The Wildest Lovecraft Adaptation Just Got A Swanky New Blu-Ray Release
Re-Animated once again.
The legendary 1985 horror movie Re-Animator, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this month with a brand new 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray edition, was not only grisly, outrageous fun, but arguably re-introduced the work of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft to a new generation of fans, paving the way for more adaptations.
Based on the 1922 story “Herbert West – Reanimator,” the film follows West (Jeffrey Combs), a brilliant but megalomaniacal medical student who’s created a “reagent” that can bring the dead back to life... as savage zombies. West’s obsession soon pulls in his fellow student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), Dan’s girlfriend Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton), and the sinister Dr. Hill (David Gale), who has unsettling designs on both West’s formula and Megan, into a macabre, stomach-churning maelstrom of death, gore, and resurrected corpses.
How Was Re-Animator Received Upon Release?
The most surprising thing about Re-Animator — besides debut director Stuart Gordon’s assured control of the material, the excellent cast, and the movie’s truly outlandish makeup, effects, and set pieces — is that it’s shockingly funny. Gordon and co-writers Dennis Paoli and William J. Norris didn’t set out to make Re-Animator a black comedy, but it evolved into one. The film’s deft combination of horror and humor landed well with top-shelf critics like Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, and the New York Times’ Janet Maslin, and it even won a special critics’ prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Releasing without an MPAA rating — a decision made by the film’s producers to avoid an X rating or extensive cuts — meant that Re-Animator received only a limited theatrical release, but the film became a cult classic thanks to numerous home video releases. The mini-franchise has spawned two official sequels (1990’s Bride of Re-Animator and 2003’s Beyond Re-Animator), and a series of comic books.
West is just trying to get ahead in science.
Why Is Re-Animator Worth Watching Today?
Before Gordon unleashed Re-Animator, Lovecraft’s prevailing cinematic legacy was a series of sober, unadventurous adaptations like The Haunted Palace, The Dunwich Horror, and Die, Monster, Die! But Re-Animator changed all that, giving this rollicking spin on Lovecraft’s story a modern appeal, a new cinematic vigor, a comedic tone, and a shocking torrent of gore that might have rattled the author himself.
Or maybe not. Some Lovecraft fans thought the film’s copious blood, nudity, and “splatstick” — a combination of physical comedy and extreme gore — were anathema to the cosmic awe and terror of Lovecraft’s best-known tales. But “Herbert West – Reanimator” was a pretty crude piece of fiction itself, full of grave-robbing, mass murder, cannibalism, and disembowelment (Lovecraft wrote it for the money and reportedly hated it, while scholar S.T. Joshi called it his “poorest work”). Even the film’s most memorable image — Dr. Hill’s severed but conscious head carried around by his own decapitated body — is found in Lovecraft’s story, although the detached head’s attempt to perform oral sex on Barbara Crampton is the movie’s infamous invention.
Re-Animator is fairly faithful in other ways too, and has served as a portal for viewers to Lovecraft’s better stories, which are essential reading for anyone interested in horror literature. Re-Animator’s success also led to a resurgence of films and TV shows inspired by, or directly adapted from, Lovecraft. Just as importantly, Re-Animator was one of several films, including Return of the Living Dead (1985) and Evil Dead II (1987), to achieve a near-perfect mix of gory scares and over-the-top humor, opening the doors for a subgenre that’s flourished to this day.
This is one of Re-Animator’s tamer moments.
What New Features Does The 4K Blu-ray Have?
Re-Animator has been reissued many times over the years, but the new edition from Ignite Films gives the film a fresh 4K UHD-HDR restoration while containing both new content and a slew of legacy features ported over from past releases.
This includes a new conversation with Combs, Crampton, and producer Brian Yuzna (sadly, Stuart Gordon passed away in 2020), recent interviews with Gordon’s wife (and supporting cast member) Carolyn Purdy-Gordon and editor Lee Percy, a 1977 documentary on Chicago’s Organic Theater Company (which the Gordons founded in 1969 and led for many years), a feature on Re-Animator: The Musical, which was staged in Los Angeles, New York, and Edinburgh in the early 2010s, and a mini-documentary on the movie’s legacy called “The Horror Of It All.”
Fancier versions are also accompanied by a 150-page hardcover book featuring more new interviews and essays, a series of collectible art cards, and a Dr. Hill bobblehead, while some lucky buyers will randomly land a poster signed by Combs, Crampton, and Yuzna, plus other goodies. It’s more than enough to keep Re-Animator fans busy, whether they’re alive, dead, or somewhere in between.
