Re-animator is a famous brutal American horror franchise that spanned two decades and three films. Stuart Gordon directed the first film, Re-Animator, which was released in 1985, and Brian Yuzna directed Bride of Re-Animator, which was released in 1990, and Beyond Re-Animator, which was released in 2003. Despite being based on H.P. Lovecraft’s serial novelette, Gordon made significant changes to the plot, including the addition of numerous new aspects.
The film focuses on the heinous experiments of Dr. Herbert West, a mad scientist who devised a serum that can reanimate the dead. Jeffry Combs has appeared in all three films as Dr. Herbert West. The film contains mature content, making it X rated in certain countries and R rated in others after a few scenes were edited out. A fourth film in the series was planned but never released, but we will get to that later.
The First Movie of the Series: Re-Animator
Re-Animator movie began with Harvest West, an ambitious student of the Zurich Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, inventing a serum that could reanimate dead bodies. With this experiment, he brought his deceased professor, Dr Hans Gruber, to life, but with terrible side effects.
Subsequently, he moved to Miskatonic University in New England to continue his medical studies. He devised his laboratory in the basement of the building where he had rented a room from his fellow student Dan Cain. West demonstrated his invented serum to Cain by reanimating his dead cat, Rufus. But during the experiment, Dan’s fiancée, Megan Halsey, who was also the daughter of the medical school Dean, entered the lab and was horrified.
Cain tried to convince the Dean, Dr. Halsey, about the invention of West with the reanimation of his cat, but he and West ended up getting barred from the school. Eventually, Dan and West sneaked into the morgue of the hospital and injected a corpse to reanimate it, but the corpse became alive in a savage zombie-like state and ended up killing Dr. Halsey. West reanimated Dr. Halsey with his reagent, but he, too, was revived in a frantic zombie-like state.
Doctor Carl Hill, who was Dr. Halsey’s colleague and a professor cum researcher in the hospital, while operating on Dr. Halsey, understood that he was reanimated. He then tried to blackmail West to hand over his notes and serum to him as he wanted the entire credit for the research. West fooled him and managed to kill him by cutting off his head.
This time West decided to reanimate Dr. Hill’s head and body separately. While West was interrogating Dr. Hill’s head, the body attacked West and fled with the serum and notes.
As a strange consequence, Dr. Hill developed a peculiar power to control other reanimated corpses with telepathy. With this newly acquired power, Dr. Hill compels Dr. Halsey to abduct Megan and bring her to him, where he assaulted her sexually. Luckily West and Dan reached the spot just in time to save Megan and learned about Dr. Hill’s new telepathic ability. However, Megan’s voice evoked the fatherly instinct in Dr. Halsey, who started combating other corpses enabling Dan and Megan to flee from the enthralling situation.
Amidst the ongoing commotion, West injected Dr. Hill with a high overdose of his reagent, which led to a rapid mutation in his body, and he attacked West. West screamed aloud and requested Dan to escape with all his research and serum.
Dan recovered everything, and while he and Megan fled, one of the reanimated corpses attacked Megan by strangling her. Despite Dan’s earnest efforts to revive Megan, she was found dead. In desperation, Dan injected Megan with the reanimating reagent, and the last scene faded away with the scream of Megan, who was most likely reanimated.
Re-Animator was released on October 18th, 1985, with an estimated budget of $900,000 and eventually earned $2,023,404 only in North America. Stuart Gordon was pleased with the story of Herbert West – Re-Animator by H.P. Lovecraft as he desired to make a film inspired by the Frankenstein character. John Naulin was the makeup artist responsible for the ghastly makeup of the corpses, which intensified the horror factor of the film.
The movie immediately received positive feedback from the critics, with significant praise for actor Jeffrey Combs for portraying such a whimsical psychotic character of a mad scientist. Bruce Abbot, as Dan Cain and Barbara Crompton as Megan Halsey admirably kept up the excellent work in support of the characters. The Re-Animator was made much ahead of its time and, despite its erotic contents, managed to remain fresh and thrilling even after 36 years.
The Following Movie: Bride Of Re-Animator
Bride of Re-Animator, released in 1990 and directed by Brian Yuzna, is the sequel of Gordon’s Re-Animator. The movie roughly follows the 5th and 6th chapters of Lovecraft’s original story.
The story commenced after eight months from where the previous movie ended. Dr. Herbert West and Dr. Dan Cain were engaged as medical practitioners amidst a civil war in Peru. With abundant corpses in war casualty, they continue their experiment of reanimation. After the enemy conquered the medical facility, West and Cain returned to Miskatonic University and resumed their jobs as doctors while West continued his experiments in the basement laboratory at Cain’s house.
With the due advance in research work, West realized that his serum can reanimate body parts separately, and he was determined to create an entire living person using distinct reanimated body parts. Consequently, West discovered the heart of Megan Halsey, who was Cain’s fiancé and decided to revive Megan with her heart. Inside the hospital morgue, the pathologist Dr. Wilbur Graves unearthed an unused vial of reanimating serum and the severed head of Dr Carl Hill and incidentally reanimated Dr. Hill’s head.
A police officer, Lt Leslie Chapham, started his investigation on West and Cain as they solely survived the Miskatonic massacre. He also bore a severe grudge against them as his wife became one of the zombie-like reanimated corpses of the massacre. When Chapham detected the corpse-filled lab of West, a fierce conflict commenced between them where West killed Clapham. Intending to shield his crime, West re animated Chapham, who violently stormed out into the cemetery nearby.
