That's pretty much the best way to sum up my reaction the first time I saw Re-Animator. Though I've since come to appreciate the rest of the film (except maybe Barbara Crampton's shrieky victim, but we'll come to that later), my first, oh, half-dozen viewings were pretty much motivated by the fact that Herbert West is basically my ideal man.
I mean, he's aggressive, handsome, brilliant, arrogant, rocks a skinny tie, and is really short.* That pretty much covers all my requirements. Unfortunately, yeah, he's kind of a sociopath with zero interest in women. But nobody's perfect.
Which all may help to explain why I'm single, actually.
ANYWAY. My romantic issues aside, he's really an incredible character. Neither villain nor hero, victim nor savior, Frankenstein nor Pretorius, Herbert is one of the great mad scientist characters, truly an inheritor of the great classical tradition of over-reachers -- Dr. Faustus with a pocket protector.
And that's one of the reasons he's become such a cult figure, too -- Herbert is a hopeless nerd. He's like the patron saint of hopeless nerds, because despite being as square as they come, he's supremely confident (and completely justified in his confidence, unlike most real people). He absolutely does not care that people think he's weird and dislike being around him, and he doesn't envy their normalcy or ability to connect with one another in the slightest. And his work, his obsession actually is grand enough and important enough to justify his divorce from the rest of humanity. Unlike most [of us] hopeless nerds, his alternative to human connection actually is a fair tradeoff.
There's a deleted scene on the two-disc DVD in which Dan finds Herbert injecting himself with his own re-agent, clearly addicted to it as a stimulant; it's a nicely played scene by both actors, and the moment of vulnerability for Herbert is quite touching. I do kind of wish they'd kept it, though it's clear why they didn't: it's an ambiguous and human side to Herbert that complicates his character considerably, bringing him too close to the fragile side of madness: in the film as released, Herbert is so larger-than-life that this kind of moment would seem out of place. It only really works if you're inhabiting the film's world so entirely that you're already looking for that humanity -- which I am, of course, but that's what I do.
Anyway. Enough about my horror-movie boyfriend. There's a whole movie here, and it's a good one, though it took me a while to come around to that view. The writing is a little stilted -- Jeffrey Combs basically says as much when he admits on the film commentary that he railed against having to say the line "Terrible, terrible, terrible!" when Herbert finds his work stolen. Because, seriously, not only has nobody in the twentieth century ever talked like that, I doubt anybody has ever talked like that outside the confines of an H.P. Lovecraft story. On the other hand, there are a few lines, like "trysting with a bubble-headed co-ed," (more on that later, obviously) that almost make up for it.
The deaths, though, are fantastic. Awesome effects, enough blood and gore and mayhem to totally satisfy -- apparently the crew decided Stuart Gordon's motto was "More is not enough," and that's evident onscreen.
But then there's Meg. Oh, Meg. Well, wait, first there's Dan, and I gotta defend Dan, because it took me a long time to join Team Dan. It's a totally thankless role and I think Bruce Abbott really does an awesome job with it and is subtler than he's given credit. The dynamic between Dan and Herbert is tricky, and he largely has to carry it because Jeff Combs is otherwise occupied devouring the scenery. (Said with love!)
All right. Meg. She just -- she gets on my last nerve, she really does. She's a victim in every sense, but that needn't necessarily be a deal-breaker -- so is Cheryl in The Evil Dead and I'm always prepared to defend her. Meg's just so blonde and... blonde. I mean, she doesn't really have any defining characteristics to speak of, besides being helpless and blonde, and being an amazing screamer, which -- again, so irritating. And I don't blame Barbara Crampton, I really don't, because she rocked it in From Beyond. But, nasty as Herbert is about her, he's kind of right that she's mostly just in the way of people getting stuff done ("bubble-headed co-ed" is the kind of meanness that I completely love him for. What's that Liz Phair line -- "everything you say is so obnoxious, funny, true and mean"?) And it's such a small central cast, and Meg is the only woman, which is fatal in a horror film. Not only is she guaranteed to die, she's guaranteed to be annoying getting there, because the "good girl" always is and if you can only have one female stereotype in your horror movie, that's what you're going to get.
