Re-Animator (1985)

This is one I'd been meaning to do for a long time, and after I asked Jamie if she'd like to be my full-time co-host at the DTVC Podcast, I thought I'd offer this one up as our first one to do, because she's more of a horror person, and to make up for the woefully painful Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark that she had to endure for our first episode together. Also on the episode of the podcast was longtime friend of the blog Fred the Wolf from Full Moon Reviews. You may remember that I lost a bet to him when my Pats lost to his Giants in the Super Bowl, and as a result had to review Do You Wanna Know a Secret? with Joey "Joseph" Lawrence and Teen Star Chad Allen. This was a much better collaborative effort between he and I here I think.

Re-Animator stars the legend, Jeffrey Combs, as Herbert West, a med student who has just transferred from Switzerland after his professor dies in a horrible accident. Turns out the prof bit it after he and West tried a reincarnating serum that didn't work so well. West thinks he's perfected it though, so he moves back to the States and in with Bruce Abbott, who himself is looking to finish med school and marry his sweetheart, Barbara Crampton. At the same time, their professor, one David Gale, is also an expert in the field of brain surgery and keeping brains alive. He's a creepfest and doesn't get along with West. One thing leads to another, and we find ourselves in a showdown between David Gale's reanimated head and his army of reanimated corpses versus West and Abbott. It's a bloodbath carnival.

This is a classic for good reason, and I think a very necessary recovering flick after Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark. This has everything you want in a good horror movie: silliness, creepiness, great characters, gore everywhere, and a nice runtime (of course I had to mention the runtime!). Combs and Gale are perfect as, I don't know, two villains, hero and villain? Both exude charisma, something we take for granted when making movies, but something that's very important. We also had a story that worked well from start to finish, didn't have too many moving parts, yet kept things interesting throughout with few dull moments. For what should be a silly 80s horror flick, we also have a surprising amount of nuance, which is always great to see. The other thing I loved was the ending. It was like a fireworks finale on the 4th of July. The film did a great job with that, building up the gore, the tension, everything, so that when we get to that moment we're looking for a big payoff, and it more than delivered. This was a unanimous hit among all three of us.

Combs is the perfect place to start here. What more can we say about him that hasn't already been said? And this is his signature role, the one that most people know him for. At this point he's a veteran character actor with over 120 credits to his name, and he's always great in whatever he does, even if the film itself isn't. Here though we have the perfect marriage of good material and Combs's skill-set. He's does both creepy and sympathetic well. He commands every scene he's in--except the ones with David Gale, where they both command them together and are great to see. We're more likely now to see him in a low-budget DTV horror flick bait-and-switch with his name all over the cover for only ten minutes of screen time, but it's how he was in this that keeps us renting and watching, looking forward to even those scant ten minutes to see him do his thing.

Whereas Combs's Herbert West character is possibly either baddie or hero, David Gale's Dr. Carl Hill is out-and-out villain, and he's fantastic. He channels that 60s creeper villain perfectly, in that Vincent Price mold, and it's there in everything he does. It's like ghoulish-ness, like he might talk about the "Monster Mash", but at the same time it's not silly at all, purely horror villain, and it works so well. What's great too is that we have the dark humor element of him with his animated head in a metal pan while he instructs his headless body to do things, so we're laughing about how great that is, while at the same time he's that scary villain we hate and want to see vanquished. It's things like that that make a movie like this such a classic.

Rounding out the cast, we had Barbara Crampton, who is great in this and who everyone loves. She's often the lone voice of reason, and also she's really put through the ringer in the finale. Bruce Abbott we've seen here at the DTVC in a flick called Interzone, in which he plays the hero in some post-Apocalyptic wasteland. He was great in that, and great here, though I was wondering here if he wasn't originally supposed to be the hero and sympathetic character and West more of a baddie. Jamie and Fred were of the opinion that no, West was definitely the hero of the film, however misguided he may be. It was just another one of those nuances the film had that added unexpected depth.

I saved Robert Sampson, who played Dean Halsey, Barbara Crampton's father, for this paragraph, because I wanted to discuss something here about killing off characters. Sampson's character is a total dick, and a total dick to Abbott especially. Also he's in bed with the evil Gale because Gale brings money to the university he's the president of. Usually when a character is a dick, we can't wait to see him bite it, but the way Sampson bites it is a bit harsh. First he's killed when one of West's reanimated corpses crushes him with a metal door in the morgue. Then he's reanimated by West. Then Gale lobotomizes him so he can control him and keep him in a straight jacket in a padded room. Finally, as he's watching Gale's disarticulated head violate his daughter, he snaps out of it and goes crazy. Jamie and Fred were on the fence about this, but I felt like it was a tough ride for anyone, even if the guy was a total dick.

You don't need me to tell you this is a total yes. Forget the fact that it's currently on Netflix, you should own a Blu-Ray of it or a special edition DVD--I know I need to too. But the fact that it is on Netflix is good, and if you haven't seen this before, or haven't seen it in a long time, you need to check it out. As far as checking us out, you can find the podcast on all your favorite podcatchers, or follow the link on the sidebar. Also thank you again to Fred the Wolf for joining us, it was a great conversation. Remember to check him out at Full Moon Reviews.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089885/

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