'Re-Animator' is a gory trip into movie madness

Re-Animator (1985)
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale and Robert Sampson
Director: Stuart Gordon
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Dan's new roommate and fellow third-year med student, Herbert West (Combs) draws him into his bizarre (and successful) experiments with re-animating dead bodies.

"Re-Animator" is one of the craziest movies ever made, and it ranks up there with "Dead Alive" as one of the funniest creepy movies ever made. While it is nowhere near as gory as "Dead Alive" and the slapstick isn't quite as sharp, it features a cleverer script and a superior cast.

Jeffrey Combs is particularly excellent as Herbert West. We get the sense that he's a bit weird early in the film and highly strung; Combs performance puts the viewer in mind of Peter Cushing's Victor Frankenstein in the first couple of Hammer Frankenstein films... coldblooded, arrogant and probably sociopathic but not necessarily completely bonkers. When West calmly a bone saw through the chest of a zombie and then immediately sets about reanimating its recently deceased victim, it's clear not just from his actions but from Combs performance that he more than a little off. And when he later animates the severed head of an obnoxious rival (likewise brilliantly played by David Gale), it's clear that he is completely unhinged.

Speaking of the severed head, it gives rise to some of the most unnerving moments in the film, as well some of the funniest. I don't want to go into too much details, because I'd ruin the shock value. Suffice to say, it's something that needs to be seen.

Credit also needs to be go to Bruce Abbott and Barbara Crampton. While Combs and Gale are giving performances that seem like they just teleported in from a Hammer Films set in 1960, they play their characters mostly low-key. This, combined with the fact that their characters are nice and normal people, give the audience someone to identify with as the film unfolds and provide an island of calm in the middle of the evermore turbulent sea of madness that is this movie.


"Re-Animator" elevates Herbert West among the great movie mad doctors, even if, according to the very informative interview included on the Achor Bay edition of the film, he was actually a minor character in the script and through most of the filming. It wasn't until "Re-Animator" was crafted into a releasable movie that the emphasis shifted to Herbert. (Comments in the interviews on the DVD even make me wonder if the filmmakers knew they were making a comedy until late in the process....)

Whether intentional or accidental art, this is one of those movies that gets everything right, from the mood-setting prologue, through its score (which spoofs Bernard Hermann's famous music for "Psycho") to its chilling end. It's also feels as fresh as when it first released in 1985. This is one of those very rare horror movies that actually deserves the label "classic."

If you are inclined to add this film to your personal library, make sure you get the limited edition "unrated" version from Anchor Bay. The cut presented there may be shorter than the R-rated version, but the humor and shocks are more outrageous than its tamer and slightly bloated counterpart. The disc full of extras is also something that you'll find extremely interesting if you have any interest at all in the filmmaking process. (The same is true of the commentary tracks.)

'The Shunned House' is a messy place to visit

The Shunned House (2003)
Starring: Giuseppe Lorusso, Federica Quaglieri, Emanuele Cerman, Silvia Ferreri, Michael Segal, Cristiana Vaccaro, and Roberta Marrelli
Director: Ivan Zuccon
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Alex (Lorusso) and Rita (Quaglieri), while working on Alex's latest book, investigate an abandoned inn with a reputation for being haunted, cursed, and generally just Plain Bad News. While they wander through the decaying structure, Rita starts having disturbing visions as the past and present being to collide, and the evil in the house reawakens....


"The Shunned House" is a kinda-sorta anthology film that loosely adapts three Howard Lovecraft short stories. I say kinda-sorta, because all three stories are intermixed, unfolding in an almost random order, with bits of other hauntings that take place in the inn creeping in around the edges. The tales flow in and out of one another, with sometimes no more than a lighting change or a switch in the musical score to alert the viewer to the fact that we have switched storylines again.

