Medical student Herbert West has just started studying at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts having previously studied in Switzerland. He believes that he has developed a serum that can re-animate the dead! He lodges in the basement flat of fellow student Dan Cain and soon Cain and his girlfriend Megan, the Dean's daughter, are caught up in West's experiments. First he just re-animates a cat but soon he and Cain are re-animating a human being. It doesn't go well and the patient gets violent and the Dean is killed. They re-animate him and he is taken into the care of senior doctor, and lecturer, Dr Carl Hill. Hill figures out what has happened but rather than inform the authorities he decides to steal West's work... things then get really gory!This classic of the horror genre is somewhat over looked compared to other films of the era which is a pity... although I suspect most fans of the genre will have seen it. There are plenty of gory moments and quite a few laughs. The special effects are impressive; especially this involving a character who is reanimated after being decapitated and continues to function with head and body separate. The story itself might be a bit silly but that doesn't matter as it moves at a good pace so the viewer doesn't dwell on such details. The cast, particularly Jeffrey Combs who plays West, does a fine job making their characters believable even in the more extreme situations. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of the genre; especially those who like a few laughs with their gore.

Re-Animator is an obvious cult classic. Few people coming to it would be unaware of that fact. It is not undeserving of its status in this regard.Jeffrey Combs is the absolutely perfect choice for Herbert West, or any Lovecraft character. He's small, intense, intelligent, pale, and apparently completely humourless and devoid of any human interest. He comes across as a pure scientist as Lovecraft's characters always were.He was so well cast, and this movie did such an admirable job of modernising a Lovecraft story - albeit with some alterations, such as a love interest (something you'd be hard pressed to find in the horror master's entire body of work) and a spooky, Manson-like professor - that it is hard to believe he made the misfire "From Beyond", the next Combs- Gordon collaboration of another Lovecraft story. That one, based on a short story, was simply not suited to a feature film length, and so required more than just "modernizing": it had to be padded with garbage that spoilt the master's original work. That was not the case with Re-Animator, which was based on a novel, after all.Finally, a word about the tone: I first saw Re-Animator coming from Peter Jackson's Brain Dead and Frank Henenlotter's movies. I expected a similar kind of horror-comedy and was disappointed. As far as I know, Stuart Gordon has never gone for comedy in any of his movies. This is not a problem in Re-Animator; it's goofy fun regardless.

Re-Animator is a low budget, silly, gore filled, schlock horror comedy. In fact I think the director was hoping to make a serious adaptation of a H P Lovecraft story and decided to send it up as a campy horror comedy based on the Frankenstein/zombie genres and somehow it succeeds. A dismembered head trying to give fellatio to a naked, bound woman will forever be etched in my memory!Bruce Abbott plays the rather wooden lead, Dan Kane, a well meaning doctor who is roped in by Jeffrey Comb's Herbert West who is experimenting with a serum to bring the dead to life. Barbara Crampton plays the sexy girlfriend of Kane who is also the daughter of the hospital principal. David Gale plays a rival doctor who also wants to experiment in reviving the dead and has a sleazy eye on Crampton as well.The film in some ways makes little sense, dismembered bodies moving and attacking people. Yet its a hoot as well as unnerving. Its a classic of 80s horror-comedy.

Silly but entertaining.Re-animator started reasonably well, with a fair amount of intrigue and suspense. It was even plausible, to a degree. After a point, however, it becomes rather silly, with things thrown in clearly just for shock and gross-out value. Plot becomes more and more implausible and ridiculous the longer the movie goes on.Visual effects are okay (but for the over-the-top attempts to make things as unnecessarily gory as possible) but, strangely, the sound quality is quite poor. You'd think this is the one thing everyone gets right, but here it leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the time it sounds like the actors are talking from a distance away. Plus the stereo is all over the place, sound coming from the wrong side speaker at times!Performances, from a cast of unknowns, vary from okay to abysmal.A hit-and-miss movie. Not a must-see, but not a total waste of time either.