Insert pun about severed heads or the phrase "Over my dead body"
So I just watched Re-Animator with Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West. Funny, how a film can inspire reactions that you wouldn't have predicted. This is the cult movie based on the H.P. Lovecraft story about the medical student who can bring people back to what he insists is life. It's actually a gross kind of rage-based zombiism. So far, so like the story. I was aware it diverged a lot, and really I was surprised how faithful it was to the spirit of the original story, which was a cheerfully sick romp. Kinda sub-Frankenstein comedy. Also Jeffrey Combs has a mighty reputation in genre circles, and I can see why. His performance fully lived up to all the praise I've read. Herbert West is small and neat, yet disturbing, and capable of impaling a monster with a bone saw without changing his facial expression. Combs was just plain fun to watch. The scene where West is attacked by a (very fake) zombie cat was cute.
This film also has an infamous scene where a screaming blonde woman is strapped to a gurney and molested by a reanimated guy who's carrying his own severed head. How unlike the home life of our own dear Lovecraft.
The woman is named Meg; she's the daughter of one eminent doctor and crush object of another medical researcher, and girlfriend of the presumed hero, who, with Herbert West, is the direct cause of almost everything horrible that happens to her. There's a lot of it. Meg doesn't get to have much personality beyond being the sole nice person and moral compass of the movie, but you can't help but feel for her. First she finds the body of her boyfriend's cat. Then she watches the cat corpse be reanimated. Then she realizes that she's pretty much lost her boyfriend to Herbert West's sociopathic charm, and that the two of them are experimenting on corpses in the morgue. Then she walks in on her boyfriend and West reanimating her father's recently-killed body, which drools blood and throttles people and later lurches round a padded cell in a straitjacket. After that she realizes that her father's creepy co-worker wants to get into her pants and has lobotomized her monster-father. Then her de-brained undead father kidnaps her at the behest of the creep, who by this time is undead and carrying his own head. After that, being stripped naked, strapped down and licked by a severed head is just the icing on the cake of sucky existence.
By that time, I saw her as the heroine, and I started wanting her to win. Yes, I know that wasn't what she was in the movie for. I know we live in a misogynist world where women are in horror films like Re-Animator to be plot points, violated or shoved in the fridge or otherwise harmed in order to thrill the audience and motivate the male characters. I didn't care. I wanted there to come a time when Meg gritted her teeth and decided she had had enough of this bullshit. Then I wanted to see her wreak bloody vengeance on most of the other characters: the creepy rapist, of course, but also her boyfriend and West. And then put her poor old zombified father out of his pain. And then march off to the nearest microscope, analyze the magic reanimation serum, and make her fortune doing what all the male characters wanted to do and revolutionizing the world of medicine. I can dream, can't I? (Correct answer: yes. Yes I can.)
This film also has an infamous scene where a screaming blonde woman is strapped to a gurney and molested by a reanimated guy who's carrying his own severed head. How unlike the home life of our own dear Lovecraft.
The woman is named Meg; she's the daughter of one eminent doctor and crush object of another medical researcher, and girlfriend of the presumed hero, who, with Herbert West, is the direct cause of almost everything horrible that happens to her. There's a lot of it. Meg doesn't get to have much personality beyond being the sole nice person and moral compass of the movie, but you can't help but feel for her. First she finds the body of her boyfriend's cat. Then she watches the cat corpse be reanimated. Then she realizes that she's pretty much lost her boyfriend to Herbert West's sociopathic charm, and that the two of them are experimenting on corpses in the morgue. Then she walks in on her boyfriend and West reanimating her father's recently-killed body, which drools blood and throttles people and later lurches round a padded cell in a straitjacket. After that she realizes that her father's creepy co-worker wants to get into her pants and has lobotomized her monster-father. Then her de-brained undead father kidnaps her at the behest of the creep, who by this time is undead and carrying his own head. After that, being stripped naked, strapped down and licked by a severed head is just the icing on the cake of sucky existence.
By that time, I saw her as the heroine, and I started wanting her to win. Yes, I know that wasn't what she was in the movie for. I know we live in a misogynist world where women are in horror films like Re-Animator to be plot points, violated or shoved in the fridge or otherwise harmed in order to thrill the audience and motivate the male characters. I didn't care. I wanted there to come a time when Meg gritted her teeth and decided she had had enough of this bullshit. Then I wanted to see her wreak bloody vengeance on most of the other characters: the creepy rapist, of course, but also her boyfriend and West. And then put her poor old zombified father out of his pain. And then march off to the nearest microscope, analyze the magic reanimation serum, and make her fortune doing what all the male characters wanted to do and revolutionizing the world of medicine. I can dream, can't I? (Correct answer: yes. Yes I can.)