I wonder what HP Lovecraft would thing of this film if he were around. This modern interpretation of the classic story is a coalescence of horror elements with quick comedy that will be lost on alot of people.
Humans can’t help but play god, it’s in their nature. Not only do we have the propensity to prove to every other species we share this planet with our superiority, but that same desperate showcase of power extends to the forces of nature, life and death too. Is this feverish attempt at consolidating our power a result of our terrifying insignificance in the universe? Quite certainly. But the need to play god doesn’t purely come out of fear or superciliousness, sometimes it’s borne from pure genius. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re in a place to bend the rules of nature to your will, break a leg!
Continuing my study of the comedic value of death, my second case study is about reversing the very same. Only recently did it come to my attention, by way of a friend’s hoodie, that there’s a movie interpretation of the Lovecraft’s Herbert West -Reanimator, so I thought studying Reanimator (1985) would give me some leads towards my writing. Much like the story, the film follows resolute and brazenly erudite Herbert West as he tries to reanimate the dead by reinvigorating the chemical processes that govern life. His keep scientific zeal keeps him moving on the trail of bodies he leaves in the wake of his experiments. Him and his housemate, who’s also a shining student at the hospital Herbert snoops around to get all his subjects, have to deal with all the animalistic savage and superhuman undead they’ve scientifically reanimated. With a girlfriend who also happens to be the daughter of the hospital’s dean and with his education on the line, not to mention the electric chair if they don’t get killed by their creations and get caught instead, there’s a lot of collateral damage.
Though there wasn’t much to study from this film, I still found myself rolling along with the story and enjoying this unique take on Lovecraft’s story bought into the present day. Although I’m extremely jumpy in real life, horror films just don’t seem to scare me anymore, I miss the times when watching a horror film would make me stay up for hours as the sleep would refuse to land in my eyes in fear of my nightmares taking some creative liberties from what I just watched. That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy them, quite the contrary. If anything, I feel I enjoy them even more, objectively, if such a thing even exists. Judging by the atmosphere set up by the camera, the music and all manner of practical effects alongside the gruesome make-up on the corpses and the way the narrative unfolds, the film is most certainly spooky. Constant foreshadowing portents the coming of the calamity their experiments will unleash, making all these little details complicit in an act of visual symbolism.
Jeffery Combs plays an aggressive and cold Herbert West, with a stiff face, almost embalmed and his big scary eyes beaming out determination and shock. His performance shined above the rest, not to say the others were bad, far from it, they all played characters in a way that made me root and rage for them.
Despite me not being able to find much material to include in my essay, there were some wonderfully comic moments which heralds the playful way in which the film combines horror and humour. “Cat dead, details later” is something that I won’t be able to get out of my head for a long time. Also, the physical humour of keeping a decapitated head still on a paper spike is just another example of a brilliant sense of humour that would be completely wasted on the mostly puritan crowd that would’ve watched this film during its theatrical run.
Yet another classic gem mined from the depths of the 80’s, it has the spooky aesthetic and the humour that makes that decade such a gold rush for horror film fans. It has my stab of approval, go watch it, and read the source material in your own time.
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