Dr. Hill too was determined to avenge his death by slaying West. He retained his telepathic power to control minds, and hence he used Chapham to compel Dr. Graves to stitch bat wings on his neck so that he regains mobility. Meanwhile, West and Cain had completed forming the new body of Megan and injected the serum into her heart.
West received a parcel, and on opening it, Dr. Hill’s winged head comes out, and with his command, all zombie-like corpses from the previous massacre break into Cain’s house. Cain and West retreated to the lab where the reanimated Bride had awoken. A fierce fight broke out between the Bride and Cain’s present girlfriend Francesca Danelli, whom he met in Peru. But Cain chose Francesca over the Bride. Heartbroken and frustrated, Bride ripped Megan’s heart from her body and fell into pieces.
West, Cain, and Francesca fled from Hill and his zombies and hid in the crypt of the adjoining cemetery. All the test subjects of West also arose and advanced towards them. The unstable crypt collapsed, and everyone got stranded in the debris. Cain and Francesca just managed to escape and land safely in the cemetery. The movie ended with Hill laughing frantically while Megan’s heart, grasped by the Bride’s hand, finally stopped beating.
The sequel of a blockbuster film often falls short of the expectations, and Bride of Re-Animator was no exception. Director Brian Yuzna definitely deserves admiration as he kept up the spirit of the original movie, but somewhere the storyline itself loses the thrill and jam-packed excitement.
Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbot continued their excellent performance, but actress Barbara Crompton refused to work in the sequel as she was not satisfied with such a minor role. Though the film was nominated for Saturn Award for best horror film yet, the film remained a forgettable and wasted sequel.
The Final Movie of the Series: Beyond Re-Animator
Beyond Re-Animator is the third and final movie of the Re-Animator film series, released in 2003 and directed by Brian Yuzna.
As the movie commenced, it revealed that Dr. Herbert West had been imprisoned for the last 13 years convicted of murder by one of his reanimated zombies. Still, he is committed to experimenting with limited supplies in the prison medical center. Even with his basic experiments on rats, he uncovered a key element in his reanimation process.
He identified a form of Non-Plasmic Energy or NPE that had to be extracted from any living organism’s brain by applying a special electrocution-like process and needed to be stored in a bulb-like capsule. Along with his previously invented serum, this energy would reanimate the deceased person avoiding the mindless zombie-like state. The reanimated person would live a normal life like before with regained skills and memories.
Eventually, a young doctor Howard Phillips was appointed in prison, and Dr. West was assigned as his assistant. Phillips became quite interested in West’s experiments and started supplying all the necessary elements that West could not acquire in prison. West, in the meantime, came to know that Phillips had an elder sister who was killed by a reanimated zombie, and he came to the prison exclusively to work with West.
Though Phillips helped West in all respects, he was in an ethical dilemma to complete the project. Meanwhile, a young journalist Laura Olney visited the prison for an exclusive cover story, and consequently, Phillips and Laura fell in love. The warden of the prison was also infatuated with Laura and tried to seduce her. When Laura refused and protested, the warden killed her.
Doctor Phillips was devastated by Laura’s death and was left with no option but to reanimate her with the newly invented methodology. West resurrected Laura with his serum and NPE, but unfortunately, the dangerous side effects were still prevalent even with NPE.
The warden tried his best to stop West from his experiments but got killed by him in the process and subsequently got reanimated. West extracted the NPE for restoring the warden from a prisoner’s rat, and it caused rapid side effects in the warden’s behavior.
Chaos and commotion broke out in prison, with the serum being circulated among all the prisoners present there. When the riot in prison finally seized, West escaped from the jail by stealing and using Phillips’s ID card. While police finally started taking control of the prison, Herbert West put on his glasses and disappeared into the night to further his research.
Beyond Re-Animator received a mixed response from critics after being released in 2003, as many people thought it was a let-down sequel after its predecessors. The movie had more enhanced digital horror effects than the previous movies, but, as a whole, it was slightly disappointing. Combs, with his age, perfectly depicted the matured version of West flawlessly. No matter what, Beyond Re-Animator is worth watching at least once as a continuance to the horror series.
Why Re-Animator 4 Never Got Made
House of Re-Animator, the 4th movie in the reanimator series, was planned to be made in 2006 when George Bush was the president of the USA. Stuart Gordon was again supposed to return as director of the movie. The character of Dan Cain was also planned to be revived in the movie, though his character was absent in the previous sequel, Beyond Re-Animator. The story was supposed to revolve around the American president who died in his office and, Dr. West was requested to reanimate the president with his serum.
Though the president of the movie did not resemble President Bush but killing the president seemed somewhat unwanted. Hence the producers stepped back from the project at they had no intention of offending the White House. By the time the project got momentum, Barrack Obama had become the president of the USA, and creating a movie with the zombie-like state of the previous president was strictly avoided. House of Re-Animator, thus, only remained as a plot and was never filmed.
Future of the Franchise
The Re-Animator fan club hence had been eagerly waiting for the future franchise of the horror series. Although there was a silver lining with the project of House of Re-Animator, the death of Stuart Gordon in 2020 disappointed the fan club with the franchise. No other director has been heard to take over the project.
Actress Barbara Crompton who had featured as Megan in the very first movie Re-Animator had sincerely expressed her desire to work with Jeffrey Combs on a Re-Animator franchise even though it may not be a direct sequel of the horror series though she felt there is plenty of scope for expanding the Re-Animator franchise. Horror fans definitely look forward to a new entry in the Re-Animator franchise though its possibility of it is yet to be seen.