Original subtitles

We can defeat death... and it was really our intention to do something that would

go beyond what people used to see.

Otherwise, we're just going to be one of the millions of movies that get made and

forgotten.

There's always this idea that really great horror movies don't show the more horrific

stuff.

Baloney!

I like when they just go... places you would never guess.

Dead?

Not anymore.

I couldn't believe how audacious it was.

Afterwards, I think we were all shocked by what was going on.

I was like, oh my god, did you see all the blood?

It's so gross.

There's parts of it that are very funny.

And parts that are just gross.

It was definitely the most gruesome movie I've ever worked on.

These guys are coming in with their gallons with blood and cow and testing.

And Stuart would go, no.

You know, that's not enough.

And he was right because it's timeless in its rashness.

This is like the movie that will not die.

I'm from Chicago and grew up there.

I was the artistic director of the organic theater company in Chicago for 15 years.

My wife Carolyn, I started the company in 1969.

We started it with our wedding money.

The money that we received as wedding gifts was put toward starting a theater

company.

We were a theater that was dedicated to the crew.

The creation of original work.

And we did all kinds of things.

We did the world premiere of sexual diversity in Chicago.

We worked with a lot of really stellar talents.

Joe Montana, Dennis Franz, just a host of really fine actors.

And I felt, you know, here we have these great, you know, performers.

We really shouldn't create a movie for them.

And a friend of mine advised me that we should do a horror film because he said it

would be the easiest to kind of move you to find backing.

I've always been a huge fan of horror movies, especially with Frankenstein's story.

And my friend said, well, have you ever read Lovecraft's Herbert West reanimator?

So I started looking for it and eventually I ended up going to the public library and

found six little stories that he wrote in the 30s and in reading them, I was blown

away.

I mean, they are fantastic and I could see the potential as a film because they're so

packed with action.

I mean, jam packed with incredibly shocking and often very gory proceedings.

It's funny because since Lovecraft wrote reanimator as a serial, my first thought

was that we should do it as a series.

It's kind of hard to imagine that now.

But I thought maybe PBS wouldn't be interested in any of those six half hour

shows based on these stories.

So we adapted the very first one of the stories and actually was very literal

adaptation.

It was set in period and so forth.

And PBS, of course, said this is too much for us.

We're never going to do this.

So we took it around a few other places and we're told that no one was interested

in half hour shows anymore, that everyone wanted our long shows.

And the original writer on the project, the fellow named William G.

Norris, he got kind of discouraged and kind of turned it over to Dennis at that

point.

I'm a teacher and did I teach Gothic fiction among other things.

Stuart knew I knew the genre and asked if I could take a look at this and maybe help

Gothic it up at the same time as maybe expanding it.

So we went back to the drawing board and we combined the first and the second story

into an hour.

It was determined that the story should be updated.

But we still wanted to be faithful to it.

Right about that time, a friend of mine, Bob Greenberg introduced me to a fellow

named Brian Eusner.

I got into Reanimator back when I lived in North Carolina and I was a horror fan.

So I was looking to make a low budget horror movie and I wasn't the first of course.

George Romero did it with Neither Living Dead.

Dave Friedman was doing it with Richard Gordon Lewis.

And I had saved up some money and felt like I could borrow some.

And so I was interested in the Reanimator project.

So I went to Chicago.

He said, I think we should, you know, expand this into a feature.

And I said, great, we can add the third story.

And he said, no, I had all the rest of the stories.

So suddenly there were these opportunities to make twists in the stories to throw in

more gore, more excitement.

Lovecraft pushes the genre in literary terms.

So we were going to have to push the genre in filmic terms.

And that was one of the original directives we had on this movie.

I wanted to make it gory and sexy enough.

And I didn't want to skimp on that.

Brian Usna said that you looked out all back anything.

Which I think was very good advice.

So about every weekend we go to Brian's house and we would watch videos of just

about every horror movie that had been done in the last 10 years.

Our goal, of course, was to find a way to how to do everything that we were seeing.

Stewart's original idea was he wanted to shoot it in black and white and 16

millimeter at the organic theater.

When we finally did have the financial backing and were ready to go, the board of

the theater got horrified that we were doing a horror film.

They weren't having any part of any HP Lovecraft.

That was just too weird for them.

You know, they said you should be making an art film.

So if you want to allow me to do this project, then I'll take a leave of absence

from the theater.

And I came out to Hollywood and directed the movie.

Pre-production on this began with talking to effects people, but how are we going to

achieve this?

We actually had the first meeting of mine, so to speak, in my backyard over in

Panorama City.

The first thing is you get to script.

You go through and read it.

And, you know, the first time when I read a script, I go through and start

highlighting things that would be classified as effects.

First, I thought, well, this isn't going to be, you know, all that difficult,

but it turned out to be quite a project.

Because as we started listing out the effects, it just got huge, huge,

huge, huge, huge.

I mean, there were 89 separate scenes that had effects in them.

And we had to come up with a way to do these effects that was on a budget and a

schedule.

I mean, I had six weeks to build all this stuff.

Then I actually sat down and storyboarded the effects sequences to make it clear to

the effects people what I'm planning kind of working out ideas as to how to

accomplish some of these things.

We also did a lot of research when we were working on the film.

They gave me a layer-by-layer dissection manuals and all that sort of stuff.

Stuart had a friend who was a pathologist and this guy sent out some photographs of

an autopsy in person.

I'd never seen anything like that before.

And I was like, oh, man.

But he wanted all that stuff to be absolutely realistic.

The casting of Reanimator was done in the classical low-budget Hollywood way.

We were brought in on auditions and we were paired together with a certain someone.

And I got lucky enough to be paired up with Bruce Abbott.

My background was the stage as was all the actors in this film.

You know, I think we had to come straight together and really liked each other

immediately.

And we were the chosen ones.

Jeffrey Combs was known by our casting director for his stage work.

And as soon as he read the role of Herbert West, I knew he was the guy.

