Re-Animator tells the story of Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), a medical student in love with the Dean's daughter, Barbara Crampton (Megan Halsey). Dan has a hard time seeing people die; we first meet him as he tries, and fails, to revive a patient. It is this important detail that helps explain some of the actions that follow and what make him, in Gordon's own words, the "unsung hero" of the film. Why would the director refer to the lead actor as the "unsung hero"? Because between Herbert West (played with manic zeal by Jeffrey Combs) and Dr. Carl Hill (as performed by David Gale with enough tongue-lolling lechery to estrange him from his actual wife), it's easy to forget who the hero is as we, instead, become entranced by the bloody fight that ensues between these two corpse-controlling egomaniacs. The whole affair has fun putting its own spin on the Frankenstein mythos, as well as updating the spectacle and theatrics of Grand Guignol.
Script-writer Dennis Paoli was originally asked by Gordon to use the six serialized Lovecraft pulp-fiction stories for Herbert West: Reanimator that were in the public domain with several half-hour television episodes in mind. But then television formats seemed to switch over from favoring half-hour episodes to preferring stand-alone hour-long episodes, and Paoli began combining concepts from these stories into one bigger project to fill out the hour. It is at this point that Yuzna hopped aboard, and he wanted to make a feature-length film. So the extrapolations continued with the help of William J. Morris and Gordon and the end result was a two-and-a-half-hour long beast that was all shot between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1983. Both Gordon and Yuzna credit editor Lee Percy for his work in pairing Re-Animator down to an economical 86 minutes in length, which sacrificed a dream sequence and a bit about hypnosis, among other things, but which helped push the film forward at an unflagging rate. Ironically, a rated version would later be released that cut out the especially gory bits and used many of the original extended sequences for a version that was actually longer than the unrated cut.
I'll resist the great temptation to make a re-animation pun on how often Re-Animator has enjoyed being re-released in various formats. I still have my 1995 10th anniversary Elite Entertainment "letterboxed edition" laser disc, which was then tweaked again by Elite as a "Millennium Edition" dvd, and which is now, again, being re-released by Anchor Bay with a comprehensive double-dvd set that includes everything that ever preceded it along with a new featurette called Re-Animator Resurrectus. The Anchor Bay also includes, if you get it new with packaging intact, a syringe-shaped, green-fluid-filled highlighter (presumably to use in your studies instead of a pencil, which snaps easily as we see in the film).
To recap the extras: the aforementioned featurette (70-mins), an interview with Gordon and Yuzna (48 mins), an interview with writer Dennis Paoli (11 mins), an interview with composer Richard Band (14 mins), a music discussion with Richard Band (15 mins), an interview with Fangoria editor Tony Timpone (4 mins), deleted scenes (3 mins), extended scenes (24 mins), trailer, tv spots, production stills gallery, behind-the-scenes still gallery, "fun on the set" still gallery, posters and advertising gallery, storyboard gallery, Stuart Gordon bio, and two DVD-ROM features: the film screenplay and the original Lovecraft story for Herbert West, Reanimator. The Anchor Bay dvd release presents the film in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, with three different audio formats (DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0), and the feature also has two different audio commentaries available, one with Stuart Gordon, and one with Brian Yuzna, Bruce Abbot, Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, and Robert Sampson.
It's a lot to digest, but just think: the other script competing for Yuzna's feature-debut attention was a story about a guy on death row who escapes by being reincarnated as a potato, while Gordon's other competing project of that time surrounded the idea of a jealous dog trying to kill his owner's newborn baby and embroiling the both in a battle of wits. I'm glad they both found Herbert West instead.
For more information about Re-Animator, visit Anchor Bay To order Re-Animator, go to TCM Shopping.
by Pablo Kjolseth
