10/6-Re-Animator (1987)

After Resolution wasn't quite the horror I was expecting, I wanted to follow it up with something definitely horror, even if it isn't particularly scary.  And that's exactly what this was.  Re-Animator is based on an H.P. Lovecraft story, which surprised me to be honest because I didn't really know that Lovecraft wrote stuff that is Cthulu related (although I probably should have realized that).

Re-Animator opens on the University of Zurich Institute of Medicine, where two policemen join a doctor and a nurse outside the office of Dr. Hans Gruber (seriously).  When they knock on the door, they hear a crash followed by screams and begin to know more fervently, eventually breaking the door open.  They find Herbert West (played by the guy who was the ghost doctor in House on Haunted Hill.  Unexpected connections!) crouching over the screaming corpse of Dr. Gruber, who jumps up and thrashes about until his head explodes and he drops dead.

Okay fine, just his eyeballs explode. Pardon me for my hyperbole.

"You killed him!" the nurse says.

"No I did not" *looks directly into the camera* "I gave him life..."

Roll opening credits.  Which were awesome.  A sort of odd, psychedelic anatomy lesson set to some rad music.  Really the music throughout is great.

After the credits, we relocate to a medical school in Massachusetts, where we meet med school students attempting to resuscitate a woman.  One of them, Dan Cain (Dean Cain was already taken). just. won't. let. her. die (foreshadowing, oooooo).  But she does die, and Dan has to take her down to the morgue where Dr. Hill, the leading doctor on death at the school, is performing an autopsy.  They are joined by the dean of the school (the daughter of whom Dan is shtupping) and a new student, Herbert West, who apparently did not get arrested in Switzerland.  West acts like a dick right out of the gate and accuses Dr. Hill of stealing research from Dr. Gruber.

West then moves in with Dan not because of friendship, but because Dan needed a roommate and Herbert answered the ad.  In fact, Herbert stays in his room all the time.  Megan, the aforementioned dean's daughter, is very uneasy with him, warning Dan and citing Dan's cat, Rufus, as a litmus test for West; Rufus always hides from him.  They then realize that they haven't seen Rufus in awhile and find him dead in Herbert's mini-fridge.  (Sidenote, I have watched a lot of animals die in these horror movies and it never gets easier)

Dan and Megan are understandably upset, but West explains that he found the cat dead and was keeping him in the fridge to prevent a smell.  He didn't want Dan to find Rufus because he felt it would hurt too much.  This all sounds nice, but Herbert does himself no favors by continuously referring to Rufus as "it;"

That night, Dan wakes up to the sound of a commotion.  He goes to investigate and finds Herbert in the basement wresting with what turns out to be the re-animated Rufus.  The creature is clearly out of control and is killed again.  Herbert reveals to Dan that he has developed a serum which can bring the dead back to life and asks Dan to speak with the dean about this in order to get funding.

Zombie kitty!

As you might imagine, the dean doesn't believe a word of what Dan says in regards to the serum and has a nice little power trip.  He pulls Dan's student loan, effectively ousting him, and outright expels Herbert.  But the two don't fret, they believe they just need to demonstrate the effectiveness of the serum to the dean.  So they sneak into the morgue and inject a corpse with the serum.  When nothing happens, they give the body another dosage, which as it turns out, is too much.  (This is a good reminder for other things in life, wait for the dosage to kick in, before taking another.  "Donnie, get the ludes!")  The overdose causes re-animated corpse to be incredibly violent.

A good amount of intrigue and dead bodies follow in the movie, including an amazing death of decapitation by shovel, which in turn becomes an amazing re-animation of a guy who has to carry his head everywhere (see: poster above).  While this is awesome and funny, he does make things uncomfortable when he performs the clumsiest sexually assault I've seen on film (or in real life too.  I don't know if I needed to make that explicit, but I feel better knowing that there's no confusion).

My only major criticism of the film is that the "protagonist" Dan is super lame.  He's just sort of along for the ride and doesn't do much on his own.  But otherwise, this was a super bizarre and campy ride.

Rating on the Spook-o-meter: 2 out of 10 boos