Re-Animator 1 of 2 2022 revisits

I just wanted to watch <b>Re-Animator</b> with Joe Bob insert trivia and monologues – a part of the big marathon he thought was his final horror hosting gig that broke Shudder’s site – even though I plan to watch it again this Sunday (I own the Anchor Bay box special edition from 2007 with Herbert on the cover, a fake re-agent included, and a ton of special features I will be revisiting in full). I was in the mood for this warped bloody mayhem. While watching this tonight, I couldn’t help but think to myself throughout…this is really fucked in the head, isn’t it?

That scene where Dean Halsey’s lobotomized reanimated corpse with mad eyes and bloody mouth, hypnotized by the “mesmerist” decapitated head of Dr. Hill (his head held in his separated body’s hands!) kidnaps his daughter, Megan, and strips her fainted body of all her clothes…I couldn’t help but just remain aghast at the gall to direct that and leave it in. How that was able to go to any theaters remains astonishing to me. Hill’s bloody mouth licking down Megan’s naked breast as she looks on in horror with one of her arms and both legs bound to a slab (by her father’s “mind controlled” corpse, no less!) as he adores her body, eventually held between her legs before (thankfully) Herbert West arrives to mock his nemesis: this has not lost any of its shock and awe that Crampton agreed to it and Gordon directed it. That commitment and dedication to such a grossout scene, really showing how disgusting Hill is and how disturbingly obsessed with Megan he was, with the bizarre nature of a severed talking head of Hill held in his separated hands responsible for why she’s naked and on the slab; this is the willingness of Gordon to push the envelope. 

But just in regards to Dr. Hill and his attempt to blackmail Dr. Herbert West for his reagent notes, their rivalry where West claimed Hill plagiarized his mentor’s notes and work, the film allows us to see the extremes of how much these two detest each other. West sees Hill as “outdated” in his methods and education on brain death, while Hill sees West as an antagonistic prick. I think that intense, heated dynamic made the film the most interesting. Since Abbott’s Dan Cain was more or less pulled into the chaotic mess through West’s manipulation, basically only an assistant in his access to the morgue and hospital, the rivalry of West and Hill really brought about a majority of the madness that results by the end where violent rotted corpses rampage through a morgue destroying everything in sight, turning over tables, chemicals, and tools. 

I do appreciate Abbott more today than I might have when I was a kid watching this way, way too young. Again, this was a HBO recording on a VHS tape I borrowed from my uncle. How could this not blow the mind of a 12 year old???  There is a headless corpse in a frenzy running around with a giant monster intestine that encircles West, choking him, holding him hostage as the room becomes gassy, with Dean Halsey regaining agency, squeezing the head of Hill, discarding it into a wall outside the morgue. And the zombie cat terrorizing West while Cain is mortified at the sight of his pet turned into this monster shrieking and violent. Imagine finding that in your basement! But the scenes where Dan is horrified at what is happening, including his mournful face and regret when approaching and facing Megan after the death and resurrection of her father, collapsing into a fetal position in shock while West consoles him, and the stunned, taken aback reaction to Dean Halsey’s rescinding of his loan for nothing more than telling him about West’s experiments…Abbott is the humanity of the film, an innocent drawn into the grotesque display of egotist scientists. Yes, Combs gets the love as does Gale, since their parts of flashier and over-the-top, but I like how Abbott is the balance with his decency and heart (you see that when he tries to bring a patient back to life early in the film with Gordon’s wife telling him he had to learn when to stop). And because West lured Dan into his world of mad science, Megan, too, is brought into it, resulting in tragedy. No matter the setbacks, Herbert West will not stop. Despite every reason to cut it out, West refused to give up. A lot of catastrophic results follow him time and time again, just like they did for Frankenstein and any other scientist modeled after him.