Movie: Re-Animator (1985)

Interviews & Extra Video

IMDB Synopsis: After an odd new medical student arrives on campus, a dedicated local and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue.

Starring

Director: Stuart Gordon

Additional Movie Info

Rotten Tomatoes rating is 93% Fresh.  It received a Rotten Tomato audience rating of 82% liking it.  Average Rating: 3.96/5 with a number of User Ratings: 37,126. Click HERE to read more.

Specs:  Release date: 18 October 1985 (USA) / Runtime: 93 min / Budget: $900,000

iMDB Trivia

• The special effects department went through twenty-four gallons of fake blood during the shoot, Naulin said that Re-Animator was the bloodiest film he had ever worked on. In the past, he had never used more than two gallons of blood on a film.
• Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli originally intended to be faithful to H.P. Lovecraft’s story, but the film ultimately had little in common with the story, which was intended to be a parody of “Frankenstein.”
• Actor David Gale’s wife divorced from him shortly after this film’s release. In the DVD’s audio commentary, the rest of the cast suspects that the scene when his character, Dr. Hill, attempts to rape Megan was the cause of divorce.
• According to “Re-animator: Ressurectus”, the 70-minute featurette on the Limited edition two-disc “Re-animator” box set, glowstick liquid was used for the glowing green “Re-agent”. It is the first time glowstick liquid/glowsticks have ever been used on film.
• In the DVD commentary, Jeffrey Combs expressed regret over the “Who’s going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow.” quote, mentioning that the “talking head” part got such a laugh out of theater audiences that the “sideshow” part (his personal favorite) often went entirely unheard.
• Originally director Stuart Gordon wanted to shoot the movie in black and white on 16mm film to give the film a gritty quality.
• The woman Dan is seen attempting to resuscitate at the beginning of the film was a “dildo enthusiast” and was known to hide dildos with the fake corpses in the morgue set.
• The opening credits sequence pays visual homage to Saul Bass’ work in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958).
• The “brains” in the severed head were made up of steer meat by-products, ground beef and fake blood and when they shot the scene in the autopsy room with the severed head being thrown out the door and then smashing onto the hallway wall, the crew were all behind the cameras with garbage bags over their clothes because no one knew just how much the brains would splatter.
• Lovecraft never really liked his Re-animator stories and wrote them only because he got five dollars per installment.
• The padded cell that Dean Halsey was confined in after being reanimated was hastily constructed and was prone to collapse. During early takes, actor Robert Sampson would dive into the walls while attempting to act insane and accidentally knock the walls over. Ultimately, Sampson was forced to not interact with the set and act out his scenes in the middle of the room, or lightly leaning against a wall. Evidence of the set’s flimsiness can be seen when Halsey is fighting with two nurses. When he tosses one of them aside, the actor playing the nurse bumps into a wall which noticeably wobbles.
• Producer Brian Yuzna described the film as having the “sort of shock sensibility of an Evil Dead with the production values of, hopefully, The Howling.”
• The doctor Herbert West re-animates in the opening scene is named Hans Gruber, the same name of the villain in Die Hard (1988), released three years after this film.
• The actors playing the re-animated corpses all worked out together at the YMCA to coordinate their movements as zombies.
• The head-less Hill effect was achieved in part with the use of a belt. The performer inside the fake shoulders/neck rig had a belt that he would take hold of with his mouth to keep his head pulled down and steady.
• The cast collectively love the jokey inclusion of a Talking Heads poster above Cain’s bed while he and Megan Halsey (Crampton) are playing doctor well, all except Abbott who claims he didn’t even know it was there during the scene. “I was busy,” he says.
• In Japan, the film is titled “ZOMBIO” (“Drifting Spirits”). The sequel dropped the “Zombio” title though due to how it makes no sense.