Friday, October 23, 2020

Re-Animator (1985)

IMDb plot summary: After an odd new medical student arrives on campus, a dedicated local and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue.
Directed by Stuart Gordon. Starring Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, and David Gale.

This is such a delightfully cheesy film, with all the extravagantly gory special effects functioning perfectly as both horrifying and absurd. They just get more and more outlandish as the story goes on -- the segments toward the end where a head on a tray and his lumbering severed body are the primary villains is an especially great combo of the grotesque with the hilarious. Jeffrey Combs as West turns in a very fun performance, really milking his character's obsession for all its worth. The rest of the characters are pretty bland, aside from possibly the primary antagonist, but they're just there to be audience inserts and foils for West's mad scientist plans anyway, so they fulfill their purposes. And the effects are just so much fun to watch. Definitely worth a watch if you like gory B-movies -- it does not disappoint in that realm!

How it entered my Flickchart:
Re-Animator > Letters from Iwo Jima
Re-Animator < My Name Is Joe
Re-Animator > Kill Bill Vol. 1
Re-Animator > Mary Poppins Returns
Re-Animator > Dangerous Liaisons
Re-Animator < Center Stage
Re-Animator > Auntie Mame
Re-Animator > Gone Baby Gone
Re-Animator > The Color Purple
Re-Animator > Unbreakable
Re-Animator > Wonder Boys
Final spot: #863 out of 3243, or 73%.

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