As low budget ’80s horror films go, Re-Animator (1985) is particularly unhinged. It’s a gory Frankenstein-esque tale loosely based on H. P. Lovecraft’s 1922 serial novelette “Herbert West—Reanimator,” which follows medical student Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) as he experiments with a reagent that reanimates dead tissue … with predictably horrifying side effects! Ahh!
When released in theaters in 1985, the film more than twice recouped its approximately $1 million budget, but its real commercial success came as an unrated home video, where it garnered cult classic status.
Re-animate!
The Central Coast Film Society presents Stuart Gordon’s 1985 cult classic horror film Re-Animator at the Bay Theatre on Monday, Oct. 20 (VIP doors at 4:30, general admission doors at 5, with a 5:30 p.m. screening followed by a slideshow of behind-the-scenes photos; $23.27 general admission or $33.98 VIP at my805tix.com). All ticket sales and funds raised go to the nonprofit Central Coast Film Society. Learn more at centralcoastfilmsociety.org.
Now celebrating its 40th anniversary with a 4K restoration and redistribution by Ignite Films, it will screen for one show only at the Bay Theatre, but the real draw for this event will be a slideshow of behind-the-scenes still photographs of the making of Re-Animator by Los Osos resident Abe Perlstein, who will be in attendance to comment on the never-before-seen images.
“I was in on the beginnings of the MTV music video craze, where I was hired to shoot behind the scenes of music videos that were all the rage back then,” Perlstein recalled during a recent phone interview. “My first job after shooting all those music videos, my first feature film job, was Re-Animator. I can’t remember who hired me, but I met the director, Stuart Gordon, and I really liked him right off the bat.”
Perlstein remembers the vibe on the set as jovial.
“I can’t speak for everyone else, but I can tell you it was a lot of fun,” Perlstein continued. “It still rates as one of my favorite productions I ever worked on. I worked on over 120 television assignments as well as about 120 features. And this one remains one of the funniest and most fun projects I ever worked on. Everybody liked working with one another. The script was very funny, and everybody kept ruining takes because we’d all be laughing so hard.”
One of the things that makes the film so hilarious is that it plays it straight. There’s no winking at the camera, no “Ha-ha! We know this is ridiculous.” For instance, when one of West’s professors, Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), tries to blackmail him into surrendering his discovery, West lops his head off with a shovel and reanimates him. In a scene probably most responsible for the home video being unrated, Hill’s body holds his severed head and tries to use it to sexually assault naked Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton), who’s tied to a medical exam table. It’s batshit crazy!
“It’s a dark humor, which is completely played straight throughout the whole movie,” Perlstein explained. “But everybody knew it was funny.”
It was also sticky work. At the time, Karo Syrup, a commercial corn syrup, was dyed red and used as fake blood.
“Today it’s not that shocking, but back in 1985, it would have been, and I mean, the blood and guts, it’s just so over the top and there was so much Karo Syrup used on the film,” Perlstein said with a laugh. “I think they had pallets of Karo Syrup, like gallons and gallons of the stuff, and it was sticky, and it would get all over the place. It was impossible to keep the set clean. A lot of times when there’d be an arm ripped off or something, the special effects guy would pump up the pressure on the Karo Syrup. It’s supposed to dribble out, but a lot of times it was pumped up too high, and it would just completely spray everybody in the room. Everybody’d be soaking under this stuff. And if you weren’t wearing a trash bag to prevent yourself from getting, you know, you’d just be covered in Karo Syrup.”
A trash bag wasn’t the only protection Perlstein needed on set. He also had to rig something to quiet the click of his camera shutter when shooting while the cameras were rolling.
“When they were shooting with the film camera, I would wait and get shots after,” he recalled. “But after a couple of days of this, I realized, ‘Wow, I’m missing all the great shots. I should somehow soundproof this camera.’”
He took Duvetyne black cloth, a kind of super dark felt material used on film sets to block out light from, say, a window, and wrapped his camera in it.
“I had about six or seven layers worth, then sealed the whole thing up with gaffer’s tape and had a little hole in the bottom where I could insert my right hand and then close it up with Velcro that went around my wrist, and I could look through the viewfinder because I had a little hole so I could see through. It was pretty quiet. You really couldn’t hear it at all, except my hand, after being in there, would be so sweaty and hot that when I’d take it out, it would be soaking wet. And I’d have to open the thing up and blow a fan into it.”
In addition to praising the new 4K restoration, Perlstein also notes that the film’s score, by composer Richard Band and recorded by the Rome Philharmonic, is very similar to Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho.
“If people liked Psycho, they’ll probably liked this because they did a really good job of the remastering the film. But the thing I most want people to know is that if they like dark horror comedies with the emphasis on comedy, they’re going to really like this film because it’s so ridiculous and funny. It’s screamingly funny. If you don’t have a sense of humor or you don’t like gore, don’t come to the movie.” ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 16-26, 2025.