How much needs to be said about Re-Animator that isn’t revealed in its tagline, “Herbert West has a good head on his shoulders … and another one on his desk”? You already have a sense of not only what the movie is about but also of its unabashed humor, so it should come as no surprise that the film (based on a H.P. Lovecraft tale) is a deeply deranged sci-fi/horror picture, as clever as it is demented. It might catch some viewers off-guard that the film’s director, Stuart Gordon, and his star, Jeffery Combs, handle this melding of the comedic and the gruesomely visceral with such seriousness, but that’s all part of the film’s peculiar charm. Re-Animator is at its most commendable when it is being gravely serious about being wickedly garish.

We first meet the overly confident Herbert West (Combs) in Switzerland, where he has managed to reanimate the dead body of his mentor, albeit for only a few moments until the newly invigorated corpse’s eyes bulge out of their sockets and explode. West, whose experiment is seen as a colossal failure, relocates to the United States to further his research at Miskatonic University. He rents a room from Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), a student and local morgue worker, to conduct his experiments, and he eventually enlists Cain as his pseudo-assistant. One of West’s first experiments involves reanimating the dead cat of Megan (Barbara Crampton), Cain’s secret beau and daughter of the dean. Although the experiment ultimately proves to be a failure, the valiant West decides to sneak into the morgue to test his serum on human corpses. Opposing West is Dr. Hill (David Gale), a professor at the University, who attempts to discover the secret of the reanimation serum and steal it for himself.

Gordon’s wisest choice as a director is to focus a majority of his film on Combs’ performance as West because it is so inescapably engaging. Combs is essentially performing as a mad scientist, a role normally characterized by fleeting outbursts of madness and cackling laughter (preferably with lightning crashes on the soundtrack). He reduces the caricature of the role to a few facial cues, the most prominent of which is a wide-eyed stare. See the scene where West details what his serum does while attempting to recruit Cain’s assistance, and watch as Combs’ eyes, filling with excitement and madness, expand beyond the boundaries of his horn-rimmed glasses. However, during that same scene Combs speaks with a calming contention that is frightening; when he uses the phrase, “we can defeat death,” he does so not as someone who thinks he can but as someone who knows he can. Combs provides West with a daring and confident personality through his speech; his eyes, however, offer a true window to his soul, one that must be filled with cackling laughter and lightning crashes.

Other performances are much less noteworthy, the fault of which is shared between the actors and the screenwriter, Dennis Paoli. There is a noticeable lack of motivation in the characters of Dan Cain and Megan Halsey (played, respectively, by Bruce Abbott and Barbara Crampton) as the film’s intended heroes, but Paoli likewise gives the two actors little to be motivated about. Abbott expresses little vigor and is inordinately dull, but the character has nothing interesting to say and is essentially there as a means for West to get into the morgue to set up a later scene there. How else could one explain the motivation behind Cain agreeing to be West’s assistant since there is never one implied? As for Crampton, her role is to wait around to either be frightened or captured, so her acting consists primarily of shrieks, screams, and worried looks. Beyond that, her dialogue, much like Abbott’s, is incredibly inconsequential, and her character exists so that someone in the movie can scream at all the horrors that are taking place (since none of the other characters seem too bothered). But if the character was really as terrified as she is written to be, why wouldn’t she attempt to leave town, distance herself from Cain, and call the police? It’s obvious from Paoli’s script that Re-Animator was intended to be West’s show.

Further shortcomings are present, but some are cleverly integrated, like the film’s special effects limitations. Gordon clearly has no qualms about the fact that, in the scene where West battles a recently re-animated cat, the animal in question is under no circumstances a real feline. He knows that strapping a stuffed cat to the back of one of his actors will not fool the audience, so he has Combs overact the attack to the point of absurdity, knocking over and destroying lab equipment and hitting an overhead lamp so hard it sways back and forth like a pendulum. As the scene’s primary light source, the swaying lamp works two-fold: It casts the dank basement setting in a jarring light, creating a mild fright for the audience while also effectively amplifying the scene’s intended humor. Gordon takes what could have been an unintentionally funny scene and makes it intentionally so, thus managing to uphold his film’s naturally creepy allure.

But much of the humor in Re-Animator is not derived from the slapstick approach; rather, the humor takes a much darker, more macabre form. Often unnerving situations provide the film with its most splendid sequences, like the conversation that takes place following the aforementioned cat attack scene. Post-fight, the cat is mangled and bloodied and lying stiff as a board on a table before West and Cain, and an argument arises between the two men over whether or not the cat is still alive. West, as calmly and assertively as he can, asks Cain, “Do you agree that he’s dead now?” while picking up the cat and dropping it onto the table with an audible thump. Afterward, to further prove the result of his serum, he decides to bring the cat back to life and tells Cain, “Don’t expect it to tango, it has a broken back.” There is no hint of humor in these two lines, but the solemn tone with which they are delivered makes the audience laugh, even if it is an uncomfortable, half-hearted laugh.

There is a similar scene (in terms of humor -- there’s no further cat mutilation) late in the movie after West has just reanimated a human head (which West has caused to be disembodied) and asks it how it feels. “You…” the head whispers, and West joyfully begins to write down what the head is saying to him, totally oblivious to the fact that the body previously belonging to the head is approaching him from behind with its hands outstretched. As an audience we are again unnerved throughout the scene (considering that West has killed someone for the sake of his experiment), but at the same time we cannot help but laugh at the visual gag, much like we did for the clearly dead cat. Yet Re-Animator never openly searches for humor in its scenes; it merely happens upon humor. The audience is so perplexed at the grotesqueries of West’s actions and the seriousness with which he regards them that laughter seems to be the only possible response. We suspect that Gordon knows just how insane his film is and that sequences involving dead cats and headless corpses are meant to be humorous, but perhaps the grim tone that the film takes is also its biggest punch line.

Those who find Re-Animator to be too much will cite its humor as unnerving and the performance of Combs to be wacky and psychopathic. Others will love it, citing these exact reasons and will also find that the film’s somber tone is precisely the reason that its dark humor is so successful. Thankfully there is never a moment in Re-Animator where Gordon tapers his film’s delirious principles for the sake of his audience. He keeps the tone grim, the scenarios outlandish and visceral, and his main character unwavering and assertive. As a result, the film works in all its aspects: as science fiction, as horror, as comedy, and as totally and unequivocally insane.