I was banging around Hollywood, LA trying to get to, you know, some work.

I'm a lot of theater, but not a lot on film.

So for me, it was time in front of a camera on a set with a pretty good role.

I went down, I picked up the sides and played it like I stuck my fingers or

something.

You know, you know, you know, I thought I would fool of myself.

But Stuart said, wow, I left one home and got word later on that I had got it.

David Gale was another one of these actors that walked in.

And when I met him, it was like, oh my God, this guy is like Boris Karloff.

I mean, he really is.

It's funny, to say to someone, you know, you know what?

You belong in horror movies.

But David really did.

Stuart was staying at the Oakwood apartments there on Barham Boulevard,

and we went over there and ran through the scenes.

We did rehearse for a week before we started shooting, and we rehearsed it like

a play.

And we're very, very rarely do movies have rehearsals.

But Stuart coming from the theater believed that, you know, you need some

rehearsal for the actors.

I can't tell you how valuable that really is.

He really knew what he was doing.

He was with us.

And, you know, he was our leader.

I took all of the actors to the LA County morgue, just so that they could get a

sense of that world and what it's like.

And that, you know, that was an incredible experience.

And it's being around a dead person is not what you would imagine.

It's very strange.

If you get no vibe, you get no rhythm, you get no... you get nothing.

When you see a dead body, it is a dead thing.

And it makes you realize just how magical this idea is.

How truly incredible it would be if someone could bring the dead back life.

We did reshoots after the movie was cut together.

And one of the reshoots was the opening scene.

There was so little time and money to spend on this that we decided it wasn't

necessary.

But after we had cut the material together, Brian felt we really needed to

go back and get that scene.

I was very concerned that the audience wouldn't be ready for the tone of the

movie if they didn't get a taste of it up front.

Dr. Gruma!

Hey best!

How's Paulman?

Looking at the film now, I think he was right.

I get a call from Brian.

He said we need a pre-title sequence.

And it was fun because I got to do some cool things with bladders and eyes.

And what we did is sculpted the eyelids shut.

And I created a bladder that went over each eye.

It was basically people on these rubber bladders.

So you got these big old red eyes bulging out.

Then we filled up the tubes with blood and put a lot of air into it.

It was just one extra day to get that sequence.

And that scene kick starts the movie.

It is told.

And it's a better intro for my character.

You killed him.

No, I did not.

I gave him life.

The young mad scientist.

Who doesn't mind that chaos is in his wake.

We were thinking that maybe there'd be a series of Lovecraft films.

With Lovecraft's name above the title.

And the title sequences in those movies are members being very vivid.

Like really colorful.

And so that was kind of what we were going for.

With those really hot pinks and bright colors and so forth.

The opening titles were done by Bob Dawson.

Who has gone on now to be like the title sequence guy in Hollywood.

I mean, there's a lot of Tim Burton's movies.

And those titles I think are so great.

And they really get you into the mood of the film.

Stuart wanted a Bernard Hermannest score.

And we know where that went.

Richard Ban got into a lot of trouble with this score.

Because people thought that he'd ripped off Bernard Hermann Psycho.

And it was just really awful.

Because he was doing it as an homage.

And Richard Ban had a great influence on this movie.

He felt like that the music should at points indicate the comedy.

Richard found a way to let the honest note was okay to laugh.

Without getting into the nudge nudge wink wink kind of stuff.

It's a sensational score and you can't imagine reanimator without this music.

The budget ended up being about a million bucks.

And the advantage reanimator head going in was that there was nobody to answer to.

You know, it was my money.

It was at stake.

I was taking the risk.

The people that I borrowed money from, I personally guaranteed it back.

So it was really a stupid thing to do.

But I was young and I just did it.

We shot it at S&A Studios.

Which was a very old studio.

Merry Pickford headshot material there.

I mean, you couldn't find them or run down sound stage.

Our dressing rooms were pretty pathetic.

Chipped paint, ricky staircases.

And we'll watch out, you know, holes in the floor.

So it wasn't the best of the sound stages that I've been on.

And it just kind of like shows you how low budget this was.

But I definitely feel that we had a special connection.

All of us working on this movie.

And we all loved it from the very beginning.

And we were all in it together.

And what makes a successful movie is when everybody is on the same way.

Like, if you can get everybody to pull together and focus on the same goal,

then you've got something.

Well, I was back in Chicago by then we had two children.

So I left them with a sitter and flew out here to do my piece in the movie.

And I was truly a novice.

But it was exciting.

I was excited.

Good.

We tried to be as faithful to the Lovecraft as we could be.

But it does get problematic because he leaves a lot to the imagination.

And the fact is, as an adaptor, you really need to make changes.

For example, we created a character of Dan King.

She just needs a little more time for the drug system.

Everybody in the story is so insane.

Then you needed a normal guy in the midst of all this so that you could identify

with.

King, we have done everything that can be done for this woman.

She has not responded.

She's gone.

I described Dan as the audience's response to this movie.

She's going to emotionally connect to the movie.

It's probably going to be through Dan.

He's kind.

He's sweet.

He's naive.

Okay, your optimism is touching, but a waste of time.

A good doctor knows when to stop.

I related to him really easily.

Take her to the morgue.

What we tried to do with that character was to make the audience really care about

him.

That's the key.

That's the key.

That's the key.

And so the back story that we created for him was that this is a poor kid who,

through scholarships, has gotten into medical school.

And he has got a real chance at a real future.

Everything is looking very rosy for him.

Until all of that gets destroyed during the course of the film.

Oh, I'm sorry, Dan.

I didn't mean to scare you.

Oh, it wasn't too bad, Dean.

I just didn't know anybody was here.

Until he meets this Herbert West.

Dan, this is Herbert West.

He'll be joining you in your third year.

He was doing independent research and Switzerland with Dr. Boober shortly before

he died.

The West, this is Daniel Cain, one of Miss Catonic Medical's best young

hopes for the future of medicine.

What were your researching?

