RE-ANIMATOR (1985)

FILM: 'RE-ANIMATOR' COMBINES HORROR AND LOTS OF GORE

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - June 3, 1985

Author: Rick Lyman, Inquirer Movie Critic

Re-Animator is another example of what happens when a movie that leaves nothing to the imagination is made by people who don't have any. You get pounds of sausage meat, buckets of stage blood and nothing you'd want to grab hold of without rubber gloves.

It's a movie for people who savor state-of-the-art gore and don't care if there's nothing else on the menu.

Based on an H.P. Lovecraft story, it's the old wheeze about a mad doctor who experiments with ways to keep brains alive.

When Lovecraft was writing his cheery little pieces back in the early decades of the century, the art of motion-picture gore-mongering was still young. He had to content himself with dreaming up horrid ideas, things that would make readers cringe.

Now, in our more advanced era, we don't need to read a graphic description of an autopsy. We can watch it - in close-up. Ever wonder what the inside of a human head looks like after the brain has been scooped out? Wonder no more. It's kind of like a toothless hippopotamus with its mouth open.

Director Stuart Gordon's loose adaptation of Lovecraft's story, updated to present-day Massachusetts, is a smorgasbord of grisly close-ups. We learn what every single one of those tools are for in a coroner's office, and pay several bile-inducing visits to the morgue.

There's never much doubt about what's going on, notwithstanding all the portentous dialogue. A strange Swiss medical student arrives espousing all sorts of creepy notions. His professors, boobs all, ridicule him. His all- American roommate grows suspicious. What's he up to in his room all day?

Of course, you know what he's up to.

You're 10 minutes ahead of him all the way. By the time the movie's half over, you're already working on the sequel.

Re-Animator could be seen as a failed satire about students wreaking vengeance on their idiotic professors. But that would take more charity than I'm able to muster.

It's not fierce enough to be really unsettling - like Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead or Wes Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street, for instance - and it's too slow and schematic to work as horror -comedy. Some of the characters seem to be going for laughs; others seem to be going for the exit.

The movie's distributors opted not to submit it for a rating, so it's being released with a "warning" to those under 17. As you might guess, there were enough 17-year-olds to staff a couple of high school proms the afternoon I saw it.

I think it might be advisable, though, to leave the younger ones at home.

And stay with them.

RE-ANIMATOR

Produced by Brian Yuzna, directed by Stuart Gordon, written by Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris and Stuart Gordon, photography by Mac Ahlberg, music by Richard Band, distributed by Empire Pictures; running time, 1 hour, 29
mins. *

Dan Cain - Bruce Abbott

Megan - Barbara Crampton

Herbert West - Jeffrey Combs

Dr. Hill - David Gale

Parents' guide: No MPAA rating (graphic violence, some nudity)
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'RE-ANIMATOR' ONLY FOR GHOUL FOOLS

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - June 4, 1985

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer

"Re-Animator." An adventure-fantasy starring Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott. Directed by Stuart Gordon from a screenplay by Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris and Gordon. Based on the story, "Herbert West - The Re-Animator," by H.P. Lovecraft. Photographed by Mac Ahlberg. Edited by Lee Percy. Music by Richard Band. Special-effects makeup by Anthony Doublin. Running time: 86 minutes. An Empire release. In area theaters.

With plenty of scary music and lots of catsup (or whatever else ''filmmakers" use today in lieu of real blood), Stuart Gordon's "Re- Animator" is your basic predictable, use-every-trick-in-the-book contemporary horror movie.

The victims in this kind of film deserve everything they get. We don't.

Based on an H.P. Lovecraft story, "Re-Animator" chronicles the dubious experiments of an inventor named Herbert West (played by Jeffrey Combs) who has lost all sense of rationality. In this case, the mad scientist concocts a medicine that revives the dead. Problem is, it also makes them innately
violent.

The result is a film that probably owes less to Lovecraft than to George Romero and his "Living Dead" flicks. In a replay of older horror films, the movie's main subplot involves a young couple (Bruce Abbott and Barbara Crampton) who unwittingly - and unfortunately - become involved in West's deadly experiments. The guy is West's roommate at a college they attend together, and the girl is the daughter of the dean there.

She eventually is pursued by one of West's victims - a doctor whom West has beheaded, murdered and then brought back to life with his serum.

The picture has a lot of special effects, all as hideous as its plot. With no tension, no humor and impossibly embarrassing performances throughout, the only horror you might feel is the realization that you've spent five bucks for nothing - at most, to have your intelligence insulted.

What could have/has been frightening/creepy in the hands of someone/anyone else comes off embarrassing/insulting here.

People who want to see films of this sort usually don't heed reviews. If you're of that stance, then by all means, go. See it. I don't want to prevent you from enjoying yourself.

