31 Nights of Horror: Night Twenty-Four, "Re-Animator"

H.P. Lovecraft is a notoriously difficult writer to adapt because his stories lack the visceral grit or overt relatability that characterize later, more bankable authors like Elmore Leonard and Stephen King. His fiction tends to feature highly rational people, often scientists, confronted by total irrationality, which drives them to madness through the simple fact of their existence rather than the number of tentacles on their unutterable bodies or syllables in their unspeakable names. This is a point most adaptations don’t seem to grasp--it’s the offense to our sense of cosmic order, and not the offender, that constitutes Lovecraftian horror.

    Stuart Gordon doesn’t give a fuck. His three adaptations of the Rhode Islander’s work (and a half, if we’re counting his Masters of Horror segment for “Dreams in the Witch-House”) miss the point and yet stand as the very best Lovecraft movies we have, each a ferociously entertaining and fun movie in its own right. Of the three, Re-Animator is the very best, a re-imagining of one of Lovecraft’s (ironically) least Lovecraftian stories, “Herbert West - Re-Animator.” It was lauded on release, remained a cult horror staple through the years, and has rightfully entered the horror pantheon as one of the best-loved horror movies of the 80s with Arrow Video’s recent deluxe edition, featuring the 86-minute theatrical cut and the 106-minute extended cut, available for the first time in North America. It’s a big deal.

    Ostensibly a mad scientist story, it follows the brilliant Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) from his botched tenure in Switzerland to the fictional Miskatonic University of New England, where he intends to continue his experiments with reanimation: bringing the dead to life. A couple of things get in his way: friction with Miskatonic professor Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), and medical student roommate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), who isn’t much of a fan of West--especially after he kills his cat Rufus. West and Cain are forced into an uneasy partnership when Dr. Hill’s lust for Cain’s girlfriend Megan Halsey (the incredible Barbara Crampton) goes too far. The movie catches its tempo the moment Rufus is resurrected, and never stops: it’s a blistering ride through zombies, decapitations, nudity, murder, and more, summing up to a near-perfect horror movie and an indispensable October viewing.

-Brian L.

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