Death.

Herbert is a force to be reckoned with.

I think right away I kind of like thought how, you know, fun this guy could be.

Mr. West, this is our eminent brain researcher and grant machine, Dr.

Carl Hill.

Herbert appeals to all of our notions of never having to compromise.

I know your work, Dr. Hill.

Quite well.

Your theory on the location of the wheel and the brain is... interesting.

We spend our days bending over acquiescing.

And Herbert doesn't see the point.

Though derivative of Dr. Groober's research in the early 70s, so derivative

in fact that in Europe it's considered plagiarized.

Arrogant?

Okay, somebody might say, Arrogant.

But from his point of view, he's stronger than you.

Intellectually.

And your support of the 12 minute limit on the life of the brain stem after death.

Six to twelve minutes, Mr. West.

Herbert West.

And he's annoyed when someone is wasting his time.

Frankly, Dr. Hill, your work on brain death is outdated.

I mean, I'm a student of his and I'm calling him on his shit, you know.

Looking forward to seeing you in class, Mr. West.

I think that was just delicious.

I love that.

The thing about Lovecraft is that you very seldom has any women in his stories.

And, you know, Herbert West's animator is no exception.

So the whole idea of the Dean's daughter was invented for the film.

I don't know.

I know.

I know.

I know.

Those early scenes were very intimate scenes.

And working in front of 50 people, you sort of have to a nest to size

yourself to what's going on and and forget that the people are there and really

concentrate on your partner.

Bruce is a lovely person and we had a really nice time together.

I had some great chemistry with Barbara and she was just lovely.

Really nice.

I mean, you know, it can be really uncomfortable.

That was, I think, one of the first scenes that we shot in this movie.

And, you know, it was a real bonding thing for us.

We'd only known each other for a few weeks and it seemed as if we were boyfriend a

girlfriend.

We were very comfortable with one another.

The minute you get your MDL married you.

I think the ease that we felt with one another was evident on film.

After half a day in bed with somebody you're hardly uncomfortable anymore.

A lot of really wonderful things happened in that scene that weren't necessarily

scripted like the whole being under the covers thing.

The original script had a lot more to do with Dan Cain and Meg.

It was a movie about lovers getting caught up in this situation.

And Herbert West was kind of the sort of annoying catalyst.

You're on a hear about the apartment.

Yes, but not really quite as front and center as he kind of became in the final cut.

Did we meet this morning?

You're West.

Herbert West.

So, for me, I thought of it as sort of a nice supporting role.

I startled you.

Yes, you did.

He's the other side to Dan.

May I introduce my fiance, Megan Holsey?

Miss Holsey.

Mr. West.

He's going to drive the action.

Does this building have a basement?

All of us were really young in this movie.

And we wouldn't know how to steal a scene at that time.

Oh, yes.

But, Jeffrey is an amazing actor.

Yes.

I think this will be just fine.

I mean, he was just so much this character and gave it its life.

I think you and Mr. West have a lot to discuss before you decide anything.

Oh, I've decided.

And he's so quirky and so bigger than life.

You'll never even know that I'm here.

Dan, of course, on the first of the month.

Mr. West?

He turned into sort of the star of the movie.

Do we have a deal?

At that time, I was doing business with Empire Pictures, Charlie Band.

He didn't put a nickel into the movie.

But he did provide some support.

For instance, the first DP was getting Bob Ebencher.

And he shot the entire first week of the film.

And actually, he was quite good.

But Charlie Band felt that Mac Alberg would be a better choice.

They called me at night.

I think, and I started next day in the morning.

And I never met Stuart Ward on in my life.

But I came to the set.

And he took me half an hour to literally fall in love with the guy.

Of course, he is such a warm and wonderful person and very talented.

But then, on the other hand, he was totally inexperienced when he came to

Mullewood making at that time.

The crew, I think, you know, at first they were going, who the hell is this guy?

You know, and he doesn't seem to know what the hell he's doing.

They would always be finding myself standing in the wrong place.

They'd be blocking the light.

In one instance, I even run over by the dolly.

You know, the dolly guy ran over my foot.

And it was completely clueless about things like the screen direction and I

remember someone saying, well, Stuart, you've just crossed the line,

and I'm going, where?

What line?

Luckily, Mack Alburn was very, very helpful and kind of explained things to me.

I think Mack is the guy who kind of carried Stuart through his first picture.

Every first time director needs support.

He was a theoretical director.

And a theoretical director who works on a stage what he sees when the light and

everything is what he got.

But we'd feel something totally different.

Mack Alburn would sometimes say, Stuart, Stuart, I'm sure this looks

absolutely fabulous from what you're standing, but you should really look

through the camera because from here, this looks like shit.

Stuart, we can't do this.

Stuart, you're editor is going to hate you.

I always say that the most important thing to be a happy cinematographer is to learn

how to bite your tongue, exactly in a good marriage.

You learn how to bite your tongue.

I remember a few times when we had disagreements.

And behind Stuart's back, I said, you are a testadura.

You are really a too stubborn person for this world.

I said, Stuart, let's do it two ways.

Let's do your way and lose my way.

Most of the time, when we saw the day, Stuart said, oh, was that my way,

oh, you were right.

And actually, Stuart and I got very well alone and he's a very good director.

Mac and I ended up really bonding and I ended up doing seven more movies with him.

And as I said, he's the professor.

You know, I'm still learning from Mac.

The majority of the medical science that shown on the film is accurate.

For the autopsy victim, we created a foam latex prosthetic that was designed in

reverse.

So that actually all the detail was on the inside of it.

And the outside of it was covered by a wig.

So it used an extra with a bald head.

And I painted his bald pay to look like the skull.

And then I put the prosthetic over it and glued it down.

And when we shot the scene, the actor grabbed it and peeled that back.

It was very much like feeling a large orange.

And it worked real well.

Once the skull is plainly visible, you take the bone saw and you cut around

the perimeter.

But then we cut to a replacement body that was made in the same proportions as this

guy.

