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Sep 20, 2017 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

Old-timers in the horror fan community will remember this situation clearly – here’s looking at you, VHS collectors – but for many years it was absolutely necessary to keep hold of two different videocassette copies of Stuart Gordon’s splatter classic, Re-Animator. For the longest time my collection had twin Vestron tapes, one in a blue slipcase, the other black, containing the unrated and R-rated cuts of the movie.

Nine times out of ten, the unrated version of a horror movie is the clear-cut preferred one. Typically they restore some trimmed gore, nudity, or similar naughty bits, but Re-Animator is an unusual case. The unrated cut is indeed the one that director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna approved, and does feature significantly more blood and bare bodies, but also the shortest runtime. An R-rated version was also prepared which hacked out much of the movie’s glorious gruesomeness, but padded out the film’s runtime with extended sequences and additional dialogue – adding almost ten minutes to the movie. Although fewer guts were being spilled, many – this critic included – felt those scenes fleshed out the story and better-rounded out several characters and relationships. (There are other, differing still international and TV cuts of the movie, but that’s another story.)

Still with me? This is where we get to the “Integral Version” of Re-Animator. This cut – only officially released in Germany, until now – splices the extended sequences from the 95-minute, R-rated version into the gorier, unrated 86-minute version, creating an all-inclusive 105-minute cut. The Integral Version offers the best of both worlds, story-wise and splatter-wise, and given that Arrows’ super-deluxe-ified limited edition presents it for the first time in fully-restored high definition, that’s reason enough for fans of the movie to seek this one out. (The original, unrated cut is also included here, for fans who might want to stick with the speedier version.)

We won’t waste a lot of time re-hashing the movie’s greatness – it’s a bona fide classic of ‘80s horror, and one of the funniest splatter-comedies of all time. (Seriously: there’s Evil Dead 2, Re-Animator, and Dead Alive in one tier all their own, and then pretty much everything else.) Loosely inspired by an H.P. Lovecraft story, Jeffrey Combs stars as Herbert West, a Miskatonic University medical student single-mindedly obsessed with one goal: bringing the dead back to life. Proving that his serum works – to the degree that it revives cadavers as mindless, murderous zombies – West loops in his level-headed roommate, Dan (Bruce Abbott), to helping him with his experiments. West’s controversial theories lead to a conflict with the school’s dean, who inconveniently happens to be the father of Dan’s girlfriend (Barbara Crampton); meanwhile, an unscrupulous professor (David Gale) discovers the truth behind West’s apparent madness, and attempts to steal their work. As the drama unfolds, the bodies pile up – only to be revived again with West’s glowing, green serum.

Many factors contribute to Re-Animator’s classic status: its definitive, wild-eyed Jeffrey Combs performance, its many fantastic one-liners (“Don’t expect it to tango – it has a broken back!”), and its top-notch, stomach-churning makeup effects chief among them. (The filmmaking team studied forensic photos to ensure that the fresh corpses looked realistically pallid, and their homework shines through in some of the most disturbingly real-looking zombies you’d see in any vintage horror flick.) Re-Animator is a movie that manages to be both scary and profoundly silly, placing it squarely among the decade’s best genre flicks.

Unsurprising for a film with such hallowed cult status, Re-Animator has already been graced with a number of absurdly extras-laden special editions. Fifteen years ago, it looked like Millennium’s 2-disc DVD edition – which proudly boasted six hours of bonus materials – could never be topped, but Arrow’s limited edition Blu-ray proves that wrong. All of those features, including the multiple commentaries, hour-long retrospective documentary, interviews, marketing spots, and a half hour’s worth of alternate scenes are found here, as are many, many bonus features new to North American releases of the film. This includes new interviews with Gordon, Crampton, and the creator of Re-Animator: The Musical, an additional commentary, an isolated score, and an audio reading of Lovecraft’s original short story by none other than Jeffrey Combs himself. There’s another feature-length documentary, too, entitled A Guide to Lovecraftian Cinema, a fascinating and thorough history of the author’s film adaptations, from the 1960s through today, presented by Chris Lackey, the host of the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast. This two-disc Blu-ray set comes packed in a handsome, heavy-duty slipcase with mini reproductions of old lobby cards, a 92-page (!) comic book adaptation of the movie, and essays about the film and its restoration.

Without any doubt, this is the new definitive edition of Re-Animator – and that’s based on the inclusion of the restored, integral version of the film alone, even before the set’s heaps of extra features are taken into consideration. If you’re a fan of the film – or of horror in general – you should absolutely give Arrow’s limited edition a look while it’s still available.