Cain is dating hottie blonde Megan (Barbara Crampton), the daughter of the dean (Robert Sampson) of the medical school. The school's prize professor is Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), an arrogant man who nurses a creepy crush on Megan. Dr. West and Dr. Hill soon become enemies.
Cain has access to the city morgue. West convinces Cain to sneak in West to revive the morgue newly dead. The dean, goaded by Dr. Hill, attempts to stop Dr. West and is killed by a revived corpse. Dr. West "re-animates" the late dean, but the undead dean is so disturbed that he is committed to an insane asylum. Dr. Hill operates on the dean and turns him into a zombie that he can control.
Dr. Hill attempts to blackmail Dr. West into turning over his research. Instead, Dr. West decapitates Dr. Hill with a shovel, then re-animates both the head and headless corpse of Dr. Hill. The revived Dr. Hill somehow gets into the morgue, and uses West's serum to revive all the corpses and make them zombies. Dr. Hill commands the newly freed dean to kidnap Megan. Cain and Dr. West arrive to confront Dr. Hill and his zombies in the wild, gruesome finale.
Re-Animator was followed by two sequels, both starring Jeffrey Combs.
In the first sequel, Bride of Re-Animator (1989), Bruce Abbott and David Gale also reprised their roles. Alas, Gale died in 1991 during open heart surgery, and thus could not appear in Beyond Re-Animator (2003).
How others will see it. Re-Animator did not have a box office comparable with Back to the Future. But it didn't need to, since it cost less than one million dollars to make. A video success, the film was a hit on the horror festival circuit, earning a Best Horror Film nomination from the Saturn Awards.
Re-Animator was notorious from the beginning, and is today regarded as a cult classic. At imdb.com, it has a respectable 50K user votes and a surprisingly high user rating of 7.2 out of 10. Ratings are highest from young American males, but even women over 45 give it a respectable grade of 6.9.
The user reviews generally overflow with praise for the movie. No one seems to mind the combination of gore and comedy. (Presumably, those who would be know better than to see it.) Some are understandably offended by the film's most infamous scene, which has Dr. Hill's severed head sexually assaulting a bound Megan, with one reviewer calling it "gratuitous."
Richard Hand is credited as the film's composer, but the score is so similar to Bernard Herrmann's work in Psycho that some call it more of a rip-off than a tribute. In any event, the Rome Philharmonic Orchestra does a bang-up job with it.
How I felt about it. Re-Animator isn't meant for everyone. It is intended for the viewer who knows that it is not to be taken seriously. No humans (or cats) are actually harmed, and while Crampton is mistreated, presumably she read the script before she took the part. She has acted in many horror movies, and is a celebrity at horror film festivals.
So, Re-Animator does not offend me. A moralist would want to see Dr. West punished for his amputation of Dr. Hill. Someone who wants life (and film) to be fair might be outraged at the treatment of Megan and her cat. But, I know these are fictional characters, and what happens in cinema stays in cinema.
The situations are far-fetched. We are to believe that Dr. West's serum can revive the dead. Dr. Hill is somehow able to turn the undead into zombies he can control. The disembodied head of Dr. Hill would seemingly have better things to do than order the kidnapping of Megan so he can torment her for his sexual pleasure.
But it's all in good fun. If it doesn't make much sense, it isn't supposed to. The moral of the movie concerns Dr. West. Do not admit him into your university. Events will turn out badly.