REVIVING LOVECRAFT IN THE PRESENT: 'RE-ANIMATOR' (1985)

 Herbert West (Jeffery Combs) is about to inject his reagent into human flesh to re-animate the dead. Credit: Re-Animator Productions

Re-Animator is a loose contemporary adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s serialized short horror story, Herbert West–Reanimator (1922). It is a satire on Mary Shelley’s most acclaimed and famous work, her Gothic novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), but it is done so respectively as a loving homage. Herbert West–Reanimator is the first piece of literature to depict uncontrollable and animalistic reanimated corpses. The film takes its inspiration from all of the episodes in Lovecraft’s serial.

Re-Animator is the feature directorial debut by Stuart Gordon (1947 - 2020) - one of the great unsung genre filmmakers. It is his first of five collaborations with screenwriter Dennis Paoli based on H.P. Lovecraft’s work: From Beyond (1986), The Pit and the Pendulum (1991), Castle Freak (1995), and Dagon (2001). For Re-Animator, Gordon (who co-wrote the screenplay) and Paoli, get to grips with the source material’s intended ridiculousness. Its unconventional narrative and perfect balance of imaginative, over-the-top, gory, body/zombie horror, and dark humour, makes for a bizarre and macabre experience. But it is hard to imagine that this would have worked half as well if it did not have such a talented ensemble cast.

Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a medical student who has just enrolled at the fictional Miskatonic University, situated in the fictitious city, Arkham, Massachusetts, Northeastern United States. He has just returned from Zurich, Switzerland, where he was studying under the renowned professor, Dr. Hans Gruber. Gruber died under mysterious circumstances while he and West were researching regeneration. West clashes with Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale, 1936 - 1991), when he accuses him of plagiarizing Gruber’s work, and ridicules his theory of the brainstem’s length of survival after death. 

West soon involves his new roommate, and dedicated trainee surgeon, Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), in his continued regenerative experiments, when West turns the house’s basement into his personal laboratory. He reanimates the dead by injecting a glowing green serum he has created into their tissue. Dan becomes fascinated with this after witnessing the results with his fiancée’s dead cat. 

Dan’s fiancée is Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton), who becomes unintentionally involved, forming an odd triangle. She is the daughter of the dean of the university, Alan Halsey (Robert Sampson, 1933 - 2020). The middle-aged Dr. Hill is obsessed with the young and beautiful co-ed.

When Dan smuggles West into the hospital morgue, this is where the horror really begins, as the reanimated cadavers turn into out of control and violent zombies.

"... the reanimated cadavers turn into out of control and violent zombies." Credit: Re-Animator Productions

The cast plays it straight. Their characters take the strange and frightful situations they find themselves in seriously, and the off-the-wall comedic relief organically comes from the absurdity of these predicaments. The humour feels authentic and real. Re-Animator deftly mixes horror and black comedy, and is one of the best examples of doing so.

The brilliant and eccentric scientist, Herbert West, is an arrogant narcissist, and a creep. But due to Jeffrey Combs’ quirky charm and immense charisma, and aided by the pitch-black comedic elements, he makes for an anti-hero who is impossible not to like. West’s characterization does not fit into the evil villain category, because he has no moral alignment, as he is just fiercely driven and obsessed with achieving his goals.

West’s partner in crime, Dan, is hugely likable as an all-round good guy with a caring nature, but is naive. He has everything: young, handsome, bright, respected, attending medical school on a scholarship, and is in love with the dean’s beautiful daughter. The world is at his feet. We identify with him because he is a normal person just trying to make his way in the world, and things are looking up for him. This is until he meets West, and is thrust into the madness that destroys everything he has worked so hard to achieve. We relate to this on an emotional level, because we know that life can take everything away from us just like that. Dan is the surrogate for the audience. In the first post-title scene, Dan tries his damnedest to resuscitate a patient, but fails. Doctors strive to beat death, and this is why West’s reanimation agent captivates Dan. The film’s ending goes back around to its beginning.

Megan challenges West at every turn, because she sees his work as wrong, and thinks he is leading Dan down a dark path away from her. West finds her to be an inconvenience, getting in the way of him and Dan. They fight over Dan’s soul: Megan wants them to have a life together, but West needs his help. Dan loves Megan, but the surgeon in him fighting to save lives believes in what West is doing. Dan and Megan have a wonderful romance, but it is tragically cut short. Director Stuart Gordon focuses on the dramatic tension in this intense conflict with heart and passion for the material. This is real human drama, which goes beyond the film’s shock value, and is another reason for its enduring legacy as a cult horror classic.

Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton), Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), and Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) form one of the greatest ensembles in horror cinema. Credit: Re-Animator Productions

Barbara Crampton gives a brave and bold performance as Megan. She had no qualms giving us the full-frontal nude goods in a disturbing prolonged sequence during the gruesome Grand Guignol finale, when the real villain of this horror piece sexually assaults her.

The evil Dr. Carl Hill is hungry for wealth, fame, and power. He is a fraud, who as well as pilfering Dr. Gruber’s ideas, wants to steal Herbert West’s research too. He is a despicable human being who fittingly ends up as the ghastly creature he becomes.

Composer Richard Band’s music score is a blatant rip-off of Bernard Herrmann’s iconic composition for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). But its franticness perfectly complements the film’s energetic pace and zaniness of its events.

The 86-minute unrated version was released in North American theatres for the Halloween season in October 1985. This was to avoid an X rating - the box-office kiss of death. It was made available on VHS, Betamax, and LaserDisc there, and on videotape in my native United Kingdom, where it received an 18 certificate. The home video market is where Re-Animator found most of its audience. I first saw it when I rented it from my local Blockbuster Video in South East London, England, during the mid-‘90s. This version is perfectly paced and has all of the graphic gore and nudity intact. I loved it.

 Megan receives unwanted head. Credit: Re-Animator Productions

When I read in a TV guide that the BBC was showing Re-Animator late one night, I stayed up to watch and recorded it. I was shocked to see that most of the ingenious gore effects created by SFX artist John Carl Buechler (1952 - 2019) and his team, and much of Barbara Crampton’s nudity, were edited out. This is the inferior R-rated cut. Because media outlets refused to advertise unrated films, it was re-edited and submitted to the MPAA during the first quarter of 1986, and was given an R rating. It replaces the gory set pieces with 16 plot scenes that help us to understand the more confusing parts.

This cut features Dr. Hill having the power of hypnosis to make people do what he wants. We see why Megan’s father suddenly turns on Dan, who he was fond of before. However, it can be interpreted in the unrated version, when Dan tells him about his findings with West’s experiments, that he loses his temper with Dan because it infuriates him as a man of science, and dismisses his claims as nonsense. This sub-plot makes for overstuffed proceedings, because the focus of West reanimating the dead is enough to sell the movie.  

In the R-rated cut, Megan shows much more suspicion of Herbert West. And he is made unlikable because he is portrayed as a woman hater, showing such disdain towards Megan because she is female, whereas in the unrated version, it comes off that he is just irritated by her interference. It was a wise decision to leave West’s misogynistic character traits on the cutting room floor, because it is hard to make an anti-hero work with such foul views on women.

Dan discovers West injecting himself with a watered down concoction of his own fluid, because he uses it to battle fatigue, and is addicted to it.

These two characteristics of Herbert West were not passed over to Re-Animator producer Brian Yuzna’s sequels as director: the worthy Bride of Re-Animator (1989), and the not so worthy Beyond Re-Animator (2003). This is testament to the original’s unrated version as being the definitive vision of the film. 

While it is interesting to see this extra footage, the unrated version works much better, because it is livelier and more outrageously gory fun. The R-rated cut zaps the energy out of the brisk pace as it is a drawn out affair, its added plot points makes for a more downbeat mood, and there is not much in the way of gore. It makes for a far less good time. 

The Integral Cut had its world premiere in 2013 when it was released on Blu-ray in Germany. It includes everything and runs at just under 105 minutes. Oddly enough, though, it slightly trims Barbara Crampton’s nudity, as alternative shots from the R-rated cut are used for an early scene. 

I highly recommend that newcomers to Re-Animator see it unrated first, and then watch the Integral Cut as an alternative curiosity, but avoid the butchered R-rated cut at all costs.

This is essential viewing. The heartfelt and emotional drama, black as coal humour, excellent dialogue, all delivered pitch perfectly by the fantastic cast, tremendously grotesque special effects, and shocking and disturbing moments - are the reasons why this important genre work has gained its legendary cult status. Re-Animator is one of the best horror films of the 1980s.

© 2026 Dave J. Wilson. All rights reserved.

Credit: Re-Animator Productions