Re-Animator (Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Gory as hell and funny as it could be, Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator
is a horror film lover’s wet dream. With enough classic elements of Sci-fi and
Horror with the genius turned mad scientist in Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) openly based on H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West, Re-Animator story and a distant homage to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Re-Animator didn’t become a cult classic for the
quality of its acting. Maybe. But it’s the outstanding use of gore and blood
that at first gets in your face. Then it’s the cartoonesque story of the two
young students Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott)
and West (Combs) playing with life re-animating every corpse that gets in their
way and the always in the wrong place Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton) that is the tender half of Dan.
The simple idea that students in medicine dream about
re-animating a freshly deceased corpse back to life isn’t something that
fantastic. After all, with the cardiac re-animation and the medicinal advances
to live longer and fight death this fictional story mixes elements of medicine
that wants to be the salvation of mankind since the first moments men have done
surgeries and interventions. The universe of Lovecraft is dense in Horror and
the fact that he is less known than Stephen King, Richard Matheson, and Edgar
Allan Poe just makes it unbelievable that his works is so important and could
gain a wider audience if he was better known. His impact on the collective
imagination would be greater but it is so dark and introspective of the human
mind that some might have some difficulties getting him.
Gordon’s film builds a nice atmosphere that few of the
greatest Horror films of the 1980’s have managed to create. It also represents
a youth that came just after the baby boomers and that was between Talking
Heads, U2, Metallica, and some of the most minimalistic pop bands ever. It also
was a return to the 1950’s and the Reagan and Bush era in the USA. The dark
comedy and the Sci-fi elements of Re-Animator
couldn’t be more of its era of right hand politics and control of the human
rights. Close to the Nazi experiments, West studied in Switzerland, close to
Germany, it all makes sense that like a Nietzschean utopian West wants to
control life with science. But most times than not, he creates monsters.
As a cult horror movie Re-Animator
works well and touches many elements of the classic literature that influenced
the whole genre. Honestly, I was entertained a lot by Stuart Gordon’s film and
I must admit being a beginner into horror films. However, I am slowly getting
into it while I discover the classics of the genre. Re-Animator sure is one landmark into the whole horror world.
Nice review! I liked how you contrasted contemporary musicians of the day and disaffected youth with the 80s political climate.
ReplyDeleteThanks Barry! I love to review Horror films since they carry so many levels of lecture and I'm enjoying every one of them. To me it was obvious to compare the music of the time and the youth it represented. There's a poster of Stop Making Sense (Talking Heads) over Cain's bed...
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