The whole top had been opened up.

We had taken a plastic skull and I had cast the skull into it and inside of it,

I used cow brains.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.

The human brain.

I hate to admit this, but one of my big suppliers on this film was a local meat

market.

Once the brain's stem of an individual, I'm talking about the reticular activator

system, heart regulation, respiratory center.

Once these activities cease, the brain can only survive in additional six to twelve

minutes.

David is the quintessential ominous sort of authority figure.

Six to twelve minutes.

But he's a fraud.

Until brain death brings about an irreversible conclusion.

And he's enraged that I would have the audacity to call him on that.

Mr. West, I suggest you get yourself a ten.

David Gayle was on a little bit bigger than life.

The class dismissed.

And so we were kind of on the same page stylistically.

How can you teach such dribble?

These people are here to learn and you're closing their minds before they even have

a chance.

We all both understood that it was a motto, a motto between these two characters.

You know, you should have stolen more of group as ideas than at least you'd have

ideas.

Mr. West was war.

And who's going to win out?

There's got to be a pleasure to fail you.

David Gayle, he knew how to work a scene.

And so, you know, we really worked well.

Working with Barbara was really easy.

Please.

Because you get your performance from what's, you know, coming at you.

Look, it's not you, really.

It's just a lot of little things.

I feel like I have to totally be in the moment with whoever I'm acting with.

West is always in his room with the door closed.

No.

I mean, do you ever see him?

Does he ever eat?

I have to really see what is going on between us.

Really feel that.

He bothers you too.

And that to me is as important as doing the individual work on my own character.

Rufus is terrified of him.

When West comes in, he runs and hides.

Rufus runs and hides all the time.

It's standard characters.

Yes, but not when we're together but then he's all over us trying to get your

attention.

I really liked Megan.

Where is he?

I haven't seen him since we got here.

So I think she's a strong character, which I also liked.

Rufus.

Because frequently in horror or slasher movies, the girls aren't very intelligent.

And Megan was...

She's definitely not a bubble-headed co -ed.

She is a grounded girl.

Rufus, are you right here?

Very real.

And we bring ourselves to every role.

So whoever she ended up being, I am part of that.

And she is part of me as well.

Barbara was perfect for that role.

She just gave her whole heart and soul.

She's really knocked yourself out.

Wow!

Great screamer too.

Oh, my God.

What are you doing on that role?

Dad!

Dad!

I could be in my dressing room and hear her scream.

I thought I was wearing a private room, Dan.

I mean, what the hell are you doing in here?

In the fridge!

We dealt with a lot of gross things.

And yet, it's funny.

There's parts of it that are very funny.

It was dead when I found you.

You killed him.

It does have sort of a farcical quality, but it would be a real mistake to play it

like that.

What happened?

It suffocated.

It knocked the garbage over and it got its head stuck in a jar.

You weren't home, so I put it in there.

I recall Stuart being approaching it very, very seriously.

And I did not want to stink the place up.

I was going to show you.

This is not funny.

This is not funny.

There's no humor here.

You couldn't call or write a note.

I was busy pushing bodies around.

As you well known, what a note said, Dan.

Capped dead, details later.

And it's made even more funny sometimes by not playing the funny parts, but playing

for the truth.

Because then you're not hit over the head by it.

The garbage took garbage.

The other guy's all have these kind of flamboyant flashy moments.

But the unsung hero of the movie, I think, is Bruce Abbott.

He's the one that I think is really carrying the movie on his shoulders.

You know, Bruce were not in the movie.

The movie would not work.

West!

And Bruce is fantastic in the film.

I think I enjoyed that scene just about as much as I enjoyed shooting any of them.

It's such a physical movie.

I think the swinging light was an accident.

We hit the light and that took the camera off the stand.

And, you know, things started to get very active very quickly.

And shot it extremely late at night and we shot the hell out of it.

The cat is a lot of trickery.

There was a stuffed cat.

Not even a real cat.

But they pinned to my back.

And I sort of make it move around and pull it off and throw.

You know, it was like, did you get that?

Because the light's just...

There was a very small key light source and the light swinging back and forth to

illuminate sort of what's going on.

If you watch that sequence most of the time, I never saw a cat.

There it goes.

It's an illusion of what the actors are doing, what the lights are doing.

Most importantly, what sounds just doing.

Till that wonderful last shot of the cat just coming right at the camera.

It's a great topic to pull through.

Everybody always talks about the cat sequence.

Most of the time...

There was no cat.

Death is the ultimate disease.

And, you know, what Wes is trying to do is to conquer death.

It's really quite simple.

All life is a physical and chemical process.

It stands to reason that if one could find extremely fresh specimens and recharge

that chemical process back, we have three animations.

Talking to doctors about what Wes was doing, they all kind of thought that,

yeah, that's a pretty good idea.

The theory is not new, Wes, but my reagent is.

If you were able to succeed, it would be the greatest achievement, you know,

of all time, really.

We can achieve every doctor's dream.

You'll be famous and live life times.

We think of Wes as being such an insane doctor.

You wouldn't have done this on people.

But what's so crazy about trying to prolong life?

You will help me.

No, because I don't believe you.

Wes wasn't dead to begin with.

You've dragged him and reduced his vital signs.

You lowered his body temperature.

He couldn't have been dead.

Do you agree that he's dead now?

Do you agree that he's dead now?

The whole concept of reanimation has to be bought with the cat.

So it's real important moment in the movie.

Wes, no!

He's the one with doubt, and I'm the one who's sure beyond sure.

Wes, stop!

She's in and Yang, it's point counter -point.

I'll show you.

Then you'll help me.

No!

Yes, you will.

That is why I brought the infernal beast back to life in the first place.

What?

This is groundbreaking research here, and I need help.

It's infectious.

To the brain?

Of course.

He's got to go along because he knows I'm right.

Don't expect it to tango.

It has a broken back.

Why can't you ignore us?

Birth is always painful.