The three stories that take place in three different time frames are intermixed, as Rita has visions and nightmares during her stay in the decaying rooms of the Crossroads Inn. The grisly and mysterious death of a sleepwalking mathematician whose formulas may have opened doors that should have stayed closed during the 1940s (an adaptation of "Dreams in the Witch-House"), and a writer and a young girl who spends her nights playing music to keep demons at bay during the 1920s (an adaption of "The Music of Erich Zann"), are interspersed with the modern day developments of Rita growing increasingly sick from the house's influence while Alex takes notes for his book (an adaptation of "The Shunned House"). There may also be a fourth storyline... I can't quite make sense of where the torturer, his victim, and his vengeful employer that appear at various points in the film, and I can't remember such elements in any of the three stories adapted here (although it has been several years since I've read any of them), but it's the only one that seems to feed directly into the overall developments relating to Alex and Rita.

The way the storylines of the film are presented is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, the jumbled, organic nature of their presentation gives a dream-like quality to the movie that feeds the sense of unease and horror it so expertly invokes, but, on the other hand, only one of the stories actually reaches a conclusion, and none of them fully manages to build to the fever ptich of terror that is the hallmark of a Lovecraft plot. ("The Music of Erich Zann" is the one that comes closest, and even it doesn't quite manage to capture the sense of a Lovecraft climax.)

Part of the problem with the adaptations here lies, I think, with a lack of understanding on the part of the screenwriters of what makes a Lovecraft climax work. I think that when stripping out the florid language that makes his stories such interesting reads (but which can, of course, never be brought into a movie) they failed to notice that while his stories always end with copious unanswered questions, they do end. With the exception of the storyline of the violinist playing to ward off demons from the darkness, every plotline here just sort of trails off. Unlike a Lovecraft tale, we don't get a climax in the end, but just unanswered questions.

Another weakness of the film is the actors. While they are far better than what I've seen in many movies of this type, they are still come up short. The worst of the bunch are Giuseppe Lorusso and Federica Quaglieri, not so much because they are individually all that bad, but because there is no on-screen chemistry between them whatsoever... and this is a vitally important aspect to make us care about the characters and to make a third-act revelation by Alex have any real impact on the viewers. (The two other on-screen couples are somewhat better--with Emanuele Cerman and Silvia Ferreri in the "Dreams in the Witch-House" segments being the stongest performers of the bunch.)

For all those complaints, though, this movie was a fine viewing experience, far better than I had expected.

The photography, lighting, and production design on this film are spectacular. It is plainly shot on video, but it has virtually none of the flat quality that many of films recorded on that media do, and there's nothing cheap or substandard about the technical work that is on display here; the film looks better than many horror movies that were made for twenty times the cost of "The Shunned House".

The high-quality photography and lighting is complimented by an equally impressive display of skill on the part of the sound designers and the composer of the musical score. Many scenes include subtle ambient sounds that serve to heighten the creepiness and mystery of the haunted inn. I was also impressed with the musical cues that are used to help the audience keep track of the mystical flashbacks when first start fading in and out. Very few low-budget movies are blessed with music as well-done as what we find here.


Even more, the violin music in the "Music of Erich Zann" storyline is nothing short of amazing. It's the one place where I must eat my words that Lovecraft's "florid prose" can't be presented on the screen--the music that Carlotta Zann plays late at night is supposed to be unlike anything protagonist Marco has ever heard, and we are presented with haunting, unusual music that actually makes us believe it's possible. (The audio distortions--part of the music actually being run backwards?--that get added to the music at points in the story makes it even more believable. For a sample of the violin music in question, visit the official website devoted to the film. Make sure you have the sound turned up on your computer.)

"The Shunned House" is a film that's visually striking and technically competent in every way. It manages to create and maintain a sense of dread throughout its running time, and I wish I could like more than I do. There are so many good things about it, but the weaknesses of the film loom large when it is viewed. They are severe enough that this barely rises to the level of an average movie, and I really wish I could have given it a better score in the end.

Still, this is a film that the creators of big-screen crapfests like "Boogeyman" and "The Skeleton Key" would have been well-advised to have seen and emulated when they did their films, as Ivan Zuccon did far more with far less than they did. It should also be considered a must-see by anyone out there who is considering making their own low-budget horror film. This is (in everything except the story) an example of how it should be done.

