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1985 film by Stuart Gordon

Originally devised by Gordon as a theatrical stage production and later a half hour television pilot, the television script was revised to become a feature film. Filmed in Hollywood, the film originally was released without a rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, and was later edited to obtain an R rating. It garnered its largest audience through the unrated cut's release on home video. Re Animator is the first film collaboration between Gordon and Combs, the second being From Beyond, released in 1986. It is the first film in the Re Animator film series, followed by Bride of Re Animator in 1990 and Beyond Re Animator in 2003. Released to mostly positive reviews, Re Animator has since been considered a cult film.

At the University of Zurich Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, Herbert West brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber, back to life. There are horrific side effects, however; as West explains, the dosage was too large. When accused of killing Gruber, West counters: "I gave him life!" West arrives at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts in order to further his studies as a medical student. He rents a room from fellow medical student Dan Cain and converts the house's basement into his own personal laboratory. West demonstrates his reanimating reagent to Dan by reanimating Dan's dead cat Rufus. The cat behaves viciously that night forcing Dan to kill it again before West reanimates what is left of it, convincing Dan that West's reagent works. Dan's fiancée Megan Halsey, daughter of the medical school's dean, walks in on this experiment and is horrified. Dan tries to tell the dean about West's success in reanimating the dead cat, but the dean does not believe him. When Dan insists, the dean implies that Dan and West have gone mad. Barred from the school, West and Dan sneak into the morgue to test the reagent on a human subject in an attempt to prove that the reagent works, and thereby salvage their medical careers. The corpse they inject comes back to life, but in a frenetic and violent zombie like state. Dr. Halsey stumbles upon the scene and is killed by the reanimated corpse, which West then kills with a bone saw. Excited at the prospect of working with a freshly dead specimen, West injects Dr. Halsey's body with his reanimating reagent. Dr. Halsey returns to life, also in a zombie like state. Megan chances upon the scene, and is hysterical. Dan collapses in shock. Dr. Halsey's colleague Dr. Carl Hill, a professor and researcher at the hospital, takes charge of Dr. Halsey, whom he puts in a padded observation cell adjacent to his office. He carries out a surgical operation on him, lobotomizing him. During the course of this operation, he discovers that Dr. Halsey is not sick, but dead and reanimated. Dr. Hill goes to West's basement lab and attempts to blackmail him into surrendering his reagent and notes, hoping to take credit for West's discovery. West offers to demonstrate the reagent and puts a few drops of it onto a microscope slide with dead cat tissue. As Dr. Hill peers through the microscope at this slide, West clobbers him from behind with a shovel, and then decapitates him with it. West then reanimates Dr. Hill's head and body separately. While West is questioning Dr. Hill's head and taking notes, Dr. Hill's body sneaks up behind him and knocks him unconscious. The body carries the head back to Dr. Hill's office, with West's reagent and notes. In his re animated state, Dr. Hill acquires the ability to control other re animated corpses telepathically, after conducting brain surgery on them. He then directs Dr. Halsey to snatch Megan away from Dan. While being carried to the morgue by her reanimated father, Megan faints. When she arrives, Dr. Hill strips her naked and straps her unconscious body to a table. She regains consciousness as Hill's body and bloody, severed head begin to sexually assault her. Hill's body starts to place his head between Megan's legs, but is interrupted by the arrival of West and Dan. West distracts Dr. Hill while Dan frees Megan. Dr. Hill reveals that he has reanimated and lobotomized several corpses from the morgue, rendering them susceptible to mind control as Halsey is. However, Megan's voice reawakens a protectiveness in her father, who fights off the other corpses as Dan and Megan escape. In the ensuing chaos, West injects Dr. Hill's body with a lethal overdose of the reagent. Dr. Hill's body mutates rapidly and attacks West, who screams out to Dan to save his work before being pulled away by Dr. Hill's monstrous entrails. Dan retrieves the satchel containing West's reagent and notes. As Dan and Megan flee the morgue, one of the reanimated corpses attacks and strangles Megan. Dan takes her to the hospital emergency room and tries to revive her, but she is dead. In despair, he injects her with West's reagent. After the scene fades to black, Megan, apparently revived, can be heard screaming.

The idea to make Re Animator came from a discussion Stuart Gordon had with friends one night about vampire films. He felt that there were too many Dracula films and expressed a desire to see a Frankenstein film. Someone asked if he had read "Herbert West–Reanimator" by H. P. Lovecraft. Gordon had read most of the author's works, but not that story, which was long out of print. He went to the Chicago Public Library and read their copy. Originally, Gordon was going to adapt Lovecraft's story for the stage, but eventually decided along with writers Dennis Paoli and William Norris to make it as a half hour television pilot. However, after viewing the initial dailies Empire became involved in the actual production, making a number of suggestions, including the recruitment of Mac Ahlberg as cinematographer. Gordon cited The Revenge of Frankenstein as a major inspiration for the film. The morgue set was based on the aforementioned Cook County morgue, which was newly built and featured cutting edge technology; Gordon opted for this look since he felt old morgues had been overdone in horror films. The score took about three and a half weeks to complete, and was recorded in Italy with the Rome Philharmonic. In regards to the influence of Herrmann's Psycho score, Band has noted that the similarities were intentional, and that he "used that as a base and modified the theme but kept that Herrmannesque feeling."

