Friday, October 30, 2015

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #69 Re-Animator

I find it interesting that Re-Animator has never been, as far as I’m aware, a particularly controversial film. Interesting, but not inexplicable by any means. To attack such a film for its content would be like complaining that Soldier of Fortune has a right-wing bias. That is to say, those who care have bigger fish to fry, and those who would care to consume the material knew exactly what they were getting themselves into, and thus can hardly complain.



The character of Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is one that I’ve always found truly fascinating. Most Anti-Heroes are driven by some sympathetic desire. That desire could be to help people they care about, or simply to have peace. In West’s case however, his driving force is simply the pursuit of knowledge. He’s hardly the first mad scientist in the history of fiction to have such a desire, but most have at least some remote sense of an end-goal. Even Frankenstein talked of bringing loved ones back from the grave as they were in life.



Not so with West, who seems to revive the dead solely to satisfy his own morbid curiosity about the nature of life. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that Stuart Gordon intended some sort of Religious commentary. West as a completely indifferent being, who is almost all-powerful in any environment which he enters, and is completely uninterested in the affairs of humans. As a result, he brings conflict among those who seek to understand and use his power for their own ends. His very mind appears to be a force of nature



Beyond West, the plot of Re Animator is wonderfully insane, but of little consequence. By the end of the movie, there are many gory dead bodies that have been brought back from the grave, and a woman has been raped by a headless corpse. The other characters are interesting, but I personally feel that Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) is of more consequence in Bride of Re Animator. In this film, he serves primarily to give us one character who can play the hero.



Doctor Carl Hill (David Gale), on the other hand exists primarily to give us a generically evil scientist villain whose only role is to be actively malevolent, thus technically making him worse than West by default. He wants to steal West's work, and take the credit and the power for himself. His existence allows West to take the designation of “Protagonist,” simply because West, if left to his own devices, would at least be limited to a fairly small number of re-animated corpses, with no sinister intent.



It would seem that a movie with a protagonist so evil that he could easily serve as a moustache-twirling villain in almost any other film would be too depressing to bother with. But I find Re Animator to be truly fascinating, for its mixture of carnage, characterization, and comedy.



I’m not sure what it says about this film that I find West to be easily the scariest aspect. While his persona is more malevolent, West has what could easily be described as a Hannibal Lector vibe. He’s smarter than everyone around him. And while he may be distinguished from worse villains by lack of malice, he’s also distinguished by the absolute certainty that he will not lose.



If you can’t deal with blood or gore, skip this movie. But if you can, watch it, period.

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