Weird Science brings sexual perversion 'From Beyond'

From Beyond (1986)
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, Ted Sorel and Carolyn Purdy-Gordon
Director: Stuart Gordon
Producers: Brian Yunza and Charles Band
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A pair of physicists (Combs and Sorel) create a machine that causes our dimension to merge with another. They end up unleashing horrors--and sexual perversion--unlike any our world has ever seen before.


"From Beyond" is one of those gory, goopy movies that you do NOT want to watch while eating. If you like fast-paced monster movies with a high quotient of mad doctors--there is only one out of the five major characters who isn't a doctor who is unhinged in some fashion--and you don't mind sexually-themed horror, then you'll enjoy the heck out of this movie.

With excellent special effects--particularly during the final battle against the monstrous creature from beyond--and great performances by all the actors, this movie is a fun ride. Although only the first few minutes of the film is actually based on H.P. Lovecraft's story of the same title, Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton both capture the obsession and the madness that was a hallmark of many of his characters and stories. Further, the creatures and the entire style of the movie evokes the atmosphere of Lovecraft's writings. Even better, the film provides some great laughs to offset the terror, with Ken Foree (best-known for his role in the original "Dawn of the Dead") serving double-duty as comic relief and Macho Action Hero and succeeding equally well at both.

"From Beyond" is an excellent movie to show at a Halloween party where adults or older teens make up those in attendence. If you want to get a copy to show, make sure you get the unrrated DVD director's cut, because it features some really cool scenes that were cut to earn it an R rating during its original release--such the scene where Dr. Bloch (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) has her brain sucked out through her eye-socket and some of the bits of a tentacle-beast from Dimension Lovecraft getting to know Dr. Katherine McMichaels really well.

Wilbur Whateley: Wizard of the Roofies

The Dunwich Horror (1970)
Starring: Dean Stockwell, Sandra Dee, Ed Begley, Lloyd Bochner, Donna Baccala and Sam Jaffe
Director: Daniel Haller
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A cute college girl (Dee) is fed supernatural Roofies by 1970s cultist and proto-Emo Wilbur Whateley (Stockwell). Before you know it, he's offering her asa one-night stand to the extra-dimensional horrors known as the Great Old Ones. Will her prudish girlfriend (Baccala) and the curmudgeonly Dr. Henry Armitage (Begley) manage to save her before she becomes a cosmic swinger?



"The Dunwich Horror" is a loose--VERY loose--adaptation of one of H.P. Lovecraft's most famous and most intense works, but, unfortunately, very little of that intensity manages to make it onto the screen.

The film has all the trappings of Lovecraft--the weird Whateley family, the hostile villagers of Dunwich, Miskatonic University, Henry Armitage, strange crystal rocks and even stranger rites and rituals that either summon or ward off invisible horrors and tentacle beasts the likes of which not even the Japanese could imagine! However, the film never comes close to evoking the mood of a Lovecraft story and it barely manages to be scary in a couple of scenes. To make an already borderline dull film even worse director Daniel Haller doesn't seem to know how to end a scenes. There literally isn't a single scene that doesn't go on for anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes too long; it's not that the film feels padded... it just feels like it's incompetently done. (And then there's those horribly long, loud, and garish dream sequences. I'm sure someone thought those were Lovecraftian but I simply found them annoying. Maybe they came across better to movie-goers in 1970, especially those tripping on who-knows-what.)

Except for the languid direction and the painful dream sequence, the film is decent enough. Every performer does a good job with their parts, even if the part merely calls for looking cute as does that played by Sandra Dee, and the cinematography and special effects are also quite well done. The same can be said for the film's score; the main title music seems a bit out of step with the nature of the film, but the variations of the theme featured throughout the film are spot-on. The Whateley House is also a great piece of set design, both inside and out.

"The Dunwich Horror" is one of those films that doesn't have enough good points for me to give it a strong recommendation, nor are there enough bad things about it to make me warn you off it. I was disappointed by it, but if a low-key Lovecraft adaptation that oozes an early 1970s vibe sounds interesting to you, then it might be worth checking out.

A chilling horror film lurks behind a goofy title...

