Re-Animator Movie Poster

"Herbert West has a very good head on his shoulders. . . and another one in a dish on his desk."  Re-Animator was a 1985 sci-fi horror flick based on a story by P. Lovecraft titled Herbert West –Reanimator.  With Jeffrey Combs starring as Herbert West, the film, and film series, has become a bit of a cult classic.  The movie received mostly positive reviews, and ended up turning a profit.  There were a number of follow ups, such as The Bride of Re-Animator in 1990, and Beyond Re-Animator in 2003.

In the original movie, student Herbert West brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber, back to life, while attending the University of Zurich.  Unfortunately, there were some nasty side effects, and “life” was certainly not the same for Dr. Gruber.  Taking his studies to the USA, West begins a feud with a Dr. Carl Hill, who tries everything possible to shut down West’s animal experiments.  One West is kicked out of college, he turns to the morgue to begin testing on human subjects.

It turned out, that the longer a person was dead, the more severe was their reaction to re-animation.  Regardless, even recently dead people came back in zombie like states.  In one crazy experiment, West decapitates Carl Hill, and re-animates his body and head separately.  Hill attacks West and gets away.  In the end, they managed to eliminate Hill and a number of other zombies, but in the end, the cycle continues as an important friend dies.