Re-Animator (1985)

... aka: A Hora dos Mortos-Vivos (The Hour of the Living Dead)

... aka: H.P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator

... aka: Resurrección satánica (Satanic Resurrection)

... aka: Zombio

Directed by:

Stuart Gordon

Re-Animator basically came about because Gordon (then mostly associated with stage productions and founding the Organic Theater Company) wanted to make something Frankenstein-like to counter the overabundance of vampire movies being produced. That led him to H.P. Lovecraft's previously-unfilmed 1922 six-part serial Herbert West, Reanimator, which he first considered turning into a stage adaptation and then a TV pilot before being convinced by eventual producer Brian Yuzna to go the feature film route instead. It was eventually filmed in Hollywood over the course of 18 days in the winter of 1984 for around 900,000 dollars.

What probably came as a surprise to most involved, especially in a decade where many were coming down especially hard on gory horror films, was that the film would become a huge success with critics despite the fact it was bloodier and gorier than most of its competition. It hit the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews and won a special award there, before heading to other film festivals and replicating its success. Critics for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice (who selected it as one of the Top 10 films of the year) and other major magazines doled out praise and even many of the stuffier critics like Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert jumped on board. The positive word of mouth was enough to turn this into a box office success and it doubled its budget back in U.S. theaters alone. The film likely would have been an even bigger hit had the MPAA not slapped it with an X rating, which forced the distributors to release it unrated instead.

When it was time for a VHS release, original U.S. distributor Vestron opted to release two versions: An R-rated cut and an uncut / unrated one. I'm sure you can guess which version was more popular! Oddly, the R-rated version runs 93 minutes while the uncut version runs just 86. That's because the cut version contains more dialogue scenes, which were removed from the gorier version to improve its pacing. A 105-minute "integral cut" was later assembled utilizing all of the footage. All three versions are now available on various DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Re-Animator's success ended up leading to a lot of other things, starting with opening the door for many more Lovecraft film adaptations (or Lovecraft "inspired" films) plus a resurgence in the author's popularity. Gordon and Yuzna both became top genre directors over the next few years while both male star Jeffrey Combs and female star Barbara Crampton became genre mainstays. If anything, the film's cult reputation has only grown stronger in recent years. It was name dropped in 2000's Best Picture Academy Award winner American Beauty and is now a frequent fixture of Top Horror Movies of All Time lists. A critic's poll done for Time Out placed it at #93 while Rotten Tomatoes methodology has it listed as the 58th best reviewed horror film of all time. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

We're first introduced to two very different third year students at Miskatonic Medical School in Arkham, Massachusetts. The first is Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), who's bright, clean-cut, well-respected, studious, compassionate and conscientious. He's the type of guy who actually feels something if he loses a patient, just as he later feels something when he loses his cat. Dan's the exact type of person who should be pursuing a career as a doctor and it's not because he's still young, idealistic and hasn't had the time to get completely burnt-out and desensitized yet. It's because he seems like a genuinely good guy. On the flip side there's Herbert West (Combs), who's much more into the research side of the medical profession. West is intense, brilliant, short-fused, socially off-putting, more than a little bit arrogant and something of a sociopath. Once he puts his mind to something, there's just no stopping him. Ethics and morals be damned.

Herbert has just transferred to the school from Switzerland, where he was doing some kind of "independent research" with the renowned Dr. Hans Gruber (Al Berry)... only Gruber ended up dead at the end of it. He immediately manages to get on brain researcher / teacher Dr. Carl Hill's (David Gale) bad side by calling his work outmoded and accusing him of plagiarizing his late mentor's work. Dan puts an ad on a school bulletin board looking for a roommate to share expenses with. Guess who shows up at his door? Despite Dan's fiancée Megan (Crampton) picking up bad vibes from the sketchy-acting Herbert (he seems more interested in the home having a large basement than anything else), Dan takes his money and reluctantly allows him to move in.

Megan's initial feelings prove to be correct. Herbert keeps himself locked up in his room at all times and doesn't interact with anyone outside of school. She finds Dan's cat, Rufus, dead in Herbert's refrigerator alongside a bottle of dayglo green liquid of unknown origin. Herbert claims that the cat got its head stuck in a jar and suffocated. Megan doesn't believe him. Still, Herbert knows she and Dan have been sleeping with each other and if Alan Halsey (Robert Sampson), Megan's puritanical father and the school Dean, finds out about it he very well could expel Dan from the program. Late one night, Dan is awaken by strange noises coming from the basement and discovers his new roomie has somehow managed to bring Rufus back to life. The cat's now out of the bag. Literally.

