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

All Souls Day: Dia de los muertos (2005)

... aka: All Souls Day
... aka: Dia de los muertos
... aka: West of the Dead

Directed by:
Jeremy Kasten

In the 19th Century, Vargas Diaz (Danny Trejo, the bartender in all three FROM DUSK TILL DAWN movies) discovers the "tomb of the goddess of death" in a small Mexican village. He hires townspeople to help retrieve the treasure, promising to split the profits with them. Instead, he lures every citizen of the village into the mine where the valuables were located and blows it up. After doing in eight of his faithful men with poisoned win to ensure a 100% profit margin, he gets involved in a gunfight and accidentally shoots his own young son. Around a hundred years later (in 1952), Thomas White (Jeffrey Combs) and his family; wife (Ellie Cornell, from HALLOWEEN 4 and 5), 19-year-old blonde daughter and young son in arm braces (from polio), take a pit stop in the same small town on their way to the beach. They go to a hotel and notice the people there are acting incredibly strange (and no one has signed the guest book for almost a decade), but decide to stay anyway. Son Ricky ends up being possessed by an evil spirit. Daughter Lilly (who's nice enough to treat viewers to a topless bathtub scene first) is attacked by an elderly woman downstairs, only to stumble outside and be devoured by zombies (i.e. the resurrected people killed in the mine). And the parents, well we learn later that they were just hacked to pieces with a hatchet.

Fifty-three years later, newly-engaged college students Alicia (Marisa Ramirez) and Joss (Travis Webster) are traveling through Mexico in route to visiting her parents. They wreck their car in the same small town where all this bad s--t is taking place during (gasp!) Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead to us Yanks), when all the dead are rumored to walk the Earth. Immediately, the duo discover a distraught young woman named Esmeralda who has had her tongue removed. Thankfully, a friendly American sheriff (David Keith) is in town and ready to take control of the situation. Unfortunately, he's also the same possessed little boy from 1952, all grown up and committing his own human sacrifice rituals. He kills Esmeralda for giving him too much trouble and then plots to sacrifice Alicia, because apparently only a beautiful young Mexican woman will work in the ceremonies.

Alicia and Joss check into a local hotel decorated with altars, crosses and skulls, where Former Miss USA Laura Harring (also in David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DR.) and some old psychic woman mope around, acts strange and offer up drugged wine and bread to sedate their guests. Joss, who is arrogant, obnoxious and pretty irritating all around, phones his black pre-med friend Tyler and Tyler's blonde "vacuous cheerleader" girlfriend Erica (Nichole Hiltz) to come down and pick them up. He and Alicia promptly screw (I guess finding mutilated people in the road really turns them on), more weird stuff happens, Tyler and Erica arrive, the four make small talk (lame "trendy" SCREAM-like dialogue with horror movie references; ugh) and then the zombies finally show up to try to eat everyone. You go zombies. Eat 'em all up. Please. In an all-too-familiar NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD situation, they board up the doors and windows while the mini zombie army try to get inside. Oh yeah, and wouldn't ya know it... Vargas is still alive and well at 150 years old and living in a secret room in the hotel (he is who the ghouls are really trying to get at). Alicia put it best when she solemnly intones, "This place is fucked up! These people are crazy!"

The whole thing is pretty mindless and fails to generate any atmosphere despite the setting and some good make-up fx. It also comes complete with one of the dumbest horror movie character actions in recent memory. Hell, it almost tops the girl-who-jumps-into-a-fiery-inferno-to-be-with-her-dead-boyfriend scene in CHILDREN OF THE CORN 5. After Tyler is attacked by a few dozen flesh-munching ghouls, Erica drives away to a safe distance and can clearly see her boyfriend is history. So instead of just driving off like any normal person would do, she puts the car in reverse, goes right back into the middle of the pack of zombies, opens the passenger side door and tries to yank his dead body back into the car with her!! Thankfully, she quickly gets her throat ripped out for being such a stupid bitch.

Well, in any case, All Souls Day is not a very good later-day showcase for horror icon Jeffrey Combs, who had appeared in the director's previous effort THE ATTIC EXPEDITIONS (2001). His performance is fine (and it's always nice to see him in anything), but he doesn't get to do or say anything noteworthy during his short time on screen. Hell, even his death is off-screen and he isn't even seen as a zombie. Newcomer Ramirez shows some potential (and has no problems with nudity). It debuted on the Sci-Fi Channel.

