It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the Resurrection with a weeklong plunge into all things zombie! Here’s the history: In 2008, Dr. Girlfriend and I decided to spend a week or so each year marathoning through zombie films that we’d never seen before, and I would blog short reviews. And simple as that, the Easter Zombie Movie Marathon was born.
For the curious, here are links to 2008, 2009 (a bad year), 2010, 2011, 2012 (when we left the blog behind), 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
“Herbert West – Reanimator” is a Frankenstein-inspired parody short story by H.P. Lovecraft, serialized from February through July 1922 in the magazine Home Brew, published by his friend George Julian Houtain. While it is, according to Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, “universally acknowledged as Lovecraft’s poorest work,” and Lovecraft himself was unhappy with the story, writing it only because he was paid five dollars per installment, it is noteworthy for being the first mention of Lovecraft’s fictional Miskatonic University and is one of the first depictions of zombies as scientifically reanimated violent and uncontrollable corpses.
Cut to sixty-some odd years later, as Chicago theater director Stuart Gordon while talking with friends, declared he wanted to see a new Frankenstein movie as opposed to the plethora of vampire movies that were proliferating. Someone asked if he had read “Herbert West – Reanimator” and he had not, but once he got his hands on a copy, he decided it would a great idea to adapt to the stage. However, writers Dennis Paoli and William Norris convinced him that it would work better as a television series, but after writing scripts, producer Brian Yuzna recommended shooting it as a film in Hollywood, due to the number of special effects that would be required.
In an interview in Fangoria’s August 1985 issue Yuzna described the final product as having the “shock sensibility of an Evil Dead (1981) and the production values of… The Howling (1981)”, and in retrospect, I’d have to agree and maybe suggest that Re-Animator’s combination of graphic horror and comedy then went on to influence the production of Evil Dead II.
The cast of the film was relatively unknown at the time, but two have gone on to become horror film royalty. Jeffrey Combs was cast as Herbert West, the titular re-animator, and TV soap opera veteran Barbara Crampton plays Megan Halsey, the damsel in distress who is molested, assaulted, and generally put through the ringer. In the book Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, Combs said that he had never read Lovecraft before being cast and was startled by the extreme nature of the script. Assuming that the film would never reach a large audience, he took the role that would become one his most iconic performances. British character actor David Gale became famous for his performance as West’s disapproving professor turned perverted monster, and theater actor Bruce Abbott plays West’s straightlaced roommate and unwilling accomplice, Daniel Cain.
Re-Animator was released to theaters with a runtime of 84 minutes and unrated (because they feared getting an X-rating), but this still caused problems with advertising, so in 1986 the filmmakers submitted a re-edited 93-minute cut to the MPAA and received an R-rating. This release added a number of scenes and subplots to fill the time lost to the cuts of graphic gore scenes, but most of the subsequent home video releases were of the unrated version. This version is often cited as the “director’s cut” but Stuart Gordon never had access to either final cut, but expressed his preference for the unrated cut. Then, in 2013 a new, longer cut incorporating all the added scenes from the R-cut into the unrated version was released to German Blu-ray as the 105-minute Integral Cut.
Deferring to Gordon’s preferences, this review will be of the unrated cut, which, honestly is the only cut I’ve ever cared to watch.
Upon release, Re-Animater garnered surprisingly good reviews and took First Prize at the Paris Festival of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, as well as a Special Prize at Cannes. Despite this, many Lovecraft fans didn’t take to the film, claiming that its schlock and exploitation approach were a disservice to Lovecraft’s literary legacy. I guess those people never actually read “Herbert West – Reanimator” because this film draws direct inspiration from the schlock of that story.
Opening in a Swiss clinic, we discover our young Mister West (Combs) attempting to check the vitals on the writhing, screaming, undead body of his mentor, Dr. Hans Gruber (not that one) before the police pull him away and Gruber’s eyes explode in all their gory glory. Right off the bat, we know what we’re going to get with this one, and I am there for it. After some very artistic opening credits with a very Psycho-inspired score, we are immediately introduced to our cast of characters as Daniel Cain (Abbott) is delivering a body to the Miskatonic Medical School’s morgue, where Dr. Carl Hill (Gale) is experimenting with his newly developed laser drill on the head of a corpse. Enter the school’s Dean, Alan Halsey (Robert Sampson) – father of Daniel’s girlfriend Megan (Crampton) – with new transfer student Herbert West. Without any hesitation, West accuses Hill of stealing the work of Dr. Gruber and the stage is set for our drama.