So they were like two geeks in high school that both like, you know, World War II

airplane models or something.

It was thick.

Why?

They were having a good time.

The only annoying thing is that he has this girlfriend.

Woo!

What is happening?

What are you doing here?

What is happening?

She just saps his energy.

It makes him think about soft stuff.

And what?

Really why?

Oh, I think there was definitely all triangle in the movie.

Dan, what happened?

It was incredible.

I mean, it was an incredible experiment.

Herbert West has overcome physical death.

And it was myself, and Dan, and Herbert West.

That's why I came.

I tried to call, but no one answered.

I was so worried.

Megan and Herbert West were foes, fighting for the same man.

Frankenstein stories are masturbatory stories.

Because they're all about creating life without a woman.

And it was interesting because Meg Halsey.

She is the one who really is aware that how completely wrong this is.

I tried to save him.

How unnatural it is.

No, you'll tell Halsey.

Dan Wright will tell him, and you'll be out of here so fast your head will spin.

The subtext for her character really is.

Look, you know, you can create life with me.

Don't you understand what he's done?

What we could do?

What about what we could do?

So I have to really hypnotize him to get him to stay on track.

Meg, he's right.

Your father's wrong.

Herbert represents work.

Meg represents love and relationship.

And can you have both?

The only way is that.

Herbert would say no.

Dan.

As far as Herbert's concerned, women are a distraction.

There was one sequence that I was very proud of.

I ended up getting cut out of the movie.

That was great.

Your daughter has gone into an enchanting young woman.

Oh, yes, she has.

And David and I were sitting around a table having dinner.

And he's hypnotizing me.

Meg has matured a great deal in the past few years.

But she's still young and impressionable.

And now Cain is rooming with that West character.

Originally, there was a whole subplot in the film about how Dr. Hill had hypnotic

powers.

Cain is dangerous.

And he was able to make the people do what he wanted.

That was a way to explain why he could control all these zombies.

Well, as it turns out, who cares?

And it sort of slowed things up and gummed up the works at certain points where you

just wanted to keep going.

So it was cut.

But actually, it was his hypnotic suggestions that made the Dean expelled

and Cain from the college.

You will submit to me a written apology for this entire affair.

You will in any case have your student loan rescinded.

That's one of my favorite moments.

He's just seen the reanimation of dead animal tissue to life.

And suddenly, what's more important to him is a student loan.

I won't be able to continue school.

But that's close to reality.

That won't be all, Mr. Cain.

I wanted to show how absolutely cutthroat it is.

Medical school is war.

It's war between the students and faculty to see who survives.

We did the makeup in an old sound facility called Sun West Productions down on Sunset

Western.

I would not say that it really was a studio.

It was just a big space in the middle of Hollywood.

John was at that time teaching classes on how to do makeup effects.

And so that's how we got our crew.

Our crew was my makeup class.

A lot of them had virtually no experience.

So we thought, okay, here's some free labor.

And given the chance to start building their resumes.

And remember, I said we had 89 effects.

That's pretty darn tough even when you're using my students as the crew.

We got to the point where we just had to say, we're running out of time and we're

out of money.

What can we do?

Charlie Bann.

So, well, we can't give you any more money, but we can get access to John

Beakler in a shop.

I was working with Charlie Bann's empire pictures, doing a lot of special makeup

and creature effects.

And that's how I sort of fell into the fold.

And it was a great experience.

By and large, you work in a lot of crap.

But I think in this particular instance, we saw by virtue of the material.

Yes, I think you.

By virtue of the director.

By virtue of all the people working on it.

John Doe apparently just dropped it.

The same crap.

This is good.

He's been dead for hours.

Any evidence of reanimated consciousness will justify proceeding.

Stuart's motto was more and Stuart lived by that.

15 cc's of reagent being administered.

He would keep pushing.

You know, more blood, more foamy drilled.

More emotion or passion.

More of this.

More that.

You can't stop me.

I followed you here.

I'm going to follow you until you listen to me.

I love it!

And my daughter and you'll do is you're told.

More everything.

And sometimes more is not enough.

So the truth happened by now.

But nevertheless is more.

Increasing the dosage 20 cc's of reagent.

Oh, you'll never hear Stuart say you've gone too far.

All of our choices were quite large.

Driven very much by Stuart.

Stuart didn't try to tone things down to make them more natural.

But you know what?

He was right.

Especially in the context of that movie.

And that's what makes a Stuart Gordon movie exciting.

Little Melvin.

Well, Peter can't.

He had doubled Schwarzenegger on a couple of earlier things.

Peter was actually doubling Arnold on terminator while we were doing reanimator.

And we had a membrane of bladders on us forehead so we could inflate them.

And, you know, make them undulate.

And then Peter went nuts with it.

He had a great time.

I mean, this is pretty wild.

It was fun.

That was fun.

And we did it in sequence.

May knock the door down.

It was on top of me.

And Peter, he was powerful.

Powerful guy.

And totally free, naked.

And then he picked me up and he froze me against the wall.

There was a thing where he chewed off a couple of my finger.

That kind of gets your attention.

They don't get to do any of this stuff every day.

And then they had a stuntman that stood on a platform.

And he ran and threw himself at the wall.

I'd never seen anybody do a stunt like that before in my life.

So it was fun.

And it was really easy to let it all go and to be there in the scene.

We made a very unusual prop for Peter.

We took a casting of his chest and made a fake chest.

But he's leaning forward like this.

This chest, fake chest is coming down like this.

I'm down on the floor and I've got a fake bone saw in my hand with ground beef

around it and a blood tube.

And we had pre-scored it.

So as Jeff's coming up and working his action, I'm coming up and pushing this

thing out in front.

It's a very, very simple gag, but it was really effective.

We went through gallons of blood.

Yeah, so the floor has got very sticky.

And of course right afterwards, they yell, launch.

Anybody hungry?

But this is the freshest body that we could come across as a killing one ourselves.

