Re-Animator (1985) Review

Re-Animator (1985) Review

For the first WTF Wednesday of the month, I didn’t want to start things off too extreme, but if you aren’t into the same kind of sick, twisted, gory horror movies that I am, this may already be way too WTF for you. If not, let me tell you about Re-Animator: one of the most-unique horror movies of the 1980s—unique, despite re-using concepts seen in many other films. 

Re-Animator is based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, about a mad scientist named Herbert West, who is trying to perfect a serum that re-animates dead tissue. He rents the basement of a fellow student, Dan, who attends the same medical school as him. West continues his experiments in the basement, which he turns into a lab. He manages to resurrect Dan’s dead cat, but there’s a side-effect to the glowing green serum: it makes dead corpses go berserk. Soon the medical dean is after West’s serum, and things spiral out of control. 

I don’t want to say too much more than that, because this movie is full of surprises. It strikes an interesting tone, not taking itself too seriously, but not really going for full horror-comedy, either. The tone is set early on, best exemplified by the scene when the cat is resurrected. The cat attacks Dan, and it’s very obviously a fake cat. It’s over-the-top, but it isn’t played up as overtly goofy, either. It’s depicted as being scary and legit, and the evident confidence behind the scenes resonates on-screen. Sure, the whole film is undoubtedly exploitative, and there are some cheap effects, like a very obvious severed head, but the effects are only cheap in execution. Everything is practical, and much of it, especially the gore, is really well-done. 

The writer of Re-Animator, Dennis Paoli, once said in an interview “Every film should show you something you’ve never seen before.” Well, this certainly has a unique situation, in that the severed head gives head to a very unfortunate woman. It’s this kind of WTF moment that makes the film stand out amongst the numerous zombie films of its time. The ending, too, is absolutely out-of-control, and a total blast. 

Re-Animator is definitely sick, definitely twisted, and definitely a lot of fun. The perversion of the human body that occurs may be too much for more squeamish viewers, but it’ll satisfy gore hounds with its plethora of creative shocks and scares.