Re-Animator


Re-Animator is a 1985 American comedy horror film loosely based on the 1922 H. P. Lovecraft serial novelette "Herbert West–Reanimator". Directed by Stuart Gordon and produced by Brian Yuzna, the film stars Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West, a medical student who has invented a reagent which can re-animate deceased bodies. He and his classmate Dan Cain begin to test the serum on dead human bodies, and conflict with Dr. Carl Hill, who is infatuated with Cain's fiancée and wants to claim the invention as his own.
Originally devised by Gordon as a theatrical stage production and later a half-hour television pilot, the television script was revised to become a feature film. Filmed in Hollywood, the film originally was released without a rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, and was later edited to obtain an R rating. It garnered its largest audience through the unrated cut's release on home video.
Re-Animator is the first film collaboration between Gordon, Combs and Crampton, the second being From Beyond, released in 1986. It is the first film in the Re-Animator film series, followed by Bride of Re-Animator in 1990 and Beyond Re-Animator in 2003. Released to mostly positive reviews, Re-Animator has since been considered a cult film, and been reappraised as a classic example of the zombie genre.

Plot

At the University of Zurich Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, Herbert West brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber, back to life. There are horrific side-effects, however; as West explains, the dosage was too large. When accused of killing Gruber, West counters: "I gave him life!"
West arrives at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, in order to further his studies as a medical student. He rents a room from fellow medical student Daniel "Dan" Cain and converts the house's basement into his own personal laboratory. West demonstrates his reanimating reagent to Dan by reanimating Dan's dead cat Rufus. The cat behaves viciously that night, forcing Dan to kill it again before West reanimates what is left of it, convincing Dan that West's reagent works. Dan's fiancée Megan Halsey, daughter of the medical school's dean, walks in on this experiment and is horrified.
Dan tries to tell the dean about West's success in reanimating the dead cat, but the dean does not believe him. When Dan insists, the dean implies that Dan and West have gone mad. Barred from the school, West and Dan sneak into the morgue to test the reagent on a human subject in an attempt to prove that the reagent works, and thereby salvage their medical careers. The corpse they inject comes back to life, but in a frenetic and violent zombie-like state. Dr. Halsey stumbles upon the scene and is killed by the reanimated corpse, which West then kills with a bone-saw. Excited at the prospect of working with a freshly dead specimen, West injects Dr. Halsey's body with his reanimating reagent. Dr. Halsey returns to life, also in a zombie-like state. Megan chances upon the scene, and is hysterical. Dan collapses in shock.
Dr. Halsey's colleague Dr. Carl Hill, a professor and researcher at the hospital, takes charge of Dr. Halsey, whom he puts in a padded observation cell adjacent to his office. He carries out a surgical operation on him, laser lobotomizing him. During the course of this operation, he discovers that Dr. Halsey is not sick, but dead and reanimated.
Dr. Hill goes to West's basement lab and attempts to blackmail him into surrendering his reagent and notes, hoping to take credit for West's discovery. West offers to demonstrate the reagent and puts a few drops of it onto a microscope slide with dead cat tissue. As Dr. Hill peers through the microscope at this slide, West clobbers him from behind with a shovel, and then decapitates him with it. West then reanimates Dr. Hill's head and body separately. While West is questioning Dr. Hill's head and taking notes, Dr. Hill's body sneaks up behind him and knocks him unconscious. The body carries the head back to Dr. Hill's office, with West's reagent and notes.
In his re-animated state, Dr. Hill reveals laser lobotomies grant him the ability to control other re-animated corpses telepathically. He directs Dr. Halsey to snatch Megan away from Dan. While being carried to the morgue by her reanimated father, Megan faints. When she arrives, Dr. Hill strips her naked and straps her unconscious body to a table. She regains consciousness as Hill's body and bloody, severed head begin to sexually assault her.
Hill's body starts to place his head between Megan's legs, but is interrupted by the arrival of West and Dan. West distracts Dr. Hill while Dan frees Megan. Dr. Hill reveals that he has reanimated and lobotomized several corpses from the morgue, rendering them susceptible to mind control as Halsey is. However, Megan's voice reawakens a protectiveness in her father, who fights off the other corpses as Dan and Megan escape. In the ensuing chaos, West injects Dr. Hill's body with a lethal overdose of the reagent. Dr. Hill's body mutates rapidly and attacks West, who screams out to Dan to save his work before being pulled away by Dr. Hill's monstrous entrails.
Dan retrieves the satchel containing West's reagent and notes. As Dan and Megan flee the morgue, one of the reanimated corpses attacks and strangles Megan. Dan takes her to the hospital emergency room and tries to revive her, but she is dead. In despair, he injects her with West's reagent. After the scene fades to black, Megan, apparently revived, can be heard screaming.