And every moment that we've been talking about it, cost us results that you'll give

me a hand.

Everybody in this movie has a wonderful arc.

Robert Sampson starts this movie as the most amiable, capable, dean of a medical

school.

And in a minute he's smashed by a door thrown against the wall.

He's killed, he's destroyed.

He's dead, he's out of the movie, right?

Apparently not.

I'll show you.

17 seconds.

Reanimation at 17 seconds.

The eye's open.

Today, and then to be brought back.

Dr. Welcome back to my...

I thought, wow, I can do that.

Dan?

Dan, bitch.

Meg?

It must not be unlike if you were unconscious.

And came back and figured out you were still here.

And I couldn't talk.

But I could make sounds.

What is it, are you all right?

He would still have his thoughts.

And when he sees his daughter.

No!

He's ashamed.

So I went over and I hid.

No, don't make, don't go near.

I wasn't playing somebody else.

I was playing me in that situation.

What the hell happened here?

Then you all right?

And then that's the only thing that we can do.

That is Dean Holsey.

That's the kind of stuff Stuart would work with you on, the reality of the situation.

Bob is perfectly cast as the dad.

He's the kind of man you would want to have in your life as your father,

playing opposite him.

I felt all those things for Bob.

And when he goes from being the dad, and the really grounded person to being

the crazy, reanimated person.

It was very easy to feel really upset.

I thought he did a great job.

The thing that's really interesting is that in the first half of the film,

West is the villain.

Good evening, Mr. West.

What do you want?

And then Dr. Hill kind of emerges as even a bigger villain because he's a thief.

He's trying to steal West's ideas.

I want you to discover it.

You know, he knows how big an idea this is.

And once the credit for it.

And our sympathies now shift to West.

Paul, have you locked up for a madman?

Or murder.

You will do.

What I tell you to do.

Dr. Hill, he's got one goal.

Power, he's a madman, really.

A bigger villain than West.

So West, you know, to protect his idea.

You know, it was ready to kill him.

I never said.

We did a couple of different shovels.

We had a real shovel.

Okay.

Then we made a mold of that and we cast up a rubber shovel.

And Jeff just hit David with the foam rubber shovel.

I will be famous.

And they take a real shovel and go like this, but it goes out of frame.

And then you see it around his neck.

Now that's a cut-out.

The real shovel that we had cut a half moon out of.

We had the fake head and rolled over.

And the camera is down at his feet.

So the shovel was blocking his real head.

Very effective.

But it's a very simple game.

Now we've got a fake head that has picked up and brought over and put in the,

you know, stainless steel tray.

For that, we did a full head and shoulder cast of David.

And of course it had to be made as a prop.

I mean, on this budget, optical effects just wasn't in the cards.

It was really a situation where what you saw is what you got.

The reanimator stuff.

Arts.

That was glow stick juice.

I've never done whole...

Arts.

You know, you get these little ones and you break them and they glow.

That's what it was.

I think we went through 900 sticks.

This isn't stuff to play with.

It's been acidic formula that, you know, you wouldn't want to put it

around people's eyes and things like that.

And this was the first time it was ever used on film.

Then we had the headless torso, which for close-up shots like this was

basically a torso with the next stump on it.

But for all that performance stuff, it's just the old, you know, head through

the table routine.

We would cut holes in the various furniture pieces and slot him in,

and he's down underneath with his head up through it.

We had a couple of stainless steel trays.

And one of them we cut a hole in big enough to get his head through.

The makeup for the severed neck was also our gasket.

And we can stretch this piece over David Gail's head right up to his neck.

To do it to his neck, paint it right up to that edge.

And then we would pour the blood in, and the blood is the saving grace.

Because that's what hides things.

Most of the time, it wasn't a dummy head.

Most of the time it was even.

Well, that thought cool.

I get to play a scene with a head.

There is sort of a camp kind of quality to the movie.

Yes, Doctor.

And so it requires kind of a heightened approach to the whole thing.

It has its own unique style of that movie.

Star-style.

It's high theater.

We had, I think, something like 48 pages of a character walking around without his

head in this film.

So we had to figure out the money shots.

We actually had eight separate gags just for doing the severed head.

And every time the camera angle would change, we would change the gag.

We came up with, like, a Chinese menu of the head gags.

We had a fake head with eyes closed and a fake head with eyes open.

And we had the mechanical head.

And animatronics was sort of an infancy back then.

We were sort of playing with it.

I made this animatronic head for a few shots.

It could actually put my hand inside.

It was like a muppet.

So the shots of him walking away from you, we had a stump man who could put his head

down real well.

So what we did, we just put the next stump on him here.

And Mack would adjust the camera angle down a little bit.

So when you see Doctor Hill walking away, it looks absolutely fabulous.

Sometimes he's carrying the head.

And now we've got the close-up shot of David.

I mean, that's him.

And we had a full headless torso, which we could put David Gale's head

through at the belly.

And then had another guy come around for the arms.

So we used a lot of old gags and cheats and stuff like that.

But one of the main primary gags was David's head in the tray.

That poor guy, we tortured him.

He was in quite a bit of discomfort a lot of the time.

And he was really a trooper about all that.

Never complaining about it.

And giving amazing work.

When we finished, he came up to me and he said, you know, Stuart, he said,

he said, I want to thank you because this movie has reanimated me.

I'm very sorry to say that David Gale is no longer with us.

And he was wonderful to work with.

There was a good career cut way too short.

There's a tendency to sort of assume that people who are great thinkers have no

carnal needs whatsoever.

But just because you are a brilliant scientist doesn't mean that these other

things aren't floating around in your brain.

And one of the ideas and grandimeters of when you are reanimated, you have no

control over your sex drive.

So once Dr. Hill is freed from life, suddenly it is gone completely berserk.

He's no longer hampered by society's rules.

And suddenly it's all about kidnapping the Dean's daughter and having his way with

her.

I think even then, we knew this was the scene.

This was the scene that people were going to remember.

