H.P. Lovecraft wrote some of the scariest and unnerving horror stories of the 20th Century. Unfortunately his stories have yet to be translated to the big screen with any real success. It isn’t that people haven’t tried – it’s just that they have constantly failed to capture that eerie, creepy feeling that Lovecraft’s stories have. And there has been some really bad Lovecraft adaptations. The only really good movie is this 1985 movie from director Stuart Gordon – The Re-Animator.
Don’t get me wrong – this is an awesome, over the top, gory and hilarious horror movie. I enjoy it immensely but while it’s based on Lovecraft’s Herbert West–Reanimator, it’s a loose adaptation at best.
The movie stars Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West – a young medical student who has discovered a way to reanimate the dead. His roommate Bruce Abbott is dating the dean’s daughter Barbara Crampton and his professor David Gale is trying to steal his work. Naturally dealing with the reanimated dead goes horribly wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.
