Really Awful Movies

In this REALLY AWFUL MOVIES PODCAST, we explore how we both got into gore and the early horror movies that fueled our passion for the genre.

We focus on the origins of the name of our website, Really Awful Movies, which actually celebrates low budget cinema (and how “awful” is an archaism for something that inspires awe).

The talk begins, with of all things, a Christopher Plummer period piece (!) in which the legendary Canuck stars as Sherlock Holmes in an imagined investigation into the Whitechapel Jack the Ripper murders.

We then look at the gateway drug, Night of the Living Dead, then The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th Part II (because that was all that was available at the video store), and briefly touch on the Holy Trinity of Italian Horror: Fulci, Argento and Bava. Did we mention we like movies with “massacre” in the title?

No talk of scary indulgences would be complete without discussions of Grimm fairy tales, “violent” music (metal, early blues and rap) misperceptions about people who love horror.

Enjoy the REALLY AWFUL MOVIES PODCAST
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“I’ve conquered brain death!”
Herbert West

There’s no need to breathe new life into Re-Animator. It’s just as vibrant, funny and disgusting as we remember it — a true classic.

It’s not just that the effects and script are better than about 90% of its frequently anoxic competition, but it’s the reverie and the reverence for films past: the mad scientist / Frankenstein lab movies, nods to The Brain that Wouldn’t Die. It’s simply head and shoulders above the rest. But who’s going to believe a talking head?

First time director, Chicagoan Stuart Gordon took his source material from HP Lovecraft and visual cues from Kubrick (low hall way shots and cameras entering into rooms) and Polanski and set out to make a horror because they’d likely be the most profitable of any genre of film made for less than a million bucks.

In fact, Gordon admits to having a weak stomach, something which didn’t dissuade him from researching local morgues and hospitals and conferring with pathologists to find out what bodies really look like.

Re-Animator is a horror gumbo, containing ingredients that can be found in damn-near every genre of horror movie: gory deaths, warnings about the perils of embracing scientism, a diabolical genius, the summit of jump scares in the form of poor feline Rufus, requisite nudity and zombies, lots of zombies!

The only thing missing is a jerry-rigged backstory to justify a masked killer’s sinister motivations and after seeing our fair share of that, we’re entirely glad it’s absent here.

Jeffrey Coombs as prodigy med student Herbert West is a single-minded sinister geek —think a mini-Me Bill Gates — is unforgettable. He’s a protégé of some Swiss medical geniuses whose command of the German language is…well…schrecklich. (that’s probably the film’s single flaw).

At a made-up Massachusetts medical school (quite obviously filmed somewhere semi-tropical) he bests his professors with his knowledge of how long the brain can last after death.

And perhaps for extra credit, he develops a serum that can bring the dead back to life, which he of course tests on poor poor Rufus, the dean and blowhard faculty member, the hubristic Dr. Carl Hill (whose prominence in this very website’s design demonstrate just how highly we regard this film and its Man in the Pan).

Barbara Crampton, a late substitute when another actress got cold feet, is of course, iconic as the dean’s daughter and for what happens to her. Let’s just say that one goes down in history as one of our favorites.

***** (out of 5)