Herbert explains to Dan what he's been experimenting on all this time: reanimation; bringing the dead back to life. He's already been successful in resurrecting various animals using his patented reagent (the green stuff), which is injected directly into the brain. The problem is that the revived animals have all been vicious and violent and had to be put down soon after. Herbert is convinced it's because he hasn't had a fresh enough test subject... yet. Understandably concerned, Dan goes to Dean Halsey and reveals what he's discovered only to have the Dean immediately expel Herbert from the program and threaten him with expulsion and losing his financial aid. Nevertheless, Dan sneaks Herbert into the morgue so they can try out the reagent on a fresh corpse. It's resurrected as a zombie, goes on a violent rampage, kills the Dean and then things spiral further out of control from there.

Though perhaps lacking in more substantive qualities that would have really put it over the top, Gordon does such a commendable job with the pacing and balancing the bloodshed with black humor it hardly even matters. It's pretty easy to see why this became so popular in the 80s and why it's continued to endure as a top cult title over the years. Gorehounds get exploding eyeballs, brains extracted from heads, a bone saw thrust through a chest, a shovel decapitation, eyes gouged out, fingers bitten off, arms axed off, attacking intestines (later copied by Peter Jackson for Braindead), zombies and much more. Most famously of all, Gale's character spends about half of his screen time carrying his own still-living severed head around in a dish and then has a memorably tasteless scene with Crampton as she's tied down to a slab and sexually violated. The make-up and special effects from Anthony Doublin, John Nualin, Everett Burrell and John Carl Buechler are great.

Combs and Gale have received the lion's share of praise as far as the cast is concerned and, while it's true they're both memorable in the showier roles, Abbott and Crampton are just as deserving of praise for their contributions if you ask me. Both get to show a lot of emotional range here and, without them keeping things grounded and giving the more unhinged, outrageous characters something believable to play off of, the film wouldn't be nearly as successful. Sampson does a great job, too. The cast also includes Gerry Black as a security guard who really enjoys his breaks, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon (the director's wife, who appeared in most of his other films) as a doctor, Peter Kent (formerly Arnold Schwarzenegger's stunt double) as a naked zombie and Ian Patrick Williams, who'd go on to star in the director's Dolls (1987), along with Gordon's wife.

Richard Band's score is often criticized for copying Bernard Herrmann's famous Psycho score, which is understandable once you hear it. What I don't see mentioned is that there's a passage near the end that's just as much a rip-off of Jerry Goldsmith's score for The Omen! Either way, it's noticeable but not a deal breaker. Mac Ahlberg did a nice job shooting it and the art direction is from Robert A. Burns (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

Two official sequels followed: 1990's Bride of Re-Animator, which was directed by Yuzna and had Combs, Abbott and Gale all reprising their roles, and Beyond Re-Animator (2003), which was filmed in Spain, also directed by Yuzna and starred Combs. In 2011, there was also the stage production Re-Animator: The Musical.

★★★1/2

Kamillions (1990)

... aka: Wingates, The

Directed by:
Mikel (Mike) B. Anderson

Little was known about the making of this very obscure film until the guys at Junk Food Diner hunted down and interviewed the director, so now there's a bit more background information about this one out there... and what fascinating (and amusing) background information it is! According to the director, who'd previously made and sold a low-budget comedy called Alone in the T-Shirt Zone (1986), an acquaintance of his got into contact with him about a directing opportunity. He then flew to San Francisco and met with a group of producers who'd flown in from Hong Kong. The group already had the budget in place (roughly a million dollars), the locations secured, a script and all of the monsters designed for a horror film. After a disagreement over the initial script, the original writers walked. Anderson then wrote a brand new screenplay in less than two weeks. While he was busy doing that, completely unbeknownst to him, the producers changed gears and wanted a monster-comedy film more in the vein of Tim Burton's then-recent hit Beetlejuice (1988). After reading Anderson's straight horror / sci-fi script, the producers attempted to fire him (despite the fact they hadn't yet told him they were wanting something else) and then re-hired him. Anderson and Harry S. Robins (who also plays a major acting role in the movie) then did yet another script rewrite to work in some comedy.

Filming took place at the Dunsmuir House and Gardens in Oakland, California. The familiar-looking home, which was built in 1899 in the Neoclassical style, was the same house previously seen in Burnt Offerings (1976) and Phantasm (1979). Post production didn't go smoothly because all the money ran out, so the score wasn't properly done. The first cut of the film ran over 2 hours, but much to the horror of the director and the co-writer, the Chinese producers (who didn't quite understand the style of humor) had it reduced to about 90 minutes and apparently chopped out whole scenes rather indiscriminately as they went along. Anderson claims that the film was “basically not finished” and that it's “not edited properly.” In fact, he had little to do with the version that eventually found its way onto home video. The 90-minute cut was released on a completely unknown label (SBM) here in the U.S. and it also popped up on video in a few other countries like Australia and the Netherlands. However, the overall distribution was pretty awful.

