aside from some dubious handling of its female character, I loved Re-Animator
This certainly bugs me, in a rewrity way. As far as I'm concerned, it's her story insofar as she's the one who suffers and changes most--Herbert West is the reason people watch this movie, but he enters as a cold monomaniac and leaves as one, and Dan Cain remains an everyman--and I care about her more than I think the creators ever meant me to. Hey, she loses her father in a ghastly way, gets him back at once in an even worse way, watches him suffer, fights like hell to work out what's going on and make it stop, fails, gets violated by a severed head, fights back, dies... (The whole plot thread with zombie!Dr. Halsey hits all my dread buttons. The subtext becomes text, and Megan is watching her father suffer from Alzheimer's or senile dementia.) I have to write the story about Megan-Halsey-by-any-other-name one of these days.
I am delighted that you love this movie. Sometimes things are built up and built up for me so much that the actual event is a let-down. I'd forgotten till recently how damn funny it is. It starts with the cat Muppet chase sequence, and never lets up. Jeffrey Combs scowls in frustration like a mad pug, and speaks in boldface italics with icicles dripping off the letters. (Overpronouncing his words and spitting his consonants, he sounds like a homeschooled student or someone from a very old-fashioned family. I sometimes worry that I sound like that.)
Here's a charming interview with Jeffrey Combs as himself, sounding nothing like any of his screen characters:
I'm also fond of David Gale as Dr. Hill, prehensile twenty-seven feet of intestines and all. It was a nice touch to have him be a sordid sort of real-life villain, manipulating his boss, plagiarizing, and trying to coerce his dirty-old-man way into Megan's pants. He reminds me of the Oscar Wilde line about how once someone commits murder it's not uncommon to find them cheating on their income-tax returns. The actor shaved his head for the role and wore a gross-looking toupee: that's dedication.
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This certainly bugs me, in a rewrity way. As far as I'm concerned, it's her story insofar as she's the one who suffers and changes most--Herbert West is the reason people watch this movie, but he enters as a cold monomaniac and leaves as one, and Dan Cain remains an everyman--and I care about her more than I think the creators ever meant me to. Hey, she loses her father in a ghastly way, gets him back at once in an even worse way, watches him suffer, fights like hell to work out what's going on and make it stop, fails, gets violated by a severed head, fights back, dies... (The whole plot thread with zombie!Dr. Halsey hits all my dread buttons. The subtext becomes text, and Megan is watching her father suffer from Alzheimer's or senile dementia.) I have to write the story about Megan-Halsey-by-any-other-name one of these days.
I am delighted that you love this movie. Sometimes things are built up and built up for me so much that the actual event is a let-down. I'd forgotten till recently how damn funny it is. It starts with the cat Muppet chase sequence, and never lets up. Jeffrey Combs scowls in frustration like a mad pug, and speaks in boldface italics with icicles dripping off the letters. (Overpronouncing his words and spitting his consonants, he sounds like a homeschooled student or someone from a very old-fashioned family. I sometimes worry that I sound like that.)
Here's a charming interview with Jeffrey Combs as himself, sounding nothing like any of his screen characters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7CvyJGgMyQ
I'm also fond of David Gale as Dr. Hill, prehensile twenty-seven feet of intestines and all. It was a nice touch to have him be a sordid sort of real-life villain, manipulating his boss, plagiarizing, and trying to coerce his dirty-old-man way into Megan's pants. He reminds me of the Oscar Wilde line about how once someone commits murder it's not uncommon to find them cheating on their income-tax returns. The actor shaved his head for the role and wore a gross-looking toupee: that's dedication.