We get a one-dimensional mad medical student from Switzerland, Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), who continues to study medicine at a Massachusetts hospital. West turns on his professor, claiming plagiarism based on the studies of West's previous professor who met a grisly end at the beginning of the movie. Meanwhile, there is Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), another medical student who is seeing the university dean's daughter (Barbara Crampton, who gives the only animated performance in the movie). Cain allows West to rent a room at his small house. West, though, has a medical breakthrough he wishes to continue to pursue - the reanimation of dead tissue. First, it is Cain's cat who becomes a rather evil feline after reanimation (the poor thing allegedly had its head stuck in a jar and died) and both Cain and West try to catch it and kill it. The scene itself runs on and on to the point of tedium, with West reanimating the cat twice! Needless to say, West's next guinea pig for reanimation are the corpses at the morgue. How does he do it? There is some neon green substance that needs to be injected at the brain stem and within minutes, it will be alive.
Another example of scenes running on too long includes Dan as he wheels one corpse to the morgue towards the beginning of the film, and the moment runs on forever. Tightness in pacing and editing are sorely needed for this train wreck of a ghastly horror flick but that might not have been enough. I hardly elicited much interest in the characters and that includes the iconic Jeffrey Combs, who is good at playing a maniac but that is it - he's never quite present as a real character and has too few comic lines. Bruce Abbott is practically a robot in this movie, and acts no differently after having his noggin thrust against the wall.
There are bloody entrails and severed heads that talk (when the severed head starts licking the naked Crampton's nether regions who is strapped to a table, well, just don't say I didn't warn you), but most of "Re-Animator" bored me to my skull. Or maybe I needed some of that neon green substance to reanimate my interest.
