Eijo: When it comes to success, how much does talent really matter? Or creativity? Or even good old fashioned know-how? According to Stuart Gordon’s gory campus satire Re-Animator, not much — as long as you’re ambitious. That’s right, all you need is the drive to succeed no matter what, and if that means you’re willing to cheat, steal, murder, and then re-animate the corpse of the man you just murdered… well, so much the better.
College sweethearts Dan and Megan may constitute Re-Animator’s emotional core, but the movie truly belongs to student Herbert West and his instructor Dr. Carl Hill — both of whom are already, by the film’s opening, quite mad with the desire to change the face of science, though West appears to be the purer researcher, a med student who aspires to eliminate death itself, while Dr. Hill is simply a career opportunist who wants renown and gobs of money (not to mention some sexy-time with Megan — the daughter of his long time friend, the Dean of the university Alan Halsey… eeeew).
West is played with stunning bravado by Jeffrey Combs, who’s career since has consisted of similarly quirky characters that tend to be mere shadows of Herbert West, a shame since he, like another talented and unfairly typecast performer who broke out in a classic horror film I can think of, Anthony Perkins, is capable of so much more (the key exception being the most recent Star Trek tv spin-offs, which have provided Combs with several outstanding roles that display his exceptional range despite layers of alien makeup).
Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West
West enters the film as the obsessive disciple of experimental brain surgeon Dr. Gruber, a madman himself who’s unconventional experiments in corpse re-animation lead to the creation of a green glowing “re-agent” that does indeed bring corpses back to life when injected directly into the brain — but after trying the re-agent on himself, Dr. Gruber’s eyes explode and then his skull bursts (this unfortunate conclusion to the experiment is the basis of the film’s opening scene, which is a hellified way to kick off any movie).
Though West clearly helped assist Dr. Gruber, it’s also clear that West isn’t responsible for the creation of the re-agent himself, yet he takes ownership of it all the same (Dr. Gruber of course isn’t alive to dispute the matter), which makes him quite similar to the talentless Dr. Hill — a man who has built his career by stealing the ideas of smarter men. Indeed, when Dr. Hill discovers that West possesses the method to re-animate the dead, the skeletal old codger sees dollar signs and immediately sets to blackmailing West in order to take the re-agent for his own.
And this is one of the many reasons why this movie is such a blast to watch — other than the fantasy element of the re-agent, the film plays things fairly straight for its first three-quarters, mining the bulk of its drama from the central conflict between two men with a distinct lack of scruples as they duke it out for the right to introduce to the world at large what is an incomplete and ultimately useless creation (after all, the re-agent turns corpses into insanely violent killing machines; where’s the scientific use in that?) — Dr. Hill blackmails West; West responds by chopping off Dr. Hill’s head with a shovel, and then re-animating Dr. Hill immediately after in order to see what happens — West’s overwhelming drive for more raw data is inspiring, if a little over-zealous.
West & Dr. Hill have a nice chat about science
Dr. Hill then surprises West by using his headless body to attack West and knock him unconscious — Dr. Hill’s apparent psychic ability to control his detached body, as well as the bodies of other corpses, is the point at which the film jumps fully into the territory of fantasy (the sequel, Bride of Re-Animator, goes even further when Dr. Hill’s head grows wings and starts flying around) — but here’s where Dr. Hill takes a sharp turn in his tactics; rather than publish his “findings” and make all that fame and money before West can stop him, Dr. Hill instead kidnaps Megan, straps her naked to an autopsy table, and sets about to molesting her. It’s one of those few examples in horror cinema (or indeed cinema at large) when nudity doesn’t feel exploitative. The audience is invited to squirm and cringe from an innate sense of empathy for Megan — how would any of us feel if we were stripped naked and licked all over by a pervert’s bloody grinning decapitated head? This scene is as close as I ever want to get to finding out.
Even the unscrupulous West knows enough to be, if not disgusted, at least put off by Dr. Hill’s actions: “I must say, Dr. Hill, I’m very disappointed in you. You steal the power of life and death, and here you are trysting with a bubble-headed co-ed. You’re not even a second-rate scientist.”
What follows is a blood-soaked tour de force that shows us exactly how awkward it would be to fight off a horde of angry naked corpses, but also displays West’s commitment to discovery in the face of his own death — as he’s being crushed to death by Dr. Hill’s over-grown intestines, West takes a moment to grab the bag containing all of his research and throw it to faux-hero Dan, who’s busily running for his life. The politics of discovery is nasty business, the film seems to say, and the victor is not the smartest guy in the room, but the guy who’s left standing after all the blood has flown.
