Lesson
Not Learned: Quit It With the Re-Animating, Already
The
re-animation of a corpse is an idea of something likely stemming from the very
human fear of death. The concept that we can come back in some way is
appealing, and also stands as a great image of horror. If someone goes down,
are they going to be the same when they get back up? Though Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985, Empire) draws heavy
parallels with Frankenstein (Whale,
Universal, 1931) through its mad-scientist Henry | Herbert comparisons and
their objective of death back to life, the film also heavily relates to zombie
films—particularly Romero’s Dawn of the
Dead (1978).
One
aspect of the various re-animations that these two films share is the marked
quality of these various peoples’ returns to movement after death. In both
movies, nobody really is who they were when they went down. In Dawn of the Dead, the people that die
after being bit by other re-animated souls come back to bite others,
themselves. This allows for some poignant remarks concerning what humans do to
each other, both in life and in death. They damage both emotionally and
physically—they eat each other. If you come back, you’re a husk of what you
were. Meanwhile, in Re-Animator, when
you come back, you’re pissed. Cats will claw at your back and try to eat your face;
people will come back and try to strangle you to death. In this, it almost
seems more to suggest that it’s death itself that comes back to life, trying to
drag more life down into its depths.
Where
further comparisons between the films come into play is particularly with the
faults of the characters in not really seeing the danger they’re facing. In Dawn of the Dead, often after barely
escaping certain death, its characters would run around, hooting and hollering,
refusing to check the area for more threats, only finding out where they were
once it was too late. It’s this distinction between recognizing a threat and
then ignoring it in the next scene that is a simple source for frustration from
its viewers. Where Re-Animator draws
some clear parallels here is through Herbert (and Dan) seeming to learn, time
and time again, just how dangerous anything is when it’s brought back to life.
Herbert, without Dan’s help, likely could have died from the attack by Dan’s cat
after he brought him back. From there, the pair decided to bring back a grown
man, failing completely to restrain him in any capacity whatsoever. What
follows is Dan’s girlfriend’s father is killed, and Herbert and Dan nearly die
themselves. And even this seemed to fail to teach Herbert, in particular, the
lesson he needed to. Perhaps thinking that the separation of Dr. Hill’s head
from the rest of his body would leave him too disabled to do anything similar
to the previous experiments gone wrong, but his failure to make any sort of
defensive preparation against unpredictable results makes his ultimate demise
his own fault. Perhaps it’s commentary on the guaranteed havoc caused by
playing god, or perhaps it’s shedding light on simple human disregard for death
and an egotistical failure of inevitable human error. However it’s interpreted,
human ignorance is an easy thing to see in the world, and mistakes come from
that in life as much as it does in cinema.
The
comparisons between Re-Animator and Dawn of the Dead through their different
methods of handling the return to life from death are interesting ones to note
in discussions on death and the repercussions that follow. The idea of
reversing the process of death, particularly in these two films, seems to be
given a rather pessimistic view on the outcomes. People get bitten and die,
only to return and eat more of the living. People die of natural causes and
return to rabidly murder anyone nearby. The living characters don’t learn from
their mistakes, and don’t learn more about the danger of the dead who have come
back. Maybe they’re telling us just how unavoidable death is, even under the
prospect of the potential for that end to be turned back.
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