Director: Stuart Gordon
Year: 1985
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Zombie; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Working at Miskatonic University, a praised student finds that his new assistant is a brash, outspoken new recruit who angers everyone else around him, and when he reveals that he has a serum that can revive the dead they’re forced to deal with the various reanimated corpses running around the campus.
Review:
This here is one of the best films in the genre. The thing that this one does so well that very few others get so well is the mixing of the gross-out gore with the funny and humorous moments. The gore in here is about as good as possible for the time, and it gets really messy at points as there’s a shovel used to sever the head from the neck, fingers being bitten off, a multitude of limbs taken off with just about everything possible, including axes, bare hands, knives, and much more, as well seeing a victim strangled with a strand of ambulatory intestines. The kills here mainly focus on bloodsplatter with it flying onto walls, other people standing innocently, and any nearby furniture, leaving a mess just about everywhere. The film also manages to incorporate humor into it with relative ease, making this one a real joy to sit through. From the snappy come-back lines to the insults to the one-liners thrown about with reckless abandon, this one manages to have a pretty funny feel to it that will include a couple of lines here and there for some to find funny. There are also many physical gags that are included to get some sort of laugh out of them. The sight of the headless zombie using a diagram's head to wander around unsuspected, the flying head gags, and the multitude of body-parts gags here get a chuckle, which is what was aimed at.
There’s also a lot to like here with the action as the gradual reveal of the experiments and how they play a factor in the story continuing. The idea of the serum holding off natural reactions is ingenious, and the after-effects that come from them are solid gold with their initial experiments on the revived cat chasing them around the basement or the encounter in the hospital morgue. This creates a lot of fun brawling with the rampaging corpse battling them as well as the intruder that stumbles upon it and gets involved which gives this one a fantastic baseline sequence to get this one rolling along. The finale, though, is its most fun segment, which is where the majority of the gore comes from, the action is wall-to-wall, it's creepy, and has plenty to endear itself to others with all that makeup work on the corpses. The bloodstains on the skin, mangled features, and postmortem scars on just about everything allow them to look somewhat original and have some sense of menace to them. As usual, they’re a threat due to the large numbers of them that attack, since they can be fought off reasonably well if only an individual or two but the victims succumb when swarmed by several, exactly the kind of threat they should pose, as they were dead for a while after all. The film gets a little sleazy with the infamous scene where a completely nude woman is forced to engage in oral sex with the severed head, being held by the reanimated body, which itself provides numerous punch-lines and comes off as the single most inventive scene in a film filled with it. These here make it rather fun and enjoyable.
There isn't a whole lot wrong here, and those aren't that big either. The main issue here is the confusing nature of the effects caused by the serum. It’s never told how it works, what happened that caused its creation, or anything about how it works in reanimating the intricacies in the brain, or even how the ability to control subjects is given based on what’s on-screen here. The only time anything close to it is the fact that it’s said to reanimate the dead brain cells causing the dead to live again, but how and why it works is an utter blank, and for something as important to the film as that, a little more about it would’ve been nice since it’s all kept to a mysterious series of questions. The film’s only other problem here is the curious and rather unexplained method of capturing the daughter and bringing her back for sexual favors, making for a confusing narrative that features multiple scenes of them standing around not sure of how to react since they’re under the impression of taking the formula for his gain. Otherwise, this here is just fine.
Overview: *****/5
With a lot to like about it and only a few minor flaws, this one is a really entertaining and enjoyable feature that ranks as one of the all-time greatest in the genre for good reason. This is really recommended to the gorehounds or fans of the cheesy 80s classics, while just about most horror fanatics should take a look as there isn't a whole lot who won't like this.
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