That was for me the most difficult scene.

And, you know, I'm strapped down.

I'm naked.

There's a gory head in front of me.

I mean, you know, I was wondering, am I going too far?

Should I be doing something like this?

There were some people that said, no, you shouldn't do this scene.

But I wanted to be able to commit to that moment as much as I could commit to any

other moments in that film.

So I said, okay, what the hell?

They cleared the set.

We went for it.

And it sort of broke some barriers of what was acceptable to film.

So the reanimated head is going to have sex with the Dean's daughter.

This poor girl.

I think I've always loved you.

But the question we had when we were writing it was, now how is he going to do

this exactly?

And I remember Dennis calling that shortling, you know, in the middle of the

night saying, I think I've just written the world's first visual pun.

The head gives head.

Oh my gosh!

My love!

When you're doing a scene like that, it just... it seems like an eternity was

three hours or something like that, or more.

Maybe more.

I don't even know.

I don't even want to remember.

I don't know.

Well, I must say, Dr. Hill, I'm very disappointed in you.

You steal the secret of life and death, and here you are, trusting with the bubble

-headed co-ed.

We were very fortunate to get to do all the end at the end.

You'll never get credit for my discovery.

Who's going to believe a talking head?

Get a job in a side, shall we?

Our last day was 16 long hours, and it was right before Christmas.

That was it.

We're pulling the plug at the end of this day.

We cannot go another day behind this.

Why an intelligent young man like yourself should make such a foolish, fatal mistake

of coming here to challenge me.

Yeah, that was a grueling, very, very long day.

I have a plan.

So do I.

That was the day with all the zombies coming out of the bag, so a lot of action,

and we were just grabbing shots and grabbing shots.

You know, we just kept going and going and going into the wee hours.

What a roller coaster.

I was asked to come up with a few zombie characters.

There were make-ups.

One guy was run over by a truck.

The other guy had a sort of shotgun wound to the side of his face.

The burnt corpse.

And they had to be naked.

They were naked all the time.

I couldn't believe that they could actually get a bunch of people to do this.

We had all those naked people running around.

And the most important thing was not to show any frontal nudity, as it's called.

So basically it fell to Mack Alberg to just keep the camera away from it,

to keep it out of the realm of being a porno movie.

It looked kind of distraught.

And I went over to Mack, as it's Mack.

You all right?

It's the Venus.

I see the Venus.

I got Venus vagging in my shot.

I don't know how to make them go away.

We got some framing issues.

Let's say.

I'm sure the car is dressed.

The lasers are taken through.

It takes possible a new technique in the bottom of me.

The only obstacles in the picture was the laser drill.

The smoke was cigar smoke.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Last day I shoot him.

It seemed like a big dance.

It seemed like a massive choreographed dance.

Look at me!

Just sort of like grab that, grab that.

Okay, you do it, moving on, moving on, moving on.

So you got all of this stuff going.

And everybody is running around and doing their own thing.

And it is controlled, chaos.

You've got Barbara's father trying to squeeze the head.

Then it went to a mass of hamburger that Tony Dublin sculpted on set.

He used hamburger and gel blood and managed to get a wig to stay on it.

It was just like a big hamburger patty.

But that's what Stewart wanted.

And again, as part of the humor, as part of the gross out of humor.

He wanted to be able to throw it.

But it's stickin' run down the wall.

And it did.

It was great.

Yeah!

I told you I have a theory!

One more down!

Then you've got the body going nuts and going around.

We went to a big chest.

And the rib cage was like the doors in a saloon that would just open.

And there was an air mortar built into it.

And so we packed it full of meat and rubber pieces.

And just everything we could find.

And then, of course, we've triggered the air mortar.

The intestines thing was my first experience with acting backwards.

They wrapped me in the intestines.

And then pulled the intestines through the body and out into the next room.

So that when the film was reversed, it looks like the intestines fly out and

grab me.

They've got longer.

But I was wrapped moderately early.

Once I was done and lost into the smoke, they then moved on.

I was being torn limb from limb.

And it's very effective.

I remember that we were shooting the sequence at the elevator around four in

the morning or something like that.

Bruce Abbott and his corpse are rolling around on the floor.

It's a wonderfully ragged place to be because it was the end of the movie.

We were very exhausted.

Just so tired.

So, you know, you could bring all of yourself to that moment.

The actor who plays that corpse was a real amputee.

I believe he was... his arm was amputated just above the elbow.

And he was covered in gelatin to look like he was burnt.

And then we had a poseable arm.

So I was able to make that as a prop.

And that also gave us the ability to separate it at the elbow.

And that's what gave us the piece for the cut-off.

It's literally just slid on and we hold on with that.

So when it was pulled off, the arm gag on the floor was essentially just that part

of the stump at the elbow so we could come up through the floor like this.

Have the stump out like that.

And the guy's actually just through the floor.

It was just pretty simple.

For me, during the death scene, it was really Bruce's scene.

It was really about him.

And, you know, his loss and his feeling and him trying to save me and not being

able to.

Before he heard, she's gotten up.

And I thought he did a wonderful job.

You really feel his grief.

Dan is... he's an idealist, but as soon as he realizes she's dead, then he turns the

corner.

I see Dan sort of plunging deep into the darkness and falling apart.

I don't think in the beginning of the movie he would have chosen to reanimate

somebody, but you see through the course of the movie what he's turned into.

And so at the end of the movie he makes that decision.

I think he does what everyone would do had they been placed in his situation.

But Dan also must have a terrible memory.

I mean, what part of this works?

You know, what part of this really works?

But that idea, for me, is what the movie's about.

You know, life is what's important.

And even if there are complications, you go for it.

And wouldn't we prefer to be able to save someone even if it meant that they were

kind of messed up?

And that was it.

It was the greatest time.

And it all went by in three weeks.

It wasn't tense, but it was shortened in tense.

I did the kind of rough cut of the picture.

Then I went back to Chicago.

And the final cut of the movie was Brian working with Lee Percy, the editor.

