Re-Animator (1985)/Additional

 

That scene where the entire body--besides the head--grabs blood bags from a little refrigerator and squeezes all of the "red juice" into the pan holding Dr. Hill's head remains one of the most memorable to me because of how David Gale plays it as if he's having an intense orgasm. His eyes roll back and he just lets off a long moan of pleasure. The blood really provides serious "nourishment" to his severed neck "mangled flesh meat". That and when the hand injects some of Herbert West's reagent into the back of the head of Dr. Hill, with the evil surgeon -- with the unhealthy lust and fixation for Megan -- once again seemingly reacting with great pleasure at how it feels. It is always important to show how missing a head leaves Dr. Hill's body fumbling about, while never quite falling because his eyes (and brain) still had control.

I think what often gets lost in all the madness is the damaged love story of Megan and Dan Cain because of Herbert West. If Herbert West never enters the picture, Cain wouldn't have lost his girlfriend, school loan, and potentially future father-in-law. Now, it is certain that Dr. Hill would have made a play for Megan, even though no one in their right mind could believe she'd ever want anything to do with that creep. Now Megan on the gurney naked as the severed head of Hill licking on her nipple with his bloody lips and his body's hands holding that damned head between her legs...no fucking way you'll ever see that in a mainstream horror film ever again. I can imagine since censorship has become all the rage again -- I read an article where Jessica, the Rabbit, will be fully clothed by Disney, so she won't be provocatively sexy as a cartoon! -- such as scene as this could someday be removed completely from the film. The way the voice of a few seems to have a shit-ton of power, I'm still amazed you can find this on Shudder. 

Despite all of the dead bodies running amok in the university morgue, a severed head hypnotizing zombies he lobotomized to do his bidding, and West stabbing any body in sight with his reagent despite the usually horrifying results; this film had a romance obliterated by West's obsession with reanimating the dead, bringing the dead back to life despite consistently violent and destructive results. "Bride of the Re-Animator" five years later didn't really show us how Meg responded to the reagent injected into her by Dan Cain, but considering what we had already seen before, nothing positive could come from it.

I watched this as part of the "Joe Bob's final marathon" which went on for hours and hours as horror fans crashed Shudder's streaming site, letting everyone involved know that Mr. Briggs had a lot of life left in his career. All those details and information Joe Bob brought to old and new fans alike for the marathon just made this whole experience more worthwhile. Who better to host an in-and-out series of review segments than Joe Bob. This is one of my favorite horror films of 1985 and was a VHS recording my uncle had in his collection I borrowed...he recorded it off of HBO. That was my introduction to the film. My uncle is who I owe a great debt to being a horror fan. I will always mention him on this blog as long as I write for it. I am saddened at the thought that Stuart Gordon and Yuzna never made "House of Re-Animator". I appreciated Joe Bob mentioning Abbott favorably since I agree with him that he too often gets left out of the conversation when Re-Animator (1985) is discussed. When he collapses to the floor after the death and re-animation of Dr. Dean Halsey in shock and is covered by West's coat, Abbott really sells how horrible this whole experience is. In this portion of the marathon, Joe Bob asks Darcy why they are on Tinder...I cracked up on that, obviously. Darcy dressed in a messy lab coat barely holding in her boobies...her contributions are always appreciated.

If I have a problem with "Re-Animator" it continues to be the hypnotizing angle. I get that the film is already absurd to the extreme, but a severed head talking alone is ridiculous, much less Dr. Hill fully in control of corpses injected with West's reagent.