History Film / ReAnimator

The story involves an idealistic medical student named Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), a student at the Miskatonic University of Medicine in Arkham, Massachusetts. Dan rents a room to Herbert West (Combs), who has discovered a way to revive the dead and reluctantly becomes West's assistant. Soon their activities cause a rift between Dan and his girlfriend Meg Halsey (Creator/BarbaraCrampton), daughter of the university's dean, and draw down the wrath of university higher-up Dr. Hill (David Gale). Then West decapitates Hill. Then he revives him. And ''then'' things get crazy.

Of all the [[LovecraftOnFilm film adaptations of Lovecraft's work]], ''Re-Animator'' is probably the most famous. It spawned a wave of [[FollowTheLeader imitators]] and {{Spiritual Successor}}s including ''Film/FromBeyond'', ''Film/LurkingFear'', and ''Film/CastleFreak1995'' (all starring Combs, with ''From Beyond'' and ''Castle Freak'' also being directed by Gordon and co-starring Crampton) and 2001's ''Film/{{Dagon}}'' (directed by Gordon).

* ForScience: Herbert West is ''[[IncrediblyLamePun dead]]'' [[SeriousBusiness serious]] about his dedication to this trope. He has no motivation for any of his experiments beyond his need to '''know'''. He's not interested in fame, money, helping others, or even immortality. He just wants to go past the mysteries of life and death. As far as he's concerned, any other thing is superfluous.

* LosingYourHead: "You're a [[IncrediblyLamePun nobody]]!"

* PapaWolf: Dean Halsey is incredibly protective of Meg. When Cain lets it slip that Meg has gotten involved with his and West's experiments, he immediately rescinds his loan and forbids Meg from seeing him again. [[spoiler: Not even being re-animated, or even being controlled, is enough to curb these instincts, as Hill finds out the hard way.]]

Besides the films, there are several other adaptations. In the early 1990's, Adventure Comics published two tie-in miniseries, ''Death is Just the Beginning…'', an adaptation of the first film, and ''Dawn Of The Re-Animator'', a prequel explaining West's transition from Switzerland to the United States. ''Re-Animator'' has also had crossover comic books with ''Comicbook/HackSlash'' and ''Comicbook/ArmyOfDarkness''. There is also a critically acclaimed [[http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/05/03/re-animator-the-musical-pumps-new-life-into-cult-favorite/ musical]].

Besides the films, there are several other adaptations. ''Re-Animator'' has had crossover comic books with ''Comicbook/HackSlash'' and ''Comicbook/ArmyOfDarkness''. There is also a critically acclaimed [[http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/05/03/re-animator-the-musical-pumps-new-life-into-cult-favorite/ musical]].

A 1985 SciFiHorror Comedy film directed and co-written by Creator/StuartGordon, starring the inimitable Creator/JeffreyCombs, and based on the short serial ''Literature/HerbertWestReanimator'' by Creator/HPLovecraft.

The story involves an idealistic medical student named Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), a student at the Miskatonic University of Medicine in Arkham, Massachusetts. Dan rents a room to Herbert West (Combs), who has discovered a way to revive the dead, and reluctantly becomes West's assistant. Soon their activities cause a rift between Dan and his girlfriend Meg Halsey (Creator/BarbaraCrampton), daughter of the university's dean, and draw down the wrath of university higher-up Dr. Hill (David Gale). Then West decapitates Hill. Then he revives him. And ''then'' things get crazy.

Naturally also spawned official sequels: First was ''Film/BrideOfReAnimator'' (1990), directed by Creator/BrianYuzna (a frequent collaborator of Stuart Gordon who was a producer on the first film) and ''Film/BeyondReAnimator'' (2003), also directed by Yuzna.

''Re-Animator'' was not the first [[LovecraftOnFilm film adaptation of Lovecraft]]; there were waves of them in the mid-1960s (''The Haunted Palace'' by Creator/RogerCorman, and ''Film/DieMonsterDie'' by frequent Corman collaborator Dan Haller) and the early 1970s (''The Dunwich Horror'' -- Haller again -- and several episodes of ''Series/NightGallery''). But Gordon's film is probably the most famous such adaptation. It spawned a wave of [[FollowTheLeader imitators]] and {{Spiritual Successor}}s including ''Film/FromBeyond'', ''Film/LurkingFear'', and ''Film/CastleFreak1995'' (all starring Combs, with ''From Beyond'' and ''Castle Freak'' also being directed by Gordon and co-starring Crampton) and 2001's ''Film/{{Dagon}}'' (directed by Gordon).

