Plot: A student at a medical college and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue when an odd new student arrives on campus. Soon allsorts of reanimated body parts are crawling all over the place.
You can't go wrong with Jeffrey Combs. If your new to B-Movie horror look up his filmography and start at the beginning, the man is a genius, maybe on the same level as Jesus. This film had a budget of just $900,000 yet blows most other horror films away either today. The effects are quite simply stunning for it's time.
You may feel a slight prick.
As soon as Jeffrey's character Herbert shows up at college, all hell breaks loose. He starts bringing bits of dead tissue back to life with each experiment more and more extreme. Seeing the finger thing running around is creepy yet funny and this is the films main strength. It has a comedic tone running through the whole thing which never gets silly and is always pitch black dark.
Fingerbob.
Add in the love interest, the great Barbara Crampton, and a superb performance by Bruce Abbott as Dan, and you have a great triangle of odd but charming characters all doing unspeakable stuff but doing it because they really believe in it. You also have the great Robert Sampson as the nasty Dean who almost steals the show.
It's better than a poke in the eye.
The gore flows thick and fast, there is a smattering of nudity depending the version you are watching and the finale is a joy to behold. This spawned a couple of sequels, both of which are very good and don't reach the same heights as the original.
Talk about giving head.
All in all a classic. No doubt about it. Not looking dated at all, still packing a punch and still so so watchable, this is up there with the best of the era. Put this up against the remake of Friday the 13th and it shows todays mainstream horror directors are pricks who don't know their story telling from their bum holes. Re-Animator rocks like Eddie Grant in Electric Avenue in the middle of a huge thunder storm. A+
Summary:
Great because:
- Characters are all well written
- Acting is great all round
- Effects are flippin ace
- Jeffrey Combs never fails
Crap because:
- I wont have it said, I tell you I wont.
Hamster Rating: 5
Gore: 4
Scares: 5
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