“Re-Animator” is one of the goriest horror movies you’ll ever see full of lots of gruesome acts of violence and a lot of nudity but the movie manages to justify all of this with a very smart script and some excellent humour. “Re-Animator” is a really great horror comedy up there with “Gremlins”.

In “Re-Animator”, Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott “Bad Dreams”) is a dedicated medical student and he’s in love with the dean’s daughter (Barbara Crampton “Fraternity Vacation”). Things starting getting weird for Cain when the arrogant and unpleasant Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs “The Frighteners”) joins his school and moves into his apartment as West has developed a formula for re-animating the dead.

Herbert West is a great film character done in the style of Doctor Frankenstein; they’re both obsessed with their work and somewhat blind to horrifying nature of the creatures they create. Jeffrey Combs does a remarkable job as West. I think the character of Dan is a lot less interesting than West but he still works fine and Bruce Abbott’s performance is okay. Barbara Crampton is good as Megan. The real villain of the movie is not West but rather Doctor Hill (David Gale), who intends to use West’s serum for his own evil purposes. The special effects in the movie are terrific as we see lots of weird looking re-animated people and there’s evil a re-animated cat thrown in there.

Do not confuse “Re-Animator” with mindlessly violent rubbish such as “Friday The 13th” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” because although they feature the same levels of gore as this movie, they don’t have the intelligence and the sense of humour. I would instead compare this film to other horror comedies such as “Army Of Darkness” and “Gremlins”. “Re-Animator” contains many truly crazy sequences such as one in which a man’s decapitated head is placed in a bag so that his body, which has a dummy’s head resting on its shoulders, can carry it. If you want an insane but smart movie, this is certainly worth checking out.