Oct 031985
 
four reels

Star med student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) gets a new room-mate, mad scientist Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs).  Herbert has the ability to bring the dead back to life, sort of, and if his experiments go well, he’ll be able to do so much more.  Is it his fault that the hospital is full of zombies?

Quick Review: Based so loosely on a H.P. Lovecraft story that it’s hardly worth mentioning, Re-Animator is as much fun as you can have with a zombie.  It has all the violence, gore, and nudity of your standard survivors-fight-horde zombie movie, but with wit and one hell of a mad scientist.  And it’s that mad scientist that makes me love this film.  Dan is a weak-willed pseudo-hero, but Herbert is a great character.  He’s smarter than those around him, willing to say what he think, stand-up for himself, and he’s driven.  And he not immoral, not quite.  He’s just completely amoral.  He doesn’t kill anyone from spite, but when he has to defend himself, he never looks back.  Jeffrey Combs plays him as an intense sprite and it is one of the great performances in horror.  It’s not surprising that Herbert West has so many devoted fans.

There’s some strange mind control from Dr. Hill, our “heroes” opponent, that doesn’t fit in with the mythology of the story, but I was having too much fun to care.

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