“Who’s going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow.” — Herbert West

When discussing horror films of the 1980s, the conversation almost always turns to whether one has seen a particular cult classic. One such film is Re-Animator, Stuart Gordon’s 1985 adaptation of a little-known H.P. Lovecraft short story originally serialized from 1921 to 1922. While the story itself isn’t considered one of Lovecraft’s best, it inspired Gordon to create his own grisly take on the classic “Frankenstein monster” tale—with a unique blend of horror, humor, and gore.

The film follows Herbert West, a young, promising medical student obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. After being expelled from a Swiss university for his unorthodox experiments, West relocates to Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, to continue his research in secret. He soon gains an unlikely partner in Dan Cain, a fellow medical student and landlord, who discovers West’s glowing green reagent and the terrifying results it produces.

Re-Animator plays out much like an over-the-top EC comic from the 1950s and early ’60s, full of lurid visuals and melodramatic dialogue. It’s a pulp horror film with a sci-fi twist, reveling in slapstick gore as the zombie-like corpses injected with West’s reagent come violently back to life. Unlike the flesh-eating zombies popularized by George A. Romero, these reanimated corpses are unique in their behavior, making the film stand out from typical zombie fare.

If the blood and gore weren’t enough, Re-Animator etched its place in exploitation horror history with one of the most infamous scenes ever: Megan (played by Barbara Crampton) and the severed reanimated head of West’s nemesis (played by David Gale) in a tense and chaotic encounter. This scene remains one of the most widely discussed moments in horror film history.

Gordon’s attempt to create his own “Frankenstein movie” was a huge success within the horror community, leading to two sequels. Jeffrey Combs continued to portray Herbert West in the follow-ups, though they never quite reached the original’s cult status. Still, Re-Animator firmly put both Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs on the horror map—and horror fans everywhere are thankful they did.