Parental Guide: Not rated, but recommended to adult audiences because of its scenes of gore and nudity.
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'RE-ANIMATOR': A GORY STORY

Boston Globe - November 16, 1985

Author: Jay Carr, Globe Staff

Not since David Cronenberg's explosions of blood in "Scanners" has the horror genre erupted with the kind of hard-core gore that Stuart Gordon splashes across the screen in "Re-Animator." Although the film stems from H.P. Lovecraft's studies of the unnaturally resurrected, its flavor combines the cautionary tone of a mad- doctor outing from the '30s with the special effects wizardry and sly self- mockery of the '80s. It starts with Jeffrey Combs' maniacal wimp being thrown out of the University of Zurich for playing Frankenstein. Back in the United States, he enrolls as a medical student to ensure he'll have a supply of corpses. He's got just the green glowing liquid that will bring them back to convulsive life.

West, mad gleam and all, bullies his way into the life of another medical student (Bruce Abbott), whose buxom blond fiancee, the dean's daughter (Barbara Crampton), is obvious operating-table fodder. There's shock entwined in the humor as things begin to go spectacularly wrong, starting with an ugly episode involving a cat. Combs isn't easily deterred, even though most of the bodies he raises come at him in a foul temper. The macabre fun lies in the film's emphasis on how much trouble all those flailing zombies become, including the dean and a jealous faculty member, whose severed head in a steel pan at one point tongues the heroine. "Re-Animator" plays like the kind of film George Romero has been trying to remake ever since "Night of the Livin g Dead." A genre standout, its future as a midnight staple for the strong-of- stomach seems assured.

Memo: MOVIE REVIEW RE-ANIMATOR - Directed by Stuart Gordon. Screenplay by

Dennis Paoli, William Norris and Gordon, based on stories

by H.P. Lovecraft. Starring Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott,

Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson. At the

Charles and suburbs. Unrated (bloody dismemberments,

gruesome deaths, twitching body parts, necrophilia,

nudity).

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`RE-ANIMATOR': MED SCHOOL GUT COURSE

The Record (New Jersey) - October 18, 1985

Author: By Lou Lumenick, Movie Critic: The Record

MOVIE REVIEW RE-ANIMATOR: Directed by Stuart Gordon. Written by Gordon, Dennis Paoli, and William J. Norris, based on short stories by H. P. Lovecraft. Photography, Mac Ahlberg. Music, Richard Band. Editor, Lee Percy. With Jeffrey Combs (Herbert West), Bruce Abbott (Daniel Cain), Barbara Crampton (Megan Halsey), Robert Sampson (Alan Halsey). Produced by Brian Yuzna. An Empire Pictures release. Opens locally today. Running time: 86 minutes. Not rated: extensive gore and nudity.

"Re-Animator," an unremittingly gory and silly horror movie, can claim several apparent breakthroughs.

I'm sure it's the first time a heroine, strapped naked to a table, is ravished by a mad scientist's disembodied, oozing head.

I don't think anybody's ever been strangled to death by a large intestine before.

And certainly nobody has ever had the temerity to virtually plagiarize Bernard Herrmann's well-known theme from "Psycho. "

"Re-Animator" is only the fourth film derived from the works of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), the seminal fantasy writer. I wonder about the fidelity of this ultra gross-out adaptation, which places some distinctly anachronistic characters in a contemporary setting. Director Stuart Gordon, a founder of Chicago's Organic Theater, sets tongue in ghoulish cheek as he relates the adventures of medical student Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs). Herbert, whose black suits and ties match his somber mien , left Switzerland for a New England medical school after the abrupt demise of his mentor.

Herbert's roommate Dan (Bruce Abbott) realizes that Herbert is studying something other than "Gray's Anatomy" after Herbert brings his dead cat back to life. Shortly thereafter, Herbert wields his magic hypodermic his life-restoring serum looks a lot like Lysol lit by fluorescent light on the freshly deceased Dean Halsey (Robert Sampson), the father of Dan's fiancee, Megan. Sure, it's got side effects; the dean becomes a raving, homicidal maniac. But, heck, nobody's perfect . . .

Are you still with me? I don't think it's fair to evaluate the quality of acting, given the dialogue: "The body wasn't fresh enough," "Parts. I've never done whole parts," "Don't worry, your father's been lobotomized," and "I think he's projected some kind of psychotic need onto her. "

My personal favorite, delivered by Herbert to Dr. Hill (David Gale), a demented neurosurgeon who takes to carrying around his decapitated head on a tray a la John the Baptist: "You steal the secrets of life and death and all you're interested in is a bubble-headed coed! "

H.P., rest in peace. -