Movie Review: Beyond Re-animator

5/10A

Oh dear - if you don't want to read about how silly and hilarious this outrageous tongue in cheek horror movie is or some of the more nasty bits, don't read this review.

The origins of Re-Animator lie with that well adjusted H.P. Lovecraft fellow, who wrote the original tale ("Herbert West - Re-Animator") as a satire on Frankenstein and the like, playing up the melodrama to comedic levels while still obtaining creepiness from the premise and his usual way with words.

The original film dispensed with much of what little subtlety there was and went down the broader, more comedy horror angle.

Comedy horror is a weird genre and it is best done with absolute conviction. Those of us unfortunate enough to have seen Scary Movie know that playing it with open mockery just won't work.

To this end, Re-Animator's great strength was in its utter conviction to seeing its logic through in grisly and horrible fashion - the most legendary sequence is a severed head performing cunnilingus on a captive victim - probably the nastiest idea in what is already a pretty icky movie. Its next major strength was its lead, Jeffrey Combs - who many will recall from The Frighteners where he played another strange oddball character. An absolute master at delivering utter nonsense with Shakespearian conviction (Nanoplasm and re-animating the dead are hard sells for even the most talented of actors.) he is the giant of a planet around which all the subsequent nonsense revolves, and it's hard to imagine anyone else carrying this film.

As for the story itself, the pretext exists purely to allow the now incarcerated Herbert West to get up to his old tricks and use his "formula" to bring the dead back to life. In this picture he has an accomplice in the form of a traumatised young doctor, obsessed with the idea of returning people from the dead since his sister was killed by one of West's creations.

And the whole thing takes place in a prison, presumably (if not intentionally) in Mexico, since the entire crew, most of the cast and several of the ADR folk are clearly from south of the border where, coincidentally, films are cheaper to make. (wink)

It's an odd prison, overseen by a warden who, once you've realised he resembles nothing as much as the lost Chuckle brother, it's all you can think about (we were shouting "not Chico Chuckle!" every couple of minutes). It also features a single female staff member, a nurse, who wears nothing beneath her smock but underwear, since that's policy, clearly, in an all male prison(!)

Naturally, when West and his little buddy start bringing folk back from the dead, the same old problems arise - the newly undead are just mindless monsters, good for nothing but violence. West believes he has a solution in the form of "Nanoplasm", a sort of life force or soul substitute that he has been harvesting from the recently killed, so starts experimenting with using this - with unintended consequences, not at all surprisingly.

From this point on the film is pretty much on rails, and nothing really unexpected happens in the plot (ie: it all goes to hell) but there are moments of crazed brilliance - the young doctor is beaten up by the reanimated corpse of his love, who all the while is begging him to kill her - the warden becomes crossed with a rat, and the sequence during the credits when a rat is fighting with a reanimated, er.... gentleman's privates was one of the most incredible laugh out loud moments I've seen in ages.

Poorly acted by all but the lead, badly directed - it's sole saving grace is in the physical effects (the usual get out clause for makers of horror films). They are breathtaking in their audacity, and even when played for laughs they still have a satisfying "ewww!" factor.

It's not big, it's not clever, and it's so far from sophistication it makes Little Chef look Michelin starred, but it was funny, and silly, and hit just the right note when I saw it.

A