Review by Stephanie Scaife
Stuart Gordon’s cult classic gorefest Re-Animator is being released again, this time as a 2-disc special edition Blu-ray and DVD from Second Sight Films. For those who aren’t familiar with the film, it is the brainchild of theatre maker Stuart Gordon, who made his name by setting up the avant-garde Organic Theatre Company in Chicago before setting his sights on celluloid. Like many aspiring filmmakers Gordon was advised to make a horror movie for under $1million, as low-budget genre movies always recoup their money. Initially looking to make a contemporary Frankenstein movie, Gordon was pointed in the direction H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West: Reanimator, a series of short stories, which he originally tried to develop as a television series of six 30-minute episodes. After being informed that there was no market for that sort of thing in television, Gordon was put in contact with producer Brian Yuzna, who convinced him to take Re-Animator to Hollywood and make it into a movie.
After viewing a cocktail of horror classics from the previous decade, including the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween and The Toolbox Murders, Gordon took his inspiration yet knew that he wanted to go even further, and even attempt to outdo these films. The result was the Re-Animator that we all know and love today, one of the most outlandish and excessive horror movies ever made (well, until Jackson made Braindead), and a fantastical blend of Romero-style zombie gore through the more traditional narrative route of Frankensteinian mad science.
Jeffrey Combs stars as Herbert West, a medical student who has become obsessed with the idea of bringing the dead back to life, and develops a serum which he believes will revolutionise medicine. However, after overdosing his dead college professor in Switzerland, resulting in some heinous side-effects, West flees back to the United States, where he moves to New England to attend Miskatonic University. After renting a spare room from fellow medical student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) West quickly turns the basement into his own private laboratory, as well as setting his target on Cain’s pet cat, Rufus.
West is immediately at odds with the egotistical Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), a faculty member whom West considers to have stolen the theory of ‘brain death’ from his previous mentor (and victim) Dr. Gruber. Not only this, but Hill has become infatuated with the university Dean’s daughter, and Cain’s Girlfriend, Megan (Barbara Crampton). After being kicked out of medical school as a result of Hill’s intervention, both West and Cain team up to reanimate some corpses in the hopes of salvaging their medical careers, and more importantly for Cain, his scholarship. Of course, things do not go according to plan and things go from bad to worse… culminating in one of the most memorable scenes in horror film history, and according to Gordon the first ever visual pun committed to cinema, where Hill’s re-animated head literally gives head to a restrained Megan.
Re-Animator is a true classic; it’s one of the few films (along with the likes of An American Werewolf in London) that actually succeeds as a horror comedy, being both funny and scary in equal measure. The gross-out special effects are mostly very impressive, even by today’s standards (a re-animated Rufus notwithstanding) and work as proof that horror tends to work at its best on a limited budget with in-camera special effects.
Having been available in innumerable editions on VHS, Laser Disc, DVD and Blu-ray, is this new version worth parting with your hard earned dough? In short, not really. Unless you don’t already own Re-Animator or you’re a completist, then there isn’t really anything new here. The only real difference is that with the Blu-ray edition you get the “Unrated” and the “Integral” (R-rated version) together for the first time; otherwise, all of the other special features including the Resurrectus documentary and commentaries were already available on previous releases of the DVD. Apparently it’s a brand new restoration of the Unrated version, but I couldn’t really tell the difference between that and the other version currently available on Blu-ray.
Now, this may seem like a negative review but it really isn’t. I mean, I love Re-Animator as much as the next person, but when you’re expected to fork out £20 on a Blu-ray you’d ideally hope for a more exciting package than what’s on offer here. Not only are the documentaries and commentaries rehashes, but they’re not very good – particularly the director’s commentary with Stuart Gordon, which is so mind-numbingly dull he really should just stick to making movies and not talking about them; I made it about an hour through before nodding off. The other commentary with Brian Yuzna, Jeffrey Combs et al is far more entertaining, thankfully, but whilst the documentary is also entertaining, the main players are telling the same stories that they tell on the commentaries, so there is little new information here. It’s a shame really that Re-Animator didn’t fall into the hands of the likes of Arrow Video (who released a great version of Beyond Re-Animator), because it really is lacking in the special features department. It’s just as well that the film is so darn good.
Re-Animator is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 2 June from Second Sight.