Trivia / Re-Animator

• Completely Different Title:
  • Brazil: Undead Time
  • Greece: Living-Dead
  • Japan: ZOMBIO: Drifting Spirits
  • Mexico: Satanic Resurrection
  • Portugal: The Malevolent Serum
  • Taiwan: Ghost Race
  • Thailand: Head Swapper
• Contractual Immortality: Being played by Jeffrey Combs ensures that West survives the gory finale of each film against all odds— a sharp 180 degree inversion from the original novella, in which West ends up a victim of his reanimation subjects, torn to pieces by an undead mob.
• Development Hell: The long-awaited fourth installment, House of Re-Animator, where Dr. West is called on when the president dies, co-starring William H. Macy!
• Happy Ending: A Real Life example. David Gale had grown tired of acting and had been doing it for the paycheck for years when he was cast. Much to his surprise, he realized that he loved hamming it up and actually wrote director Stuart Gordon a note thanking him for "re-animating [his] love of acting." Gale's agent put the word out that he would be interested in more sci-fi and horror films. Because of Gale's awesome work as the loathsome Dr. Hill, he had his pick of roles until his death years later.
• Money, Dear Boy: The original short stories. Lovecraft never really liked his Re-animator stories and wrote them only because he got five dollars per installment.
• Recursive Adaptation: A Novelization of the movie by Jeff Rovin (who also novelized Cliffhanger), with lots of Adaptation Expansion for the movie's universe, including greatly expanding on Herbert's relationship with Dr. Gruber.
• Typecasting: Herbert West was one of Jeffrey Combs' first lead roles, which is why almost everything he's done since, with some notable exceptions, has been Horror, and mostly Lovecraftian Horror, at that.
• What Could Have Been: There have been rumors of a fourth movie entitled House of Re-Animator which has been denied by Jeffrey Combs on numerous occasions. The movie would involve Herbert West moving into the White House and reanimating the deceased vice president. Stuart Gordon has stated that while he did originally intend to create this film, he saw no need for a political satire after the end of the Bush administration. The planned film gets referenced at the end of the crossover with Hack/Slash, where West takes an emergency call from the White House.
  • Brian Yuzna has also planned two other sequels: Re-Animator Unbound! and Re-Animator Begins. The former involves West working in a war zone and coming across the Old Ones. The latter involves West losing his memory after his encounter with the Old Ones, reproducing his earliest experiments, and falling in love with a woman. We also see a flashback to West's childhood. But like House, these seem to be on the back-burner.
  • A Younger and Hipper, Hotter and Sexier television series was proposed, but nothing came of it. Read about it here and here.
• Word of Saint Paul:
  • According to Bruce Abbott, Dan Cain is a Scholarship Student, which is why Dean Halsey withdraws his loan and why Dan is so distraught over the news.
  • Jeffrey Combs stated that Dr. West is asexual.
• When David Gale's wife first saw the infamous "giving head" scene, she stormed out shouting "David, how could you?!" This has been confirmed by Stuart Gordon.

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