Here we go with another DVD review from our man in the U.S. Shawn Francis brings us a look at the new re-release DVD of Stuart Gordon's classic horror comedy, Re-Animator. This release comes to us courtesy of Image Entertainment. Check out Shawn's review after the jump....
Written By Shawn Francis
I’m
not entirely sure how much of this memory is accurate, but here goes.
The first time I discovered Stuart Gordon’s bloody cult classic,
RE-ANIMATOR, was through 1985’s issue #46 of Fangoria. I
remember picking it up at the local bookstore, The Berkshire
Bookshop, which has long since gone out of business. It didn’t make
the cover’s centerpiece, that coveted spot went to a walking
shriveled from Tobe Hooper’s LIFEFORCE, but it did make the
cover nonetheless. Right down there on the right hand corner, a photo
of Dean Halsey in the process of squashing Dr. Hill’s disembodied
and sentient head with his hands.
I
paid little attention to the photo, in fact was a bit grossed out by
it. I bought that issue explicitly for the coverage of LIFEFORCE.
It wasn’t until I got to the article that I learned RE-ANIMATOR had
some connection to a favorite author of mine, one that I was still in
the embryonic stages of discovering—H.P. Lovecraft!
I
was sixteen back then, and had only one of those Del Reyl books, I
think it was ‘The Doom That Came To Sarnath And Other Stories.’
Now, here’s the part where I don’t know what memory is
accurate, perhaps, they both are. I also remember getting my hair
curled back then at a beauty shop. I had long hair in high school,
and was extremely vain about it. My two inspirations in this
department were Mel Gibson’s do in LETHAL WEAPON and Jeff
Goldblum’s locks in the remake of THE FLY, both of which my
hair has resembled at different times through out the high school and
early 20s of the 80s. But that’s neither here nor there, what I
can’t recall is if I learned of RE-ANIMATOR’s Lovecraft
connection in the bookstore or in the parlor, events which may or may
not have occurred on the same day. And, yet, I have a memory of
perusing the mag as my hair was being worked on.
Didn’t
end up seeing the movie until my mother rented it later on that year.
By then, I think, it was being touted as the goriest movie ever made,
bumping THE EVIL DEAD off the list by miles, or something like
that. Back then I was not a lover of anything zombie related and went
into it presuming it was going to suck. Well, it didn’t suck, and
the pitch black humor helped alleviate some of the horror.
I
can’t say that I was really over the moon about it, I seem to
recall liking the sequel more, but, for me, RE-ANIMATOR was
one of those films I didn’t appreciate until a great deal of time
had past. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say, and I didn’t get
reacquainted with it until the Spring of 1998 when I bought my first
DVD player and was looking through the Movies Unlimited catalog
trying to decide which DVDs I should get.
There
was a list and when I saw RE-ANIMATOR, for some reason, I was
incredibly overjoyed to see it, and a rush of memories flooded my
brain, namely the aforementioned recollection of first becoming
acquainted with it. I knew right then I was going to buy it and I
did.
Do I
even need to go into the plot of this movie? I suppose I should for
those neophyte horror fans that have yet to see all the classics. In
a nutshell, the movie is about “mad doctor,” Herbert West, played
brilliantly by Jeffrey Combs, who has managed to create a serum that
can actually reanimate dead tissue. The catch is it only reanimates
the body, not the “person,” but West believes he can achieve that
goal of bringing a “person” back to life again, if he just keeps
trying, and trying he does. Along the way, he drags in doctor
wanna-be, Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott,) to help with his reanimation, but
as usual each corpse they experiment on pulls the both of them deeper
into obsession and eventual full on madness as corpses run amok
throughout Miskatonic University final act.
Barbara
Crampton plays Dan Cain’s main squeeze, Megan Halsey, and David
Gale plays West’s nemesis, the equally mad, Dr. Hill, both of which
have major parts woven into this insane play director, Stuart Gordon,
chose as his first foray into adapting Lovecraft for the big screen.
I
have to admit this is the one story of Lovecraft’s I have never
read, and still haven’t to this day. Funny, all the books I ever
bought containing his stories, none of them ever reprinted his
‘Herbert West—Re-animator’ one, so I can’t comment on
exactly how much Gordon deviated from the source material, and what
he kept in.
Ever
since the advent of digital technology this movie has been released
and re-released many times. During the days of VHS there was this
format around called, laserdisc, and as far as I can trace it back
Elite Entertainment was not the first company to resurrect this movie
from the soil of video tape. Image Entertainment took a shot at it
before Elite got a hold of it and injected it with their own brand of
reanimation reagent, turning it into a pretty damn good looking 10th
anniversary edition in 1995. When new digital technology came a
knockin’ in 1997, that same company re-released it two years later
on a much smaller disc we all came to know as a DVD.
In
2004 Elite went all Herbert West on it again, and decided to
reanimate it once more with what they called the, Millennium Edition,
which gave the movie and supplements, also some new ones created just
for that edition, their own separate discs.
In
2007, Anchor Bay got the rights to it, and added a spiffy new
70-minute documentary called, ‘Re-animator Resurrectus.’
Cut to now, 2012, and the movie has come full circle, shambling back
home, on its undead legs, to Image Entertainment for it’s first
blu-ray release ever. Unfortunately, I do not have a blu-ray player,
yet, nor did I ever purchase the Anchor Bay version, so for this
review I can only compare the transfer of the Millennium Edition to
the standard DVD Image also released in conjunction with the blue.
Note
that Elite’s 2004 release and Anchor Bay’s 2007 release were both
2-disc editions; movie on one disc, supplements on the other. Image
has decided to release their blu and DVD on one disc, this means for
us standard DVD owners the ‘Re-animator Resurrectus’
documentary could not be added. Not enough room on the disc. The
blu-ray however has the room and the doc was included.
So,
for those fans that are in the same boat I am, where you don’t yet
have a blu-ray player, never upgraded to the Anchor Bay DVD and are
thinking of upgrading to the standard DVD of Image’s version, well,
let me tell that you shouldn’t. I compared both versions last
night, and the Millennium Edition boasts a crisper transfer. The
Image version is softer, and flesh tones are orangier. And to add
insult to injury, the Image DVD appears to be in a 1.78:1 aspect
ratio where the Elite and all other releases before that were in a
1.85:1 ratio. Personally, I didn’t think I would notice much of a
difference in this department, but every time I put the Image version
on I couldn’t help noticing how somewhat cramped the framing
looked. I then went back to the Elite version and observed the top
and you do see a smidge more picture.
Incidentally,
the ratio on the back of Image’s standard version claims its
1.85:1. The blu-ray, however, states that version is 1.78:1, and I’m
pretty sure the standard is in that ratio, too, just misprinted on
the back cover.
Other features Image did not port over, either on the DVD or on the
blu-ray, are the production, behind-the-scenes, poster and
advertising stills and photos. Another reason you might want to keep
your Elite and Anchor Bay versions.
On
the plus side what Image did port over to their standard DVD, audio
commentaries with Director, Stuart Gordon, Producer Brain Yuzna and
pretty much all the principle actors, except David Gale, who died
back in 1991. Interviews with writer, Dennis Paoli, composer Richard
Band, and an introduction by ex-Fangoria editor, Tony Timpone, not to
mention a host of deleted scenes, TV spots and a trailer, should give
fans and neophytes a pretty damn good look into what it took to make
cult classic.
In
closing, I wish another company had gotten this movie for it’s
blu-ray inauguration, not to mention it’s re-release on DVD.
FILM
DVD
FILM
DVD
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