The cut that Stuart had of the movie was 135 minutes or something.

It was really long, and Lee started cutting it down.

Moving scenes around, he really fashioned the material.

A lot of the scenes that we cut out.

I don't really miss him.

And then, in the beginning of February, we did the reshoots.

Like the opening.

Which I mentioned afterwards, Lee Percy put it together.

And I remember sitting with him and watching it.

I just thought this was the best shit I'd ever seen, you know?

I did not see the finished film until I came back to Los Angeles six months later.

And there was a cast in crew screening.

It felt like an opening night for a stage play.

It was thrilling.

Everybody was really into it.

And just screaming and squealing.

When it closed my heart, we didn't watch.

But yes, I did.

I peeked.

We were all rather surprised.

And really surprised by how funny it was.

You know, it was just really, really funny.

But also really bloody.

Oh, my God.

Everyone was shocked when I saw the movie.

What shot did I thought they'd be?

David Gail's wife was there.

And she was so shocked.

And she got up in the middle of the screening.

And she said, David, how could you?

I think maybe she's not...

Is this what he's up to?

Is this?

His big job as an actor, you know?

Yes, my love.

I think it was incumbent upon David Gail to give her a little bit of a heads up.

So sweet.

But that was going to happen.

Sorry.

Then we took it to Cannes.

And it was just the best audience.

At the end of the movie, they were stopping their feet and clapping in time

with the music.

I was going, man, this movie business is really great.

And then I got a notice that it had won the critics award.

So, you know, my board at the theater didn't realize it wasn't our film after all.

I decided not to take it to the MPAA because I didn't like the idea of somebody

telling us what we could or couldn't do with it.

It was a very brave choice of our distributor to release the movie on Reddit.

And we realized that to cut this to an R rating, a movie would be about 20 minutes

long, I think.

But going out without a rating meant that we couldn't advertise the movie in a lot

of newspapers.

Most of the ads were white letters on black background.

That's how the movie was sold.

There was no big ad campaign.

There was no PR for this movie.

And yet, it opened at the Paramount across the street from Grauman's Chinese theater.

And there was a line from the Paramount all the way down and around the corner.

And from that first scene, when they break into Dr. Gruber's office, it was like,

whoa!

There was a hoot!

They already went crazy over here.

They don't know whether to scream or laugh or both.

People standing up and screaming at the, oh my god, what are you doing?

You're not gonna do that!

I can't believe this shit!

Oh, no!

Oh, oh, oh, they're not... Oh, god!

It was the most vocal audience response I've ever heard.

I remember we were coming out of the theater.

And some guy comes with his groceries.

That's the best damn movie I've ever seen!

I thought, wow, this is great!

A lot of the reviews were fantastic.

I mean, the guy who really championed it was Roger Ebert, who wrote one of the

first reviews.

I remember Pauline Kale put her on her top 10 list for the year.

And this was amazing to me because I had assumed that the critics were gonna hate

the movie.

Soon I got a call from Brian saying that Charlie Band was offering us both a three

-picture deal, including another Lovecraft picture.

From the makers of Reanimated from beyond.

So it was at that point that I did formally leave the theater and moved to LA

and only to discover that these three movies were gonna be shot in Rome.

And which was another adventure.

I guess that's another story.

You know, Reanimated did well, but it wasn't a huge blockbuster.

It wasn't some big box office smash.

I don't think it was as big a movie as something like Halloween was.

It's a matter of fact, after it came out, it was forgotten to a certain degree.

And I mean, it took a while before it actually became something again.

And I think it had a lot to do with the whole video revolution.

Most of the people that I talked to, they got a hold of the tape.

Like, you know, it was in my basement.

I wasn't supposed to see it in me in a couple of brands.

And I got in trouble, man.

This movie, it allowed a lot of films that came after it to be a little more shocking

if they wanted to be.

To be a little braver than they thought they could be.

Imagine if the movie had gone for a rating.

Whatever works, the best is what they take out.

So, Reanimator has a kind of an integrity.

And today, I think Reanimator has a much wider audience than you could have

imagined 10 years ago.

It's funny, it's like, I'm reaching a whole new generation now.

People are bringing their kids to see it.

So many people talk about that movie with interest, you know.

I was doing a movie a few years ago where David Bowie was one of the actors.

and David came over to me and said, Mac, Mac, I heard you shot Reanimator.

That's my favorite movie.

I'm not surprised that this is a favorite coat film.

I'm not surprised at all.

I'm delighted to have been part of it.

It's the highlight of my career as an actor.

It's probably the part that most people remember me for.

I think it really holds up today.

It's still shocking.

It's still out there.

But I think it's a great story as well.

I think the film holds up beyond its shock value.

There's a lot of realness going on between the characters, a lot of real drama.

There's heart, there's love, there's heartbreak.

It's satirical, it's brightening.

You're lucky to be in one film that works that well.

It's a mere 86 minutes.

And, you know, it fairly flies.

It's kind of like going on a new roller coaster.

It's thrilling, and it's over before you know it.

And you go, my God, what just happened.

Let's go again.

Reanimator is one of those rare movies where everything worked well.

But we were just doing a little movie and trying to make the best that we could with

what we had.

Looking back, I realized how incredibly lucky I was to have just the right people.

Everyone was on the same way.

Everyone was doing their best work.

And it was one of these things that doesn't happen very often.

It may never happen for me again.

Reanimator is now my middle name.

It's always Stewart, Reanimator Gordon.

And it's enabled me to work, you know, for 20 years, you know, and do more films.

And so I can't complain about that at all.

On the other hand, you know, people are always expecting me to how to reanimator.

They're always able to say about my films.

Well, it was good, but it wasn't reanimator.

I guess you could say it's my Citizen Kane.

You know, this is the film that will be remembered.

I don't follow the film to have done.

I'm very, very pleased that people are watching the movie at all 20 years later

later.

And that it still seems to have its power.

Thank you very much.