Re-animator

Label: Anchor Bay UK
Release date: 23 April 2007
Certificate: 18
Running time:
Price: £16.99
Director: Stuart Gordon
Stars: Bruce Abbott, Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, David Gale and Robert Sampson

An unrivalled cult classic of 1980s horror cinema, director Stuart Gordon's outstanding debut feature Re-Animator comes to DVD in all its bloody uncut glory as a special double disc collectors' edition packed with extra features, including two audio commentaries and a brand new retrospective featurette on the making of the movie. Now fully restored with scenes previously cut by the BBFC (including the notorious "sexual assault with a severed head" sequence) this release represents the definitive version of Re-Animator.

Adapted from a series of short stories by H.P. Lovecraft, the plot revolves around Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), a gifted medical student recently returned from Zurich and now enrolled at the Miskatonic Medical School in Arkham, Massachusetts, where he intends to further pursue his former mentor's groundbreaking research into the regeneration of dead tissue. When West's extracurricular and morally dubious experiments extend to the "rebirth" of a dead cat, the unfortunate feline's owners - West's roommate and fellow student, Dan Cain (Bruce Abbot), and his fiancée Megan Halsey (scream queen Barbara Crampton) - become fatefully involved in what follows. Spurred on by his apparent success, West decides to move up a league and takes his re-animating serum to the hospital's morgue to try it out on human subjects. Meanwhile, the college's scheming star professor (David Gale) has gotten wind of West's work and intends to sabotage his student's research before claiming it as his own. But it's not long before the protagonists realise that dabbling in the recreation of life can result in some very messy consequences.

One of the most inspired and inventive horror-comedies of all time and fondly remembered by many as the best splatter movie of the 1980s, Re-Animator is a hilariously over-the-top gorefest that remains as funny and shocking today as it was when it was first spawned. The Re-Animator Double Disc Collectors' Edition (cert. 18) will be released on DVD (£16.99) by Anchor Bay UK on 23rd April 2007.

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