Taking the Frankenstein story to its low-budget ’80s extremes, Re-Animator finds lots of dry humor and gory thrills in the simple story of a mad scientist in medical school. But instead of any Frankenstein’s monster terrorizing the university, it’s the hubris of man and their arrogance in denying the inevitability of death that constantly threatens every other innocent person in the film. The scare to minute ratio here is refreshingly low, meaning Re-Animator isn’t driven by a need to manipulate audiences, but by the primal thrills of fake guts and blood—and a sharp, snarky performance from Jeffrey Combs.
"The picture is close to being a silly ghoulie classic -- the bloodier it gets, the funnier it is. This is the same blood that flows through the Hammer horror movies; it's theatre-of-the-absurd blood, slapstick blood."
— Pauline Kael
"This is just good, evil fun."
— David Edelstein
Conducting clandestine experiments within the morgue at Miskatonic University, scientist Herbert West reveals to a fellow graduate student his groundbreaking work concerning the re-animation of fresh corpses.
