Re-Animator -- Stuart Gordon
What a lovely bit of insanity Re-Animator is. I saw it once years ago, but I had yet to develop the appropriate appreciation for Jeffrey Combs' skill set, meaning everything he does is awesome. It's bizarre because he's literally the face of the movie, but Combs doesn't get top billing and isn't featured as much as one would expect. This is because we need the requisite love story between a Talking Heads loving (you'll get it later) med student and the dean's daughter. It's not that these parts are bad. Barbara Crampton is great in everything and always willing to do anything for the movie it seems, but the leading man, Bruce Abbott just can't hold a candle to Combs. There's a scene where Crampton is breaking down and Abbott looks as though he's trying to force back laughter. Maybe he was trying to act sad?
Things go suitably bat-shit in the end and I love that the dean and the doctor, two upstanding men, wind up bloody and insane by the end. There's something very satisfying about seeing their starched collars come undone. Between this and From Beyond, it feels like Stuart Gordon should have had a far more impressive career than he did.
Thought the title bills it as "H.P. Lovecraft's," it's in a name only. While the movie is great, it loses my favorite aspect of the short story. Herbert West's creation escapes and West lives in constant dread that it will come back to murder him. But that's not the West in the movie. It's just as well. I kind of like living in a world where I can have both versions of the man.
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