Loopy scientist Nathaniel Pickman Wingate (Robins), a graduate of Miskatonic University so we already know he has the highest of monster mayhem credentials, has established a contact point with a parallel universe occupying the same subatomic space as our universe. But before he can go down in the record books with some of the greats, first things first. He has a birthday party to attend... His own. Cheerfully aloof wife Nancy (Laura O'Malley) wants him to stop dilly-dallying and get ready and sends their teenage son Sam (Dan Evans) to prod him along, but Nathan just can't pull himself away from his work despite the fact he only has 4 hours of coolant left to safely operate his machinery or else he'll end up blowing up half the planet. While peering into the alternate dimension he's discovered, Nathan spots a bunch of unknown lifeforms. He's then sucked into the portal and two little insect-like monsters are spit out into our world.

Meanwhile, Nancy greets a succession of party guests starting with her snobby, bitchy sister-in-law Angelica (Kate Alexander), who isn't five minutes there before she's criticizing nearly every member of the family. Angelica technically owns half of the huge mansion but she's been unable to get her money out of it due to her brother and his family still living there, so I guess she at least has a reason to be bitter. Long-absent, extremely wealthy cousin Desmon (Christopher Gasti), who's a famous count in Liechtenstein, shows up next all the way from Europe. And then dropping by in is family friend Lawrence Newman (David Allan Shaw), who claims to have given up the bad life (like paying for escorts) to become a conservative (“Obviously the tragic result of a liberal upbringing!”) reverend but is actually just your usual greedy / sex-obsessed hypocrite in clergy's clothing. He also keeps trying to hawk some program called “Dynagetics” in an obvious dig at L. Ron Hubbard's “Dianetics,” which was all over the place at the time.

The two little creatures; one good, one evil, have the amazing power of mimicry and can rearrange their physical structure to become an exact duplicate of any organism or physical object. In other words, they can transform into whomever or whatever they want at will. They also have telekinetic abilities, can animate inanimate objects, read minds and possess many other abilities. The bad creature (which turns out to be a 10-year-old brat in the other dimension) ends up attacking and possessing Desmon, while the good creature (the brat's babysitter) sneaks into son Sam's closet, glances up at pin-up poster and transforms into the image of Sam's dream girl: a model named Jasmine (Dru-Anne Cakmis, who also starred in Albert Pyun's VICIOUS LIPS [1986] under the name "Dru-Anne Perry"). Sam, of course, falls hard for Jasmine even though he can't quite explain why she's suddenly materialized in his closet, while Desmon goes on a killing spree; gleefully offing various guests and family members in bizarre ways.

This plot seems to have been inspired not only by H.P. Lovecraft's writings but also Stuart Gordon's hit Lovecraft adaptations Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986). As for the rest, it appears they swiped elements from The Deadly Spawn (1983), Gremlins (1984), Weird Science (1985), Terror Vision (1986), Critters 2 (1988), the Nightmare on Elm Street films, Beetlejuice and numerous other then-popular films, put them in a blender and hit “Mix “ Thankfully, this is still filled with fun sequences that make the film worth a look. During one, a man's penis turns into a giant snake-like monster. During another, a woman's fox stole comes to life and attacks her before she's transformed into a cockroach. One guy gets electrocuted with jumper cables, the obnoxious daughter (Allison Rachel Golde) gets a telephone shoved down her throat and Sam's best friend (Andrew Ross Litzky) is squashed down to where he fits inside of a fish bowl. The bad creature takes on several forms throughout, including that of a chair.

Because this was clearly made in good spirits, isn't all that sleazy (there's no nudity, very little bad language and no real gore) and has a rather upbeat tone, it maintains a sort of innocent, infectious old fashioned charm throughout. The acting's mixed (and downright wooden in a few instances) but decent for the most part and the production values, photography, lighting, sets and all that are adequate. Despite what the director and co-writer have said in regards to the editing and score, I didn't notice any major problems with the continuity or flow of the film. I'm sure it's not the complete vision they had for it and they have every right to be disappointed, but what's here and how it's presented certainly isn't bad either. 

After filming was completed, Anderson returned home feeling bummed about his experiences, not to mention broke. The tide soon turned though when he got a job working on a little animated show that was still in its infancy back in 1990: The Simpsons. He worked his way up on the series, starting as a character layout artist and finally becoming a director, winning several Emmy Awards in the process. Robins would later become well-known in the gamer world for providing the voice Dr. Isaac Kleiner in the Half-Life video game series, while cinematographer Kathleen Beeler went on to a successful career working for Industrial Light & Magic. Assistant director William Rice co-directed his own weird horror flick, The Vineyard (1989), at the Dunsmuir House at around the same time.

Trivia Note: The was supposed to be called (the properly-spelled) Chameleons but one of the Hong Kong investors insisted that be changed to Kamillions because he feared people would mispronounce the title! Incidentally, this name change actually ends up suiting the film perfectly because of its comedic tone, the fact that these chameleons are from another dimension and it's how the dumb sister character spells it on a piece of paper.

★★1/2