Re-Animator

1985. If Jeffrey Combs weren't in this movie, it would suck, but because his performance as Herbert Ross is so nuanced and hilarious, this movie is CLASSIC. Don't get me wrong, the plot is okay, taken from a silly HP Lovecraft story about a scientist that develops a serum that he injects into dead things to bring them back to life, but the real show is Combs.

There's some good gore in it, too, like when Combs' character decapitates some dude with a shovel. There are also some weird titty scenes that aren't fun at all - just creepy. Normally, I'm all for naked chicks in a horror movie, but the nude scenes in Re-Animator are so weirdly staged that I feel like director Stuart Gordon isn't all there. But maybe that's a good thing. Or it isn't. He directed Robot Jocks. Remember that pile (maybe it was Charles Band's fault).

The end of Re-Animator does this thing that I hate. Sometimes in zombie movies, when the zombies have the main characters cornered, the main characters somehow have all this time to talk and move around and settle conflicts. Why are zombie such killing machines in some scenes, but then in others, they let the characters chat while they stand two-feet away moving their arms around and growling? This happens at the end of Shaun of the Dead for like forty five minutes. Shaun and his friends might as well be kicking back and watching TV while the zombies close in on them. I hate that!

This was Brian Yuzna's first foray into producing, and he later went on to direct such curiosities as The Return of the Living Dead 3 and The Dentist.