Entertainment

Re-Animator: Cult horror classic to play for Fourth Friday Fright Night

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Tuesday, 16 September 2025

Written by Adam Taylor

On Friday, Sept. 26 at 9:30 p.m., the scientist will bring back to life, in a particularly gruesome way, the dead when Re-Animator, Stuart Gordon’s outrageous 1985 horror-comedy, plays as part of downtown’s 4th Friday arts celebration.
Nearly forty years after its release, Re-Animator remains one of the boldest riffs on a theme that has haunted the screen since the dawn of dark cinema: the story of Frankenstein. Gordon’s film joins a long lineage of movies inspired by Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, a lineage that ranges from Gothic horror to science fiction to dark comedy.
The Frankenstein Lineage
Long before Herbert West, audiences were thrilled by Boris Karloff’s performance as the monster in James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). That film, with its storm-lashed laboratories and electrified corpses, not only set the standard for cinematic horror but also created the archetype of the obsessed scientist meddling with life and death.
Four years later, Whale returned with Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a sequel many critics still call superior to the original for its blend of horror, pathos and sly humor.
Hammer Films revived the legend in the 1950s and 60s with titles like The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) and Frankenstein Created Woman (1967). Each added new elements to the familiar tale, with Peter Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein pushing the boundaries of morality and medicine.
Later films, such as Frankenstein Unbound (1990), attempted to merge Shelley’s Gothic creation with modern science fiction concepts.
Through it all, the theme has remained the same: humanity’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge and the terrifying consequences of playing God.
Enter Herbert West
In this tradition, Re-Animator is both faithful and irreverent. Based loosely on H.P. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West—Reanimator,” Gordon’s film introduces audiences to a medical student whose ambition rivals Victor Frankenstein’s. Played with manic brilliance by Jeffrey Combs, West perfects a glowing green serum that can bring the dead back to life.
Unfortunately for his colleagues and anyone else within reach, the results are goofily violent, grotesque and anything but human.
With Barbara Crampton as the unwitting love interest and Bruce Abbott as West’s reluctant partner, the film combines shock with satire. David Gale’s turn as the sinister Dr. Carl Hill provides the story’s most notorious sequences, cementing Re-Animator’s reputation as both horrifying and hilariously unhinged.
Laughing in the Dark
While Whale’s Frankenstein films were somber meditations on life and death, Gordon’s vision is gleefully anarchic. If Bride of Frankenstein flirted with camp, Re-Animator dives headlong into it. The film revels in excess, using practical effects to deliver severed heads, thrashing corpses and buckets of gore.
In this way, Re-Animator also shares DNA with other cult classics like Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981), where horror and slapstick collide. Both films suggest that when science or supernatural meddling goes wrong, the results can be as funny as they are terrifying.
A Childhood Scare
For all its dark humor, Re-Animator can be genuinely frightening, especially if you happen to stumble upon it too young. I still remember my first encounter with the movie. I was probably far too young to be watching. This writer still loved it, though; one of the reasons I got into film.
But then came the scene, the one with Herbert West’s serum bringing a corpse back in a way that was more violent and chaotic than anything I had ever seen.
The dead didn’t rise with dignity; they screamed, convulsed and thrashed with terrifying intensity. In many ways, that’s what makes Re-Animator endure: beneath the absurdity, it taps into primal fears about death and what happens when we try to reverse it.
A Cult Legacy
When Re-Animator debuted in 1985, it shocked audiences unprepared for its combination of explicit gore and pitch-black comedy. Reviewers were split; some decried it as tasteless, while others hailed its audacity. Over time, the film’s reputation has only grown.
Today it is recognized as one of the great cult horror films, regularly cited alongside The Evil Dead and The Rocky Horror Picture Show in discussions of enduring midnight movie favorites.
The Frankenstein mythos has proven endlessly adaptable, but Re-Animator stands out because it doesn’t just retell the story. It gleefully mangles it, injecting it with a jolt of punk rock energy. Herbert West isn’t tragic like Karloff’s monster or tormented like Cushing’s Baron; he’s a new breed of antihero, whose relentless pursuit of science leaves a trail of chaos in its wake.
The Cameo Art House Theatre’s monthly 4th Friday screenings tie into the larger arts celebration, creating a night where film lovers and art enthusiasts converge. September’s choice of Re-Animator could not be more fitting.
With autumn in the air and Halloween just weeks away, the Cameo is setting the stage for a season of horror by resurrecting a film that has refused to die in the hearts of its fans.
Re-Animator is proof that horror—like its reanimated corpses—never truly dies.
On September 26, 9:30 p.m., “Herbert West has a good head on his shoulders…and another one on his desk.”

(Photo courtesy of Cameo Art House Theatre)