LogFAQs > #979960885

Rockus - A pretty clever modern Re-Imagining of Frankenstein as two med students try to conquer death by developing a serum to bring the dead back to life. Im a big Star Trek fan so Ive always really liked Jeffrey Combs but this has to be the defining performance of his career. His obsessive and detached turn as Herbert West is the backbone of this movie, a horror comedy that balances its humor while still retaining what makes it a great horror film as well. In the last act it goes off the rails in the best way imaginable, a pretty good movie elevated with a terrific finale and a brilliant performance from Combs.

Lightning - You killed him! / No, I did not. I gave him life.

Author HP Lovecraft these days is mostly known for his cosmic horror work (and all the racism) that became so influential on the genre. However, aside from that, he also wrote some incredibly pulpy, more down to earth horror stories including Re-animator, which is secretly one of the most influential zombie works of fiction out there. It is interesting that despite not being as well known or as often regarded as his best work, Re-animator is probably the best HP Lovecraft adaptation to date.

On reflection I suspect that part of the reason that this film is so much better than other attempts at HP Lovecrafts other work is its simplicity. There is not as much to mess up in this story, and it is immensely filmable whereas cosmic horror is much harder to get right (and it has been said that while there have been some very good cosmic horror films like The Endless, there has not yet been the big defining cosmic horror film), this however is a very straightforward zombie plot executed with an appropriate amount of gore and guts. It is not doing a whole lot in terms of depth, but it keeps you with it and executes every aspect well.

The effects are really strong here, yet dont push it too much into being just unpleasant. The cat is likely the most disturbing it gets. However in terms of unpleasantness the whole sexual assault and nudity aspect felt gratuitous. Despite that we get a good turn from Barbara Crampton with what she had, alongside memorable performances from Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott. There is some good comedy too, often involving the doctor carrying his own head. A film that is relatively light on content but not on value.

3/5

Johnbobb - I've been a little torn on how to rank this one. It's super campy and feels kind of exploitative, but it's still a pretty iconic and original take on the idea of the living dead in horror. Herbert was surprisingly effective as the lab student turned crazed scientist causing his own destruction, and there were a lot of small decisions made her that really made it stand out compared to some of the other dumber camp movies from the period. Definitely takes a hit for the weird, rapey severed head scene though.

Plasmabeam - Theres a cool concept here, but the execution was too B-movie to do it justice.

Snake - One of Re-Animator's biggest strengths is its ability to seamlessly blend outrageous gore with laugh-out-loud moments. The special effects are amazing, the splatter is plentiful, the dismemberment delightfully cheesy, and the reanimated body parts move with an uncanny twitch that's both unsettling and comical. Jeffrey Combs' performance as Herbert West is nothing short of iconic. He portrays the character with a manic energy and unwavering conviction that is both terrifying and strangely endearing. West is utterly consumed by his research, willing to break every ethical code in the pursuit of his goal. Not a fan of the sexual content here, which ventures into deeply bizarre, unsettling territory that is gross as fucking hell and not funny at all.

Evilordexdeath - After so many films involving that hack Stephen King, it's nice to shake things up with an adaptation of noted racist H.P. Lovecraft's work. This is probably the least faithful adaptation of any movie on this list - I mean it even includes a heterosexual romance and a sex scene! Lovecraft was more terrified of those things than any of the horrors he wrote about and the only emotional connections between characters in his work were a sort of respectful camaraderie between male fellows in some kind of scientific or scholarly field. So of course the love interest is an entirely new character to the film, and by extension the minor subplot about trying not to piss off her dad who is also one of the teachers at the main character's school. I'm not about to say that Lovecraft's writing is sacrosanct, and in fact Herbert West: Reanimator has shocking racism and overlong silly descriptions even for him, but I do think this movie dumbs down the weird tale in a way that's detrimental. In the original, Herbert West is the most horrific figure, a mad scientist who gradually becomes a twisted murderer - in this he's a sort of plucky antihero whose worse qualities are overshadowed by a corrupt teacher who gets reanimated as a separate head and body and tries to sexually assault the love interest girl. While the original story does eventually get to the idea of an independent head and body that can command other re-animated corpses, there is ambiguity as to whether this really takes place or if the narrator is insane and hallucinated it - while himself murdering Herbert West. It also loses a few little details that made the text feel more scientific like West's formula needing to be modified for different species and individuals or embalming fluid preventing it from working. I can see the movie being funny to some people - I mean the big bad doctor man eventually strangles Herbert West with his tentacle-like spinal column - but for me it wasn't, it was just loud and dumb where the original story's best moments were a sense of paranoia and certain startling revelations that take place in the narrator's head.