Castle Freak (1995)
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Jessica Dollarhide, and Jonathan Fuller
Director: Stuart Gordon
Producers: Albert Band, Charles Band and Maurizio Maggi

John and Susan Reilly (Combs and Crampton) travel to Italy with their recently blinded daughter Rebecca (Dollarhide) to inspect a castle they've just inherited. The Reillys soon discover the old owner of the castle had harbored a deep and twisted secret... a secret which has escaped and is now roaming the shadowy halls claiming victims.


"Castle Freak" is a horror film of such exceptionally high quality that it's surprising to learn it was made as a direct-to-video release. It is without question one of the best movies to come out of the Full Moon low-budget fantasy factory.

The film features a great script that presents three-dimensional characters dealing both with all-too-real horrors that normal people face every day (a family that's disintegrating due to a tragedy caused by the negligence of one parent, the inability of another to forgive, and the strain and guilt both feel in trying to live with the reality that one child is dead and another is permanently crippled) and the inconceivable horror that lurks within their new home. Even minor characters, such as the chief of police in the small town by the castle, feel fully realized and come across as living, breathing human beings.

These very well-rendered characters are brought to full life by the extremely talented cast, with Jeffrey Combs delivering a particularly impressive performance. In other films I've seen Combs in, he's seemed most comfortable when doing comedy--he was a bit wooden in "Doctor Mordrid" , but he ROCKED in "Re-Animator" and the 1991 version of "The Pit and the Pendulum" where he played roles that were marked by dark humor and twisted levity--but here in "Castle Freak" he plays a part that is purely dramatic and he delivers a nuanced and thoroughly convincing performance of a man who is trying his best to make up for a horrible shortcoming while trying to save what's left of his family. His eventual transformation from Everyman into Hero when he realizes the danger his family is in is more convincing here than in just about any other horror film you'd care to mention.

Another remarkable performance is given by Jessica Dollarhide who plays the recently blinded Rebecca. She portrays a kid who is genuinely nice and likable, someone who wants to be independent yet who also recognizes that her parents have needs as well. She plays the part with very little of the obnoxiousness and hysteria that seems to be the hallmark of teenaged characters in this genre... except for the well-justified hysteria that arises when the "castle freak" visits.

The film is also perfectly photographed and expertly edited. Director Stuart Gordon and cinematographer Mario Vulpiani use every trick in their cinematic bag to make the castle where the film takes place--which was a genuine 12th century castle owned by Full Moon Entertainment, and which served as the location for a number of the company's productions--take on a life of its own and make the film that much more intense. The effectiveness of the gore and make-up effects are gut-wrenchingly believeable, and, together with the skillfully executed camerawork make this movie seem like it was made for ten times the money that was actually spent.

"Castle Freak" truly is a film where every dollar of the budget is visable on the screen, and it's a movie where they get just about everything right.

Unfortunately, the one area where they miss the mark is with the titular "castle freak." The film would have been perfect if he had been just a little more sympathetic (ala Boris Karloff's portrayal of the Frankenstein Monster in the 1932 version of "Frankenstein"). All the elements are here to have made the creature an object of our sympathy--and given the horrible tortures that shaped him into what he is, we still end up feeling a little sorry for him, but not as much as we could have if Jonathan Fuller had been an actor of Karloff's caliber. Fuller isn't bad as the creature, but he's not great. (A more sympathetic portrayal of the "castle freak" would have made the gruesome cannibal rape scene all the more horrific.)

A slighlly bigger flaw than Fuller's okay-but-not-great performance is one that's built into its very basic story. The old duchess dies and no curious townsfolk or police do a walkthrough of the castle? That's all it would have taken to find the poor "castle freak" in his prison, and subsequently turned this from a horror movie to a Hallmark Special about a family resettling to a castle in Italy and rekindling their love for each other.

Despite that one glaring plothole, "Castle Freak" is a film that's deserving of more attention than it gets, and it's a worthy addition to the library of anyone who appreciates well-made horror films.



Watch a preview of Castle Freak, courtesy of Full Moon Entertainment and YouTube...