Combs is absolutely perfect as West. He channels both the manic determination of Colin Clive and the cool elitism of Peter Cushing. In the early portion of the film, Abbott and Crampton aren’t given a lot to do, other than be the young lovers, keeping the intimacies of their relationship secret from Dean Halsey. Although, Crampton was expected to show some skin, and that she does in abundance. If I remember correctly, another actress was originally cast but she balked at the amount – and circumstances – of the nude scenes, but Crampton was game enough for the first film, at least. Once West moves into the spare room in Cain’s house, and gains access to a spacious, dark, and shadowy basement, the film really takes off and Cain begins to develop into a more interesting character than he seemed to be at first.
However, the man just can’t keep his mouth shut, and after witnessing West’s reanimating agent work on his cat, Rufus, in what is one of the most fantastically entertaining uses of an obviously stuffed cat puppet in cinema history, he tells the Dean and promptly gets West expelled and his own student loans cancelled – effectively kicking him out of school, too.
In the first real gore scene, West and Cain sneak into the morgue while they still have access and attempt a reanimation on a recently deceased body, and as expected, it goes horribly wrong. When Dean Halsey enters the scene, the rampaging zombie attacks and brutally murders him before West can neutralize the monster with a fantastic cranial drill through the chest from behind gore gag. And since they couldn’t possibly find a fresher corpse, the boys inject the Dean – who, as one might expect, also comes back to life as a blood spitting rage monster. It’s only the appearance of Megan that causes him to huddle in the corner, ashamed of what he’s become.
That puts the kibosh on Daniel and Megan’s relationship and opens the door for creepy creeper Dr. Hill to put the moves on Megan. The man is a total scumbag and we can barely wait for him to get his just desserts. This screenplay, by Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris, and Stuart Gordon is a lean machine that moves from plot point to plot point with efficiency. There is no fat on this beast and as soon as Hill figures out what’s what, he swoops in to steal West’s work.
So of course he gets a shovel blow to the head and then has that head removed with the very same shovel. Jeffrey Combs is magnificent in this role. Watching the thought process play out on his face as he decides to reanimate Hill’s severed head is a joy.
This is the point where the film goes full tilt boogey into crazytown and we get scene after scene that are transgressive splatter horror classics. They’re also not for the faint of heart and involve some potentially triggering scenes of molestation and attempted rape. As much molestation and attempted rape that a bloody severed head can attempt, anyway. I’m sure the scene reads differently to a modern audience, but for us gorehounds who came of age in Eighties excess, this was a monumentally warped moment that probably scarred more than a few of us.
The zombie bloodbath finale is nothing that Mary Shelley would have approved of, but after Dawn of the Dead hit in 1978, only to be followed up by the Italian zombie explosion, 1985 was a banner year for undead cinema. Not only did Re-Animator hit, but we also saw Romero’s Day of the Dead and Dan O’Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead. These three films, along with 1987’s Evil Dead II, would spawn a wave of gore-filled zombie horror comedies that would ebb and flow to this very day.
Re-Animator ends on a high point that could be a true finale but had enough ambiguous wiggle-room where a sequel could be reasonably explained. And as luck would have it, a sequel was soon in the works. It would take a few years, and Stuart Gordon and Barbara Crampton wouldn’t be involved, but Crampton Gordon and Paoli (along with Combs) went on to give us a different series of sexy, gory, Lovecraft-inspired films like no others; From Beyond (1986) and Castle Freak (1995), and eventually the Crampton-and-Combs-less Dagon (2001), along with a television adaptation of “Dreams in the Witch House” for the Masters of Horror series. Stuart Gordon died on March 24, 2020, but one last film, Suitable Flesh was finally made and released just this past year, produced by Crampton, directed by Joe Lynch, with Paoli’s screenplay that was originally intended for an unfinanced Stuart Gordon production.