Re-Animator (1985)
Retro Review #67: Mad scientist revives the dead. What could go wrong?
Re-Animator (1985)
+ Feature film, 1h 26m
+ Based on literature (novelette) “Herbert West—Reanimator” (1922)‼️🔜 ⭐ by H. P. Lovecraft ⭐
+ 1️⃣/3 films in Re-Animator series ⭐
A->
Grade: A-> (8.0) / HOF: 10
EQ 👍A+ | 📖A+ 👥B+ 📽️A+ 🎼A+
DW 🕶️7.7 | 🌚13 🌝7
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R 💻⬆️0️⃣ 👀⬇️2️⃣ 🛐⬇️4️⃣
The severed head doesn’t fall far from the body in Re-Animator, a low-budget 1985 film based on the 1922 novelette “Herbert West—Reanimator”, which I reviewed yesterday. The movie is considered to be a cult classic, and, like the short story it was based on, it’s not for everyone. It’s a horror story with subtle tongue-in-cheek humor that some people would not find amusing in the least.
I like horror if it is particularly scary and/or funny. If it is both, it often lands in my Dark Whimsy genre and I like it a lot. For my tastes, Re-Animator could have surpassed the novelette it was based on, but instead fell short.
Like the written story, the movie is about a mad doctor named Herbert West who reanimates the dead with a scientific serum. The movie is updated to the present, adds a main character and only covers a portion of the written story, but the zombie mayhem vibes are pretty faithful to the original.
I found the novelette to be a bit scarier, or creepier, or however you might phrase it. I found the movie to be a lot funnier than the original story.
Jeffrey Combs is fantastic as the psychopathic Herbert West. The rest of the cast? How should I put this? Really bad. I think that might have been a brilliant, intentional decision, because the bad acting and bad dialogue is hilarious, amidst the over-the-top plot, laugh-out-loud gory visuals and delightfully cheesy jarring soundtrack.
I liked that the movie de-emphasized Lovecraft’s anti-Christian cosmicist beliefs. A trace was still there, but just barely.
The violence and gore in the movie are comparable to the literary version of the story, but the special effects easily make it more gory than most of us would take the trouble to imagine when reading. Although I graded the violence/scariness as extreme, it is mitigated by being somewhat cartoonish and meant for laughs, so it isn’t extreme in the sense of the more sadistic torture-horror films that have been popular recently.
I did find the over-the-top mayhem and gore to be very funny, but it definitely isn’t appropriate for kids. If you think there must be something wrong with me to be amused by this sort of content, I won’t argue with you. Maybe you’re right, but I typically just don’t take comedy that seriously.
For me, the movie dropped from an A-plus down to an A-minus due to an extreme quantity of nudity. While that content also seems to be (partly) intended comedically, I do take it seriously, for many reasons I won’t go into here. I don’t think nudity belongs in films, even films for adults.
In this case, we are talking about full frontal male and female nudity. About half of this content in the film is naked corpses, both dead and reanimated, but the remaining unclothed content is the lead actress and intended for prurient interest, in addition to comedic intent.
By the way, there are multiple versions of this film. The unrated version originally released in American theaters is, I think, the one that is currently available on streaming platforms. But edited versions were released in many countries and an edited R-rated version was released on DVD in America. Some of the edited versions added some originally cut non-adult outtakes to add time back into the film, and I think there is a version that uses both this content and the adult content. Looking for an older R-rated release might be a good choice for someone wanting a cleaned up version.
So. Even with a surprising and welcome lack of heavy adult language, Re-Animator is clearly an adults-only movie. Not one I would recommend to most people, and not one I’m particularly proud to admit I found entertaining.
But it’s one of the funniest horror films I’ve ever seen, and you know how I love my Dark Whimsy, or as we say here when it’s an adults-only work, Dark Whimzy.
Onwards!
+ last viewed (3) 2025-04-29, HDX7, 1.85v, 1M
+ first viewed 1985, ThX, 1.85, 1
+ 🧛🪐🌎⚛️⚕️🧌💀🌑🥸
+ ❌4️⃣ Extreme adults-only content. | UN
+ 😡-4^ 😵💫+0 🤬+1 🤭-2 🫣-4
+ 👀⬇️2️⃣ ➖(😐)
+ ✝️ -3 ➖(💣)🩳🩳👙👙👙
+ ✡️ -2 ➖(🤬)🚨🚨🫢
+ 🗽 -0 ➖(💻)
Last updated 2025-04-30
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