DRIVE INSATURDAY

DRIVE INSATURDAY

HEAD HUNTING STUFF!

Edouard Dauphin

Re-Animator is the newest movie to be based on an H.P. Lovecraft work and to say that it is the best horror film in recent years is not to do it justice, in The Dauph�s opinion, and, believe me, I have sat through my share of inept vampire flicks, Jason sequels and Stephen King drivel (did they make a film of this guy�s high school diary yet?), which is what the 1980s seem to be all about—at least in the genre that, for whatever reasons of mental instability, continues to be Edouard�s peculiar bailiwick. A debut film by Chicago theatrical director, Stuart Gordon, ReAnimator is the sort of picture that renews one�s faith in the ability of movies to shock, revolt, offend, amuse—in terms of sheer entertainment value, it�s about next best thing to a front row seat at an autopsy.

From its opening minutes, ReAnimator is a film with an unflinching devotion to cadavers and the day-to-day workings of a city morgue. Herbert West, a slightly deranged medical genius played by Jeffrey Combs, is convinced that he can restore newly-dead corpses to life by means of a chemical reagent he has perfected. Trouble is, unless you happen to be at a Ratt concert, it�s hard to find the properly fresh brain-dead specimens suitable for the re-animation process. West decides that the mortuary of a New England city (Arkham, a popular Lovecraft setting) would be a good place to body-snatch, so he settles in at the local medical school, experimenting on his roommate�s cat, Rufus, just to keep his hand in until he can go after bigger game. When the roommate (Bruce Abbott) discovers Rufus splayed out in the fridge looking like a furry Oven Stuffer Roaster, he is understandably peeved, until Herbert demonstrates that, with a mere injection, the kitty can once again be stalking Friskies Buffet, though, unexpectedly, Rufus acts like he could rip open a can of Beef And Giblets Dinner with his teeth.

Unperturbed by the reagent�s ultraviolent side effects, Herbert skulks into the morgue to reanimate a burly carcass, who does not take kindly to being back among the living. In the ensuing fracas—a splatterthon of epic and hilarious proportions— the born again stiff is exterminated yet again and the med school dean is bashed to bloody smithereens only to be—you guessed it—re-animated as Herbert�s latest prodigy. Nothing and no one in this movie stays dead for very long, though the squeamish among you might wish that they would.

Heads start rolling—quite literally—after Herbert�s little mortuary stunt. Confronted by a villainous professor who wants to steal his reagent formula, Herbert kills two birds with one stone by decapitating him, then re-animating his headless corpse, which spends the rest of the movie carrying around its own head. When the persistent doc still threatens to expose him, Herbert counters with one of the film�s more memorable lines: �Who�s going to believe a talking head?� The Dauph�s been saying that about David Byrne for years.

Events reach a climax—so to speak—when the dean�s daughter (Barbara Crampton) stumbles into the morgue, only to stripped naked, shackled to an embalming table and forced to commit unspeakable acts. I won�t describe this scene in detail but, once you see it, the expression �giving head� may never be the same to you again. For this and other indignities, actress Crampton seems to have a lock on the Drive-In Saturday Good Sport award for 1985. She has a bright future ahead of her.

So, it would seem, does the principal perpetrator of ReAnimator. With this film, Stuart Gordon has made the splashiest—and splatteriest— directorial debut since Tobe Hooper lurched onto the horror scene a decade ago with Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Gordon is a man to be watched—he is cinematically dangerous—and that�s The Dauph�s highest praise.