Dir. Stuart Gordon
1985, USA, 105 min
H.P. Lovecraft and Lucio Fulci did not team up to make the most amazing gore-sex grotesquerie of 1985. But thanks to Re-Animator, they didn’t have to. Feeling like an amalgam of Frankenstein, The Beyond, and Revenge of The Nerds, Re-Animator is where science meets chaos to produce an hyperactive overdose of gruesome insanity. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a new student at Miskatonic University. He also moonlights as a mad scientist, intent on perfecting a serum that “re-animates” corpses. Soon, everyone wants a piece of the action, including an evil professor and his army of slime-covered deadites. With berserker direction from Stuart Gordon, career-defining roles from horror icons Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs, and a scene of two adults chasing an undead cat in a basement, Re-Animator isn’t just a masterpiece of the horror genre – it’s a masterpiece of life.
Calling Re-Animator a crucial gore movie is like saying that fire is hot.
– Zack Carlson, co-author of Destroy All Movies
