Day 17: Re-Animator

Day 17 of Calloween Movie Month

Content warnings: lots of over the top 80s movie blood and gore, medical malpractice, animal death, sexual assault, homophobia (in my interpretation)

Recommended?: Yes

Spoilers and discussion of many of the mentioned topics below. You have been warned.

What, so no head?



Re-Animator follows Daniel Cain, a med student, as he's dragged into unethical scientific experiments by Herbert West, a man who claims he can reanimate the dead.

Re-Animator is 80s horror-comedy camp at it's peak. Between the actors all fighting for who can chew the most scenery in it's sub-80 minute runtime, it's hamburger meat guts and ketchup colored blood, the glow-stick syringes, and the excellent score that oozes with drama and intrigue, it's an intensely fun and watchable time. (Aside from a pretty unneeded sexual assault scene, but that's easily skipped without missing much of anything important.)

There's something else to it, though. Something you may have picked up on yourself if you've seen it or noticed other people picking up on if you've seen the modern quiet resurgence for this film. This movie? Gay as hell.

And I'm not saying that just because there's 2 hot guys on screen the whole time. I was tricked into thinking Lost Boys would be gay as hell because of this line of thought from others. No, it's about subtext, baby.

Not only are they very touchy and generally interested in each other and willing to back the other up to kind of ridiculous degrees considering they haven't known each other for the entirety of a month, but the plot upholds this reading rather well.

Herbert and Dan are two men against the world. They have something in their hands which could revolutionize the world, but are shunned for it. The thing they have together is seen as an affront to god, something that could only ever be used for evil.

Despite this, the only one who ever uses it for intentionally malicious purposes is Carl Hill. Who wants to blackmail Herbert into staying quiet about it so he can take credit for and make money off of it, and then after being injected with it uses it to sexually assault a young woman who trusted and supported him.

Hebert is not the most morally upstanding person, but he has good intentions mostly. In the right hands and with the right tweaks, his serum could change the world for the better. It could all but eliminate death. In the end, at risk to his own life, he even makes sure his research about it is in safe hands.

Herbert and Dan are wrongfully defamed as mentally unstable sinners for what they choose to do together. even by the people who are actively predatory monsters. And me, as a gay man, really connected with both of them because of it.

Maybe I don't know what it's like to participate in unethical experiments or kill vicious zombies, but I do know what it's like to be wrongfully judged and trying to push past bigotry and negative expectations to keep doing what I love and what I need.

Re-Animator is gooey, gory, gay and glorious. And I wouldn't have it any other way.