* HappyEnding: A RealLife example. David Gale had grown tired of acting and had been [[MoneyDearBoy doing it for the paycheck]] for years when he was cast. Much to his surprise, he realized that he ''loved'' hamming it up and actually wrote director Stuart Gordon a note thanking him for "''re-animating [his] love of acting.''" Gale's agent put the word out that he would be interested in more sci-fi and horror films. Because of Gale's awesome work as the loathsome Dr. Hill, he had his pick of roles until his death years later.

* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: On the soft side. We get no explanation for how the re-agent works beyond "restarting the physical and chemical process of life" and its effects are inconsistent and unpredictable.

* {{Asexuality}}: Jeff Combs stated in an interview that he sees Herbert as asexual, although he appears to mean this more in the pathological sense than as a sexual orientation:
-->"Herbert is asexual. On an unconscious level, probably. I tried to convey it in Bride of Reanimator, in the scene where he watches Bruce Abbott and the girl make love. Herb is a little confused, he doesn't know what intimacy is. It's something that he's very frightened of; he's so involved with life and death, that perhaps he can't even see beyond that. One of the reasons why he is so obsessed with rebirth is that he cannot live like any human being, so he longs for a different life. Now, it's very difficult to have something in common with such a character."

* AppliedPhlebotinum: The Re-Agent, the miraculous chemical that brings the dead back to life.

* VisualPun: Either supremely funny or supremely horrifying: [[spoiler:Dr. Hill giving Meg head... as in, giving her oral sex as a ''[[LosingYourHead disembodied head]]'']].

* ZombieGait: The zombies created by West's reagent lurch around without much grace or agility.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler:The fact that West got a DisneyDeath, with his literary counterpart's demise -- being [[AnArmAndALeg torn limb from limb]] by a crowd of zombies -- being given to the re-animated Dean Halsey instead.]]

* TheUndead: The creatures created by West are neither fully dead nor fully alive, although they also have some traits of {{flesh golem}}s -- in particular, in ''Film/BrideOfReanimator'', West uses a new version of his Re-Agent to experiment with creating "new" life by amalgamating unlikely and improbable masses of tissue together before animating it.

* MadScientist: ''Dr. West.'' Surprisingly he's also the most level-headed individual in the entire series-- by the end of a film, everyone ''except'' West is going through some manner of hysterics, while West continues like everything is just another experiment... in fact, his dispassionate indifference to the chaos around him is in many ways an indication of just how insane he is.
* MadScientistLaboratory: West sets this up on Dan's basement once he moves in.
* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: On the soft side. We get no explanation for how the reagent works beyond "restarting the physical and chemical process of life" and its effects are inconsistent and unpredictable.

* NiceGuy: As opposed to Herbert West's [[AntiHero perpetual amorality]], Dan genuinely appears to be a decent man and a good doctor, at least before West gets in the picture.

* OurZombiesAreDifferent: To begin with, they're {{artificial zombie}}s brought back by injections of glowstick fluid rather than by gnawing on each other. Unlike in the original novel, their status as {{flesh eating zombie}}s is more ambiguous. [[spoiler:The first zombie that West animates does bite off two of Dean Halsey's fingers, but none of the others seem interest in eating people so much as killing them.]]

* PlayingWithSyringes: Rather literally; West has to deliver the reagent by hypodermic syringe, and so is usually carrying around a syringe with a SicklyGreenGlow.
* ProfessorGuineaPig: West is shown shooting up the reagent himself to keep him awake indefinitely in a deleted scene.
** In the novelization, Gruber insisted that West test the reagent on him. West was [[EveryoneHasStandards hesitant]], but Gruber insisted.

* PsychoSerum: The reagent, which transforms those it revives into homicidal killers.