★1/2

Frightmare (1983)

... aka: Body Snatchers
... aka: Horror Star

Directed by:
Norman Thaddeus Vane

While doing a commercial, world famous horror film star Conrad Ragzoff (Ferdy Mayne) gets fed up with the obnoxious director and uses his cane to knock him over the balcony to his death. Years later, "the last of the great giants of the horror cinema" is speaking at a college before the student film society and collapses from a heart attack. He's taken home, where he regretfully tells his wife Etta (Barbara Pilavin) "I still have so much to do... I've never died before." At least he gets to do one of those things: suffocating his sniveling assistant / chauffeur Wolfgang (Leon Askin) to death with a pillow, before he croaks. After claiming his twentieth victim, Ragzoff plays the organ, climbs into a coffin and passes on. Not one to go out with a whimper, Ragzoff has already told the press that he refuses to be cremated because he plans on coming back from the dead, has purchased a huge mausoleum with a flickering neon star to house his corpse and has even pre-recorded his own sign off video so that he can be the star, even at his own funeral.

Seven members of the student film society, led by Saint (Luca Bercovici) and his reluctant girlfriend Meg (Jennifer Starrett), get wasted and go to the mausoleum late one night, where they decide it would be swell to sneak inside and steal Conrad's corpse. Stu (Jeffrey Combs, in his horror movie debut) climbs onto the roof, busts in through the skylight and lets his friends inside. Despite some security measures (Conrad appears on a video screen to warn them), they manage to get in and out with the body without being detected, then take it back to their home. They eat spaghetti wearing monster masks, dance with the corpse, kiss the corpse and then set it down inside a coffin in the attic and plan to return it to the mausoleum eventually. The next day, detectives (led by Chuck Mitchell aka Porky from the 80s comedies of the same name) are already investigating the break-in and missing body. When Conrad's widow and her friend Elizabeth (Nita Talbot) get word, they decide to hold a séance to try to contact his spirit and have it tell them where the body is. Instead, they accidentally raise Conrad from the dead.

Because Conrad had gone to hell for his Earthly deeds, he now has supernatural powers. He rips a guy's tongue out with his fingers, causes a girl to spontaneously combust, lures a guy into his mausoleum and kills him with toxic fumes, crushes a head with his coffin, decapitates someone with a sword (a crow then feasts on the head) and levitates a casket and sends someone straight into an incinerator. Strangely enough, Conrad's actual revenge on those responsible for stealing his corpse is the worst part of the movie! The murder scenes are mostly botched because the director seems to have no clue how to set up a shock scene or build suspense. It's also interesting that most are killed inside the house over a period of several days, yet no one hears the screaming at night and no one notices a charred corpse lying plain as day right in the front lawn! The fact the victims aren't given any noticeable personality traits (aside from being borderline obnoxious) doesn't help matters, nor does the fact that this movie is so darkly photographed you can't see half of what's going on. What sandwiches these scenes (the opening twenty minutes and the last ten minutes) are the highlights of the film.

Really, the best thing this has going for it is its lead actor. Mayne (best known for playing Count von Krolock in Polanski's THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS) does a wonderful job in his role; making for a pretty creepy zombie-killer once resurrected and getting to channel Christopher Lee as the pretentious, arrogant actor the rest of the time. Solidifying the Lee connection, film clips used to illustrate Conrad's early career are actually Lee movies! There are nice supporting performances from Pilavin, Talbot and Askin, as well. The rest of the cast is pretty amateurish, with just a few of them going on to bigger things. Lead actor Bercovici would later become a director and, of course, Combs would star in RE-ANIMATOR (1985) in a few years and become a beloved genre icon.

Director Vane also co-directed the underrated THE BLACK ROOM (1982) and made the rancid "comedy" MIDNIGHT (1988) starring Lynn Redgrave. Husband-and-wife producers Patrick Wright and Tallie Wright (Cochrane) were veterans of the 70s exploitation circuit and both appear here in cameos. The masks and posters were provided by Forrest J. Ackerman.

In the 80s, the company Prism released a "sequel:" Frightmare II, which turned out to be a re-titling of the 1974 British cannibal movie FRIGHTMARE. The 1981 Frightmare was filmed as Horror Star (and was also released as Body Snatchers) and released in 1983. Troma handled the DVD release.

★★