Sunday, October 29, 2006

Horror Fest 2006 Day Three: Re-Animator

After the cinematic feast that is the Jeeper Creeper, it only seemed right to test Adam's true loathing of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, a movie he rented the same day as Castle Freak (also a Stuart Gordon flick) and recalled hating. So, in the spirit of fairness, he decided to revisit this gem from the eighties gorezone and see if the antics of Herbert West and Daniel Cain were as awful as he remembered.

By his memory, Adam quickly realized this was not the movie he'd seen so many years ago. When we got to the reanimated cat scene, he said "none of this is ringing a bell", but while the none corpse segments limped along somewhat, the strictly black comedy of the angry undead more than made up for it. That, and the main villain, Dr. Hill, bears a stunning resemblence to John Kerry, which made Adam laugh even harder.

Of course, that's not the only thing about Re-Animator that's going to remind you of something. The score is unmistakably stolen from Psycho, and to call it original would be akin to saying a Puff Daddy song from 1998 was totally new music. It's almost impossible to miss the main theme from Psycho during the opening credits, and it pops up repeadetly amidst the synth-gurgles elsewhere in the movie.

But Re-Animator holds up. Jeffrey Combs is certifiably creepy as Herbert West, and the kills are inventive and disgusting, including the presumed demise of West near the end (where he's sucked into Hill's headless body with intestines), and the "giving head" scene is still sufficiently fucked up, twenty years later.

I can't speak for Bride of Re-Animator, but Beyond Re-Animator works on a much more broadly disgusting way, and I'm excited by the premise of House of Re-Animator, which focuses on Dr. West and Dr. Cain being called into the White House to help preserve the illusion the President isn't dead. William H. Macy is in it too, hopefully as the President. I can't wait.

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