* ShovelStrike: After Dr. Hill declares that he is going to take credit for the reagent, West distracts him by showing him a sample under a microscope, hits him over the head with a shovel and then cuts through Hill's neck with the edge of the shovel.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler: {{Played with}}. On the one hand, it's played straight in that West is revealed to have not actually been killed in his DisneyDeath with the release of ''Film/BrideOfReaimator''. On the other hand, there's also the fact that West ''got'' a DisneyDeath in the first place, with his literary counterpart's demise -- being [[AnArmAndALeg torn limb from limb]] by a crowd of zombies -- being given to the re-animated Dean Halsey instead.]]

* GallowsHumor: Aside from the films themselves, Dr. West is a master of doing this... or just does this because of his non-social skills.
* GenreBlindness: Everyone in these films is somehow surprisingly oblivious to the dangers of messing around with scientifically reanimating the dead -- especially West, despite the fact his experiments ''always'' try to kill him.

* GoneHorriblyWrong: Pretty much every use of Re-Agent backfires ''horrifically''. Aside from the whole "it re-animates the dead as killer zombies" thing, at the film's climax, [[spoiler: West injects two full syringes into Dr. Hill's body, hoping to induce it to "melt down" the way Dr. Gruber did at the start of the film. Instead, its intestines erupt from its body and grab West, holding him down and dragging him through the fog to his (apparent) DisneyDeath.]]
* {{Gorn}}: Probably and likely the goreiest film of all time.
* HappyEnding: A RealLife example. David Gale had grown tired of acting and had been [[MoneyDearBoy doing it for the paycheck]] for years when he was cast. Much to his surprise, he realized that he ''loved'' hamming it up and actually wrote director Stuart Gordon a note thanking him for "''re-animating [his] love of acting.''" Gale's agent put the word out that he would be interested in more sci-fi and horror films; because of Gale's awesome work as the loathsome Dr. Hill, he had his pick of roles until his death years later.

* HeterosexualLifePartners: Herbert and Dan. They live together, Dan is the ''only'' person who can stand him, and likewise is the only person Herbert seems to be genuinely fond of (though Herbert is probably asexual).
* HoYay: Debatable. Many fans of the movie interpret Herbert and Dan as a couple due to the arguable homosexual subtext, whilst others see them as platonic lab partners or merely foils.

** ''Reversed'' with the zombie of Dr. Hill attempting to sexually assault the living Meg, moaning about how he loves her.
** Played straight(ish) when [[spoiler:Dan tries to revive his dead girlfriend as a zombie with West's Reagent.]]

** Dr. Hill is declared to be a scientific hack who can only steal the ideas of others. However, he is able to use his laser drill to control reanimated corpses and he understood the reagent well enough to successfully use it on bodies that West gave up on.
** West's opinion of Doctor Hill is due to the latter's disbelief in West's theories, West's knowledge that Hill plagiarized their mutual former teacher Dr. Gruber, and West's own considerable ego. Doctor Hill revises his opinion later in the movie... but by that point, he's trying to steal the reanimation agent.
* TheInsomniac: Herbert West is two of the listed subtypes, an Obsessive Insomniac and a Superpowered Insomniac. A deleted scene shows that West injects himself with a solution of his reagent to keep himself from sleeping. This "keeps his mind sharp" but is also implied to be the cause of his insanity.

* JobTitle: The film is called "Re-Animator" and West sees his job as being... well, exactly that; a Re-Animator of the dead.

** Herbert West, of course; it goes without saying that anyone who wants to break the laws of life and death is a little nuts. That he persists in his experiments despite the constant result of this being homicidal monsters shows he's completely out of his mind. He's only a medical student and not a fully accredited doctor however.

* FullFrontalAssault: Most of the re-animated during the climax, since they were naked corpses laying on slabs before their re-animation.

** West. Sometimes it isn't even verbal, like when he kept [[AGlassInTheHand snapping his pencils]] to interrupt a professor he didn't agree with.