Which all may help to explain why I'm single, actually.
ANYWAY. My romantic issues aside, he's really an incredible character. Neither villain nor hero, victim nor savior, Frankenstein nor Pretorius, Herbert is one of the great mad scientist characters, truly an inheritor of the great classical tradition of over-reachers -- Dr. Faustus with a pocket protector.
And that's one of the reasons he's become such a cult figure, too -- Herbert is a hopeless nerd. He's like the patron saint of hopeless nerds, because despite being as square as they come, he's supremely confident (and completely justified in his confidence, unlike most real people). He absolutely does not care that people think he's weird and dislike being around him, and he doesn't envy their normalcy or ability to connect with one another in the slightest. And his work, his obsession actually is grand enough and important enough to justify his divorce from the rest of humanity. Unlike most [of us] hopeless nerds, his alternative to human connection actually is a fair tradeoff.
There's a deleted scene on the two-disc DVD in which Dan finds Herbert injecting himself with his own re-agent, clearly addicted to it as a stimulant; it's a nicely played scene by both actors, and the moment of vulnerability for Herbert is quite touching. I do kind of wish they'd kept it, though it's clear why they didn't: it's an ambiguous and human side to Herbert that complicates his character considerably, bringing him too close to the fragile side of madness: in the film as released, Herbert is so larger-than-life that this kind of moment would seem out of place. It only really works if you're inhabiting the film's world so entirely that you're already looking for that humanity -- which I am, of course, but that's what I do.
Anyway. Enough about my horror-movie boyfriend. There's a whole movie here, and it's a good one, though it took me a while to come around to that view. The writing is a little stilted -- Jeffrey Combs basically says as much when he admits on the film commentary that he railed against having to say the line "Terrible, terrible, terrible!" when Herbert finds his work stolen. Because, seriously, not only has nobody in the twentieth century ever talked like that, I doubt anybody has ever talked like that outside the confines of an H.P. Lovecraft story. On the other hand, there are a few lines, like "trysting with a bubble-headed co-ed," (more on that later, obviously) that almost make up for it.
The deaths, though, are fantastic. Awesome effects, enough blood and gore and mayhem to totally satisfy -- apparently the crew decided Stuart Gordon's motto was "More is not enough," and that's evident onscreen.
But then there's Meg. Oh, Meg. Well, wait, first there's Dan, and I gotta defend Dan, because it took me a long time to join Team Dan. It's a totally thankless role and I think Bruce Abbott really does an awesome job with it and is subtler than he's given credit. The dynamic between Dan and Herbert is tricky, and he largely has to carry it because Jeff Combs is otherwise occupied devouring the scenery. (Said with love!)
All right. Meg. She just -- she gets on my last nerve, she really does. She's a victim in every sense, but that needn't necessarily be a deal-breaker -- so is Cheryl in The Evil Dead and I'm always prepared to defend her. Meg's just so blonde and... blonde. I mean, she doesn't really have any defining characteristics to speak of, besides being helpless and blonde, and being an amazing screamer, which -- again, so irritating. And I don't blame Barbara Crampton, I really don't, because she rocked it in From Beyond. But, nasty as Herbert is about her, he's kind of right that she's mostly just in the way of people getting stuff done ("bubble-headed co-ed" is the kind of meanness that I completely love him for. What's that Liz Phair line -- "everything you say is so obnoxious, funny, true and mean"?) And it's such a small central cast, and Meg is the only woman, which is fatal in a horror film. Not only is she guaranteed to die, she's guaranteed to be annoying getting there, because the "good girl" always is and if you can only have one female stereotype in your horror movie, that's what you're going to get.
