That theatrical bravado, somehow transplanted onto the screen, means that as Re-Animator rockets to a bloody climax, it becomes “not just a gore film which delivers splattery mayhem [but] also a wildly effective dark comedy”, says Duffy.
According to Combs, however, Gordon genuinely believed he was making a serious film, and the decision to play for laughs was largely down to the individual actors. “Our instincts told us we have to find release points for the audience,” he says. “I didn’t really talk to Stuart about it – neither did Bruce [Abbott] – but it’s something we decided to do. Otherwise, it’s just going to be a bombardment of gross stuff.”
Whoever the impetus came from, it’s a comedic-dramatic tonal balance that Re-Animator manages admirably, with the humour helping blunt the excess that, in a less self-aware film, might have come across as sadistic. “It’s not nasty or mean-spirited,” says Lindsay Hallam, course leader of film and screen studies at University of the Arts London. “Nor does it delight in torturing female victims.”
Indeed, one element of what makes Re-Animator a success is its central female character, Crampton’s Megan Halsey. Atypically for the time, she’s a complex horror heroine who, rather than blithely waltzing into trouble, is both wise to the dangers of re-animating, and savvy about the world in a way her boyfriend is not. Crampton leads with a charismatic deadpan: “She really understands how to play the material, to keep it grounded, while, like the other leads, embracing Re-Animator’s silliness,” Hallam says. “She sells the believability and danger, while avoiding falling into the cliché of being a victim or the ‘dumb blonde’.” Even as she becomes an object of lasciviousness for the re-animated villain, “she transcends being just a sex symbol that caters to men,” Hallam adds.
