Day 9 of Halloween - Re-Animator

Jason: I am a huge H.P. Lovecraft fan. Now that that’s out of the way, this may be one of the best Lovecraft adaptations that has ever been made. The story is a retelling of one of HPL’s serialized stories, “Herbert West: Reanimator”. It takes its liberties and changes quite a few things, namely the time setting. Originally, they were going to have this movie set in the early 1920’s, same as the story, but because of budgeting constraints, they modernized it. And I think that it works really well in a more modern era. The same questions of what is life, and can we beat death are no closer to being answered now than they were when the story was written. And, this was originally supposed to be a multi-part film that would have come out in sequence, just like the story did. There again, it had to be cut down to a single 90 minute movie because of money. I could go on and on about the differences between HPL’s story and the movie but that could take a while.

Just like any overly gory, campy horror flick, this movie has its critics. I’ve heard it said that the tone is just not right for a scary movie, that the comedy is clunky and gets in the way of the plot. What those critics don’t realize is that “Herbert West: Reanimator” was written as Lovecraft’s attempt at comedy! The fact that it turns out being horrific and macabre is because that was Lovecraft’s forte. Comedy was not. Reading the story as such make it so much funnier! And the same is true for the movie, too. It’s the little things, like when West has just shoveled off Hall’s head and jams it down onto a receipt spike to make it stand up before he has even decided to try and reanimate it. Cracks me up every time!

This movie is smart and witty and gory and a loving tribute to one of my very favorite authors. There was no question that it had to be on this list.

Joel: This movie is gross. I mean, it’s supposed to be gross. They used something like twenty-five gallons of fake blood in order to make this movie. I don’t mean gross in a bad way, just in a gross way. I’m not one to usually jump on the bandwagon of all CGI is terrible and practical effects are the end all be all, but this movie is a great reminder of what can be accomplished with fake blood, prosthetics and creativity.  This movie is a really good installment in the gross out horror/comedy sub genre that was popular in the 80s. (Evil Dead 2 and Dead Alive/Braindead are two other great examples of that style) I really dug the absurdity of the whole movie. Everyone’s dramatic all the time and frequently over the top. It’s a strange, bizarre little movie that seems almost tailor made to get a cult following over the years.

Chris: No...just no. Jason’s streak has ended and I’m tempted to force him to vacate his previous wins. But I had when the NCAA does that and I’d like to think I’m better than those dumb-dumbs so Jason better be satisfied with just taking a loss here. To be fair, it probably didn’t help that I have to watch these movies before going into work at 3pm so I basically have to try to eat lunch through this. Not a good combo. I get why you nerds would develop a cult following to a movie like this but count me out. My cult fandom belongs to Hot Rod, with the rest of the cool kids. 3-5-1.