Rish Outfield's reviews
I first saw this as a kid, and only remembered you-know-which part. Still, I grew up to like this enough to buy the DVD, and I place it in the annals of great horror films--especially in the Watch It With A Big Group Horror Films.
I really like this movie. It was Stuart Gordon's first film, and he has a really nice style and unwitting sense of humour. It had a clever script, a fascinating idea, and a lot of talent. This is the film that made Jeffrey Combs a 'star,' and he is great, both mad and cooly logical, both villianous and leading-man charismatic. Everybody in the cast is good here, though, particularly Combs and Barbara Crampton (who is look-again-just-to-be-sure beautiful)(I had originally chosen the word 'hottie,' but changed it). The makeup effects are top-notch (especially when you consider the budget they had to work on), repugnant as they may be. The scenes with naked reanimated corpses and disembodied heads are so over-the-top gory that, like the "Evil Dead" films, it all becomes cartoon-like fun. And that's the thing I like most about Re-animator, it is a fun movie. It won't win awards, but I don't think it aspires to.
Best Scare: Usually something re-animated jumping out.
Note: the R-rated version has less gore, but extra scenes.

The tyranist's thoughts
The first from one of my favourite (and the only decent) Lovecraftian film crew. This one is based on "Herbert West: Re-Animator" by Lovecraft (of course). The film is remarkably faithful to the story, but by the same stretch manages to compress a tale that spans decades into an hour and a half presentation containing the same themes and even a lot of the same instances. The biggest difference between the two is Barbara Crampton and the ending. Usually I loathe anyone who attempts to adapt something and then violently changes the ending. In this case it works out very well. Filming "Herbert West: Re-Animator" as it was would have been largely problematic (and somewhat dull even though the story is fascinating). I will say that the key rending scene is in both ends.
Jeffrey Combs is great in this as Herbert West. I think only Lance Henriksen has appeared in more modern horror films than Jeffrey, but I like Jeffrey a lot more. He fits the mad scientist image in this perfectly.
Rish and I managed to get the unrated version of the film for our review, but it is still short of the laserdisc version. Perhaps we will see a widescreen transfer that has the laserdisc version on DVD in the future. I for one would lay down good money for it.