The histories of classic and cult classic horror movies tend to be quite scattered. If you’re lucky, Wikipedia will have a few strong leads and links that reveal huge parts of their stories, or you’ll find an investigative article or retrospective shedding more light. Who came up with the idea for the film, how they landed a particular director or actress, and which creative clashes led to some of horror cinemas most iconic moments are all dependent on these endeavors. And yet, the scope is almost always limited. There’s only ever so much you can cram into a webpage or article without making these narratives unwieldy.
This is where supplemental material on Blu-rays and special collections come in to offer a more complete version of these stories. Be it through director commentaries, archival footage, or legacy documentaries, these packages have become vessels for not just the film they house but also for the stories behind the production. Restorations and remasters in particular come packed with so many different special features that they become small museums of sorts for each film.
Ignite Films’ 4K restoration of Re-Animator (which marks the movie’s 40th anniversary) stands as one of the best of its kind. The restoration itself was approved by Brian Yuzna, the original film’s producer, and it features nearly three hours of newly produced features alongside material that had already been collected in previous releases. They range from talks on the restoration process to an exploration of Re-Animator: The Musical.
For those new to the movie, Re-Animator is a loose adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1922 short story “Herbert West—Reanimator,” in which a narrator tells the story of a man that believed the human body could be restarted after death. The movie takes this premise and focuses it on a modern setting where medical school politics, sex, and ghoulish experiments with cadavers put the ethics of science on the spotlight.
It is one of the best adaptations of Lovecraft’s work in film and its gore is some of the most impressively gruesome to have come out from the 1980s. Actor Jeffrey Combs became a horror icon thanks to his role as the titular reanimator. Its daring erotic horror shots have become legendary in their own right as well, most memorable among them a reanimated severed head that tries to go down on a woman.
Among the new featurettes mentioned above is “Re-Animator at 40: A Conversation with Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, and Brian Yuzna,” an enlightening trip down memory lane that essentially lays bare the production’s origin story along with insights into the creative mind of director Stuart Gordon. Yuzna is a great storyteller that can transport viewers back to the movie’s early stages. At certain points, Combs and Crampton are just transfixed, listening in admiration of Yuzna’s recollection of the events that led up to the creation of a horror classic.
Another featurette titled “The Horror of it All: The Legacy and Impact of Re-Animator” features a wider sample of fans and creators from the horror community that frame the movie and director Stuart Gordon as the reason why their knowledge of horror expanded so much. While Re-Animator can very easily work as a gateway movie to the genre, it definitely works better as the kind of film that challenges your understanding of it once you’ve seen a bit of horror already. The conversations in this feature speak to this, the role it plays and place it holds in horror cinema.
Of note is the “Piece by Piece: Cutting Re-Animator—A New Interview with Editor Lee Percy” featurette. Percy talks about his experience in theater and how that corresponded with Gordon’s own theater experiences and sensibilities. The connection allowed for a more fluid and organic-feeling approach to editing, especially when it came to nailing down comedic timing and terror sequences. It makes you appreciate how crucial a storyteller the editor is in the post-production phase.
Ignite Films put a lot of work and care into this latest edition of Re-Animator. The new featurettes are both a study and a celebration of Stuart Gordon’s career-defining work, which more than justify the purchase for lifelong fans. It truly is a testament to the narrative power and value of the things that happen behind the scenes on movies that have left such a mark on their respective genres. Simply put, if there’s any doubt as to which remaster or restoration of Re-Animator deserves a space on your personal collection, Ignite Films has made sure its Blu-ray edition is the final word on it.
Re-Animator is available for purchase on the Ignite Films website.
English (US) · 