* DiabolusExMachina: [[spoiler: Just when it looks like Dan and Meg escaped the Re-animated when they reach the elevator, one of them pops into the closing elevator and chokes Meg to death.]]
* DisneyDeath: [[spoiler:West meets his seeming fate in this movie when he is caught by Dr. Hill's hyper-reanimated intestinal tract, which binds him like a living lasso and drags him into the mist as other zombies wildly flail around in the morgue. We never see him get killed, but the inference is that he's met a KarmicDeath.]]
* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:After Hill is seemingly killed, his zombies go on a complete rampage, with one lassoing West with its own intestines -- which is also the last we see of him. A zombie manages to kill Meg, whose desperate boyfriend Dan tries to inject her with Re-Agent. Film fades to black in the middle of the zombie rampage, as we hear Meg's sudden scream.]]

* FanDisservice: The infamous "head giving head" scene. [[spoiler:A beautiful young woman is strapped naked to an operating table as a decapitated zombie holds its own severed head between her legs so it can try to perform oral sex on her. She of course finds it horrifying.]]

** The opening scene where Dan fails to resuscitate a dead patient and is told by one of his peers that he needs to know when to quit. [[spoiler: He's faced with the the same scenario at the very end- this time the dead person his own girlfriend, making it much more personal- and becomes so desperate not to lose her that it drives him to use West's reagent on her. Logic suggests that this is why he continues to work with West and cover up his crimes, at least for the duration of the second movie.]]

* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate: Dr. Hill, and possibly West in the sequels.

* CuriosityKilledTheCast: West re-animates every dead person and animal he comes across {{for science}}, despite the fact that they ''keep trying to kill him''. [[spoiler: Even so, he manages to survive all three films.]]

* CanonDiscontinuity: [[spoiler:Dr. Hill's head is crushed by the reanimated Dean Halsey at the end. However, in the second film, it shows up intact and gets reanimated again. Not as blatant a retcon as you'd expect; Dr. Hill's head in ''Film/BrideOfReanimator'' is visibly dented from having been squeezed, and it wasn't completely crushed in this film either.]]

* BlackComedyRape: A severed head attempts oral sex on a captured girl in one of the most outrageous scenes in the first film.

* BookEnds: The first film begins with Dan failing to resuscitate a dead woman despite all his efforts. [[spoiler: It tragically ends the same way when he is unable to revive Megan no matter what he does, which makes him use the Re-Agent on her corpse out of desperation...]]

* HappyEnding: A RealLife example. David Gale had grown tired of acting and had been [[MoneyDearBoy doing it for the paycheck]] for years when he was cast in the first film. Much to his surprise, he realized that he ''loved'' hamming it up and actually wrote director Stuart Gordon a note thanking him for "''re-animating [his] love of acting.''" Gale's agent put the word out that he would be interested in more sci-fi and horror films; because of Gale's awesome work as the loathsome Dr. Hill, he had his pick of roles until his death years later.

* LargeHam: Apparently Stuart Gordon, the director of the first film, encouraged this kind of acting style. Jeffrey Combs as West and David Gale as Doctor Hill in particular seem to have really gone for it.

* ArchEnemy: Dr. Hill to West, which carries on to the sequel when he is brought back to life.

* DisneyDeath: [[spoiler:West meets his seeming fate in this movie when he is caught by Dr. Hill's hyper-reanimated intestinal tract, which binds him like a living lasso and drags him into the mist as other zombies wildly flail around in the morgue. We never see him get killed, but the inference is that he's met a KarmicDeath... and then the sequels come out and reveal he survived and escaped.]]
* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:After Hill is seemingly killed, his zombies go on a complete rampage, with one lassoing West with its own intestines -- which is also the last we see of him. A zombie manages to kill Meg, whose desperate boyfriend Dan tries to inject her with Re-Agent. Film fades to black in the middle of the zombie rampage, as we hear Meg's sudden scream. Mitigated by the sequel, where we learn that West and Dan survived.]]

* NotQuiteDead: ''Everyone'' who seemingly dies ends up as this in one way or another. [[spoiler:Herbert West, despite his DisneyDeath, returns alive and well in the sequel films. Dean Halsey and Dr. Hill are both revived after death with West's Re-Agent]].

* AmbiguousSituation: It's unclear whether Herbert killed Dan's cat for use in an experiment or if he really did find the cat dead like he claimed he did.

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Apparently, the notion of Dr. Hill having a creepy obsession with Megan is amusing enough to West to make him chuckle.