Re Animator was released on October 18, 1985, in 129 theaters, and grossed $543,728 during its opening weekend. It went on to make $2,023,414 in North America, above its estimated $900,000 budget. However, it experienced its greatest commercial success when released on home video.

The film was originally released on VHS, LaserDisc and Betamax by Vestron Video, and was later released on DVD by Elite Entertainment on April 30, 2002 in two versions: a standard DVD edition, and a "Millennium Edition" featuring a remastered picture and two commentary tracks, one by writer/director Stuart Gordon and the other by the entire main cast except for David Gale, who died in 1991.

When Re Animator was originally released in theaters, the filmmakers did not submit it for rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), for fear that it would receive an X rating. However, this presented advertising restrictions, since many media outlets had policies against promoting unrated films. The unrated version is often labeled as a "director's cut", which strictly speaking is false; director Stuart Gordon was not allowed to determine the final cut on any version of the film. However, Gordon has expressed his preference for the unrated version over the R rated version.

A 2013 German Blu ray release of Re Animator also included a new "Integral cut," wherein the extra material from the R rated version was incorporated into the unrated version, expanding the film from 86 minutes to just under 105 minutes. This extended cut has also been included with other non US releases.

The film was well received by critics, earning mostly positive reviews. Pauline Kael enjoyed the film's "indigenous American junkiness" and called it "pop Buñuel; the jokes hit you in a subterranean comic zone that the surrealists' pranks sometimes reached, but without the surrealists' self consciousness (and art consciousness)." Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "I walked out somewhat surprised and reinvigorated (if not re animated) by a movie that had the audience emitting taxi whistles and wild goat cries." In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Re Animator has a fast pace and a good deal of grisly vitality. It even has a sense of humor, albeit one that would be lost on 99.9 percent of any ordinary moviegoing crowd". Paul Attanasio, in his review for The Washington Post, praised Jeffrey Combs' performance: "Beady eyed, his face hard, almost lacquered, Combs makes West into a brittle, slightly fey psychotic in the Anthony Perkins mold. West is a figure of fun, but Combs doesn't spoof him." In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, "The big noise is Combs, a small, compact man of terrific intensity and concentration." David Edelstein, writing for Village Voice, placed the film in his year end Top Ten Movies list. In their book Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft, Andrew Migliore and John Strysik write: "Re Animator took First Prize at the Paris Festival of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, a Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and even spawned a short lived series of comic books. Even though it was a hit with audiences, the film generated a huge amount of controversy among Lovecraft readers. Fans thought the film a desecration of Lovecraft; their literary hero would never write such obvious exploitation! But the final criticism of the film might have been a bit more muted if these fans had actually read the 'West' stories, which are pure exploitation. Lovecraft himself acknowledged as much, and female love interest and black sex humor aside, Re Animator really is one of the more faithful and effective adaptations." Bruce C. Hallenbeck, in his book Comedy Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914 2008, said the film was one of the few to successfully combine genuine scares with genuine laughs, and praised Combs's performance as retaining the theatricality of classic horror stars. He remarked that "Re Animator broke down the barriers between 'splatter movies' and comedy horror films. Its buckets of gore mixed with barrels of laughs, and it opened up a whole new realm where nothing was sacred and nothing was taboo." Metacritic gave the film a rating of 73 out of 100 based on reviews from 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Entertainment Weekly ranked the film number 32 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films," and number 14 on their "The Cult 25: The Essential Left Field Movie Hits Since '83" list.

Re Animator was followed by two sequels: Bride of Re Animator in 1990 and Beyond Re Animator in 2003. Re Animator director Stuart Gordon directed another film based on an H. P. Lovecraft story, From Beyond (1986); though it featured a story unrelated to Re Animator, it also starred both Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. In the book Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft, producer director Brian Yuzna mentions an idea that he had for a fourth Re Animator. This version would have been titled Island of Re Animator, and would have been strongly influenced by the H. G. Wells novel The Island of Doctor Moreau. In the 1999 film American Beauty, Kevin Spacey and Wes Bentley's characters Lester Burnham and Ricky Fitts make mention of the film: while both are high on marijuana, Lester asks Ricky, "Did you ever see that movie where the body is walking around carrying its own head and then the head goes down on that babe?" They both laugh and Ricky replies, "Re Animator." In 2011, a musical adaptation opened in New York, which director Gordon participated in. The character of Herbert West starred in a number of comic book adaptations by different companies, such as Adventure Comics (Re Animator in Full Color and Re Animator: Dawn of the Re Animator), Zenescope Entertainment (The Chronicles of Dr. Herbert West), and Dynamite Entertainment (Re Animator). West also appeared in Devil's Due Publishing's Hack/Slash series as a side character, and in three crossover comics by Dynamite Entertainment: Army of Darkness vs. Re Animator, Army of Darkness/Re Animator, in which Ash Williams of the Evil Dead series confronts West of the Re Animator series. and Vampirella vs. Re Animator.