But that brings me to another point about women in horror movies that I think often gets glossed over: "good girl" is often popularly translated as "virgin," and that's obviously not applicable here -- or, I think, in a lot of genre fiction. I like to bring up The Stand: the "bad girl" is a virgin, and the "good girl" obviously isn't, but that's not really how you tell the difference. The "bad girl" doesn't give Our (male) Heroes what they want, and the "good girl" does. When the author is taking a paternal stance towards a female character, "good" means virginal, but when he regards her as a potential mate, "good" means available. Teenaged girls, for example, are almost always "supposed" to be virgins (Halloween, Sleepaway Camp), while girls in college are "supposed" to be available (see also April Fool's Day) -- though not too available, and Meg's loyalty to Dan is central to her supposed likability. And I'm not saying that it's not a positive trait or even an unrealistic one, but it defines her exclusively in relation to him in a way that makes her essentially impossible to like. Basically, here's a litmus test: turn Character A into a straight man. Is there still a reason for him to be in the movie? In Meg's case, nope. Then, given my relative lack of interest in seeing her naked, why should I like her?
Again, Barbara Crampton kills in From Beyond, and it's in large part because she's not paired off: her character stands on her own, and as such there's little they can do to render her helpless (for all that Stuart Gordon tries, bless his pointed little head).
I have this personal connection to Stuart Gordon. I was active in a theater in Madison, Wisconsin that he actually started back in the 60s. Every time our managing director gave the first-rehearsal speech about the theater's origins, he'd point out that Stuart Gordon was the writer of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and inevitably forget the title of Re-Animator. I think he did it just to bug me. So I can't hold too much against Stuart, because he's like my theatrical great-godfather or something.
That said: wow. Yeah. The "head giving head" scene. It's a joke, and a truly, desperately unpleasant one. I know it's the movie's most famous moment, and like the tree rape in Evil Dead, it's famous because no one can believe they went there. And in the end, I'm pretty staunchly of the opinion that they probably shouldn't have. If it were a moment of horror, like the tree rape, it would at least earn some marginal respect for making violence against women unpleasant, but: it's a joke. When I re-watch the movie -- and I do, a lot -- I always get queasy there, because unlike the rest of the movie, it's not gross in a fun way. It's gross in a Reservoir Dogs ear-cutting scene way, and I think we can agree that that's actually not funny at all. You could certainly argue that the circumstances are so bizarre and ridiculous and improbable that it's too removed from reality to take personally, and I think that's a valid argument -- maybe especially if you don't consider the world of horror movies, where shit like this happens, to be your world, so it's utter fantasy rather than just another story about the world. But it just doesn't work for me, and I think that's the movie's shortcoming, not mine.
*(I've also been known to posit that Hellboy may be my perfect man: tough, cocky, loyal, loves cats and junk food, brings beer to a date and has a prehensile tail.)
Again, Barbara Crampton kills in From Beyond, and it's in large part because she's not paired off: her character stands on her own, and as such there's little they can do to render her helpless (for all that Stuart Gordon tries, bless his pointed little head).
I have this personal connection to Stuart Gordon. I was active in a theater in Madison, Wisconsin that he actually started back in the 60s. Every time our managing director gave the first-rehearsal speech about the theater's origins, he'd point out that Stuart Gordon was the writer of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and inevitably forget the title of Re-Animator. I think he did it just to bug me. So I can't hold too much against Stuart, because he's like my theatrical great-godfather or something.
That said: wow. Yeah. The "head giving head" scene. It's a joke, and a truly, desperately unpleasant one. I know it's the movie's most famous moment, and like the tree rape in Evil Dead, it's famous because no one can believe they went there. And in the end, I'm pretty staunchly of the opinion that they probably shouldn't have. If it were a moment of horror, like the tree rape, it would at least earn some marginal respect for making violence against women unpleasant, but: it's a joke. When I re-watch the movie -- and I do, a lot -- I always get queasy there, because unlike the rest of the movie, it's not gross in a fun way. It's gross in a Reservoir Dogs ear-cutting scene way, and I think we can agree that that's actually not funny at all. You could certainly argue that the circumstances are so bizarre and ridiculous and improbable that it's too removed from reality to take personally, and I think that's a valid argument -- maybe especially if you don't consider the world of horror movies, where shit like this happens, to be your world, so it's utter fantasy rather than just another story about the world. But it just doesn't work for me, and I think that's the movie's shortcoming, not mine.
*(I've also been known to posit that Hellboy may be my perfect man: tough, cocky, loyal, loves cats and junk food, brings beer to a date and has a prehensile tail.)