Cast

  • Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West
  • Bruce Abbott as Daniel Cain
  • Barbara Crampton as Megan Halsey
  • David Gale as Dr. Carl Hill
  • Robert Sampson as Dean Alan Halsey
  • Al Berry as Dr. Hans Gruber
  • Carolyn Purdy-Gordon as Dr. Harrod
  • Ian Patrick Williams as the Swiss Professor
  • Gerry Black as Mace
  • Peter Kent as Melvin the Re-Animated
  • Craig Reed as the One Arm Man Corpse / the Burn Victim

    Production

The idea to make Re-Animator came from a discussion Stuart Gordon had with friends one night about vampire films. He felt that there were too many Dracula films and expressed a desire to see a Frankenstein film. Someone asked if he had read "Herbert West–Reanimator" by H. P. Lovecraft. Gordon had read most of the author's works, but not that story, which was long out of print. He went to the Chicago Public Library and read their copy.
Originally, Gordon was going to adapt Lovecraft's story for the stage, but eventually decided along with writers Dennis Paoli and William Norris to make it as a half-hour television pilot. The story was set around the turn of the century, and they soon realized that it would be too expensive to recreate. They updated it to the present day in Chicago with the intention of using actors from the Organic Theater company. They were told that the half hour format was not saleable and so they made it an hour, writing 13 episodes. Special effects technician Bob Greenberg, who had worked on John Carpenter's Dark Star, repeatedly told Gordon that the only market for horror was in feature films, and introduced him to producer Brian Yuzna. Gordon showed Yuzna the script for the pilot and the 12 additional episodes. The producer liked what he read and convinced Gordon to shoot the film in Hollywood, because of all the special effects involved. Yuzna made a distribution deal with Charles Band's Empire Pictures in return for post-production services. However, after viewing the initial dailies Empire became involved in the actual production, making a number of suggestions, including the recruitment of Mac Ahlberg as cinematographer.
According to Paoli, the first draft of the script contained no humor whatsoever, and the film's comedic elements only came out over further revisions and during the actual production.
Yuzna described the film as having the "sort of shock sensibility of an Evil Dead with the production values of, hopefully, The Howling." Gordon cited The Revenge of Frankenstein as a major inspiration for the film. John Naulin worked on the film's gruesome makeup effects, using what he described as "disgusting shots brought out from the Cook County morgue of all kinds of different lividities and different corpses." The morgue set was based on the aforementioned Cook County morgue, which was newly built and featured cutting-edge technology; Gordon opted for this look since he felt old morgues had been overdone in horror films. Naulin and Gordon also used a book of forensic pathology in order to present how a corpse looks once the blood settles in the body, creating a variety of odd skin tones. Naulin said that Re-Animator was the bloodiest film he had ever worked on: in the past, he had never used more than a couple of gallons of blood on a film, but on Re-Animator he used twelve times as much.
Jeffrey Combs was cast as Herbert West. Combs had never read any H. P. Lovecraft before his casting and was taken aback by the script; he later said he only took the role because he needed the work and assumed the film would never reach a large audience.
Principal photography began on November 28, 1984, with a six-week shooting schedule, though Gordon has boasted that they finished shooting the film in just four weeks. The biggest makeup challenge in the film was the headless Dr. Hill zombie. Tony Doublin designed the mechanical effects and was faced with the problem of proportion once the 9-10 inches of the head were removed from the body. Each scene forced him to use a different technique. For example, one technique involved building an upper torso that actor David Gale could bend over and stick his head through so that it appeared to be the one that the walking corpse was carrying around.
The "reanimating agent" itself was the chemiluminescent agent luminol.