How the horror movie Re-Animator went beyond gore

This theatrical bravura, somehow transferred to the screen, means that as Re-Animator reaches its gory climax, it becomes “not just a bloody film that delivers splattered mayhem”. [but] “It’s also very effective black comedy,” Duffy says.

However, according to Combs, Gordon truly 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 had to find release points for the audience,” he says. “I haven’t really talked to Stuart about it – and neither has Bruce [Abbott] – But this is something we decided to do. Otherwise it will just be bombing with disgusting things.”

Whatever the source of the motivation, it’s a comedic-drama balance that Re-Animator manages admirably, the humor helping to temper the excess that might seem sadistic in a less self-aware film. “It’s not a bad or vile thing to do,” says Lindsay Hallam, head of the Film and Film Studies course at the University of the Arts London. “She also does not take pleasure in torturing female victims.”

In fact, one of the elements that makes Re-Animator successful is its central female character, Crampton’s Megan Halsey. Unusually for the time, she is a complex horror heroine who, rather than happily getting into trouble, is wise to the dangers of re-animation, and savvy about the world in a way that her friend is not. Crampton delivers in a deadpan, engaging style: “She really understands how to work the material, keep it grounded, while, like the other main characters, embracing the absurdity of the Re-Animator,” says Hallam. “She sells credibility and danger, while avoiding falling into the cliché of being a victim or the ‘dumb blonde.’” Even when she becomes an object of lust for the re-animated villain, “she goes beyond just being a sex symbol who caters to men,” Hallam adds.