There have been a number of great actors through cinema history who have been a little too successful with an earlier role, to the point that audiences come to identify them almost exclusively for a particular performance. Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho is an obvious example - Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West in the cult classic Re-Animator is another. As the title implies, Re-Animator is a quintessential mad scientist movie through and through, with Herbert West determined to bring the dead back to life no matter the cost. Based on the story by H. P. Lovecraft called Herbert West - Reanimator, director Stuart Gordon takes the Frankenstein-esque model and injects it with a sharp streak of bizarre comedy and full-on gore, creating one of the greatest horror-comedies of all time.;. Released in 1985, Re-Animator can be viewed as part of the golden age of Hollywood horror when excess and gore was splattered across the screen with macabre delight, and indeed the genre today often feels like little more than lazy, corporate fare completely lacking in the inventively gleeful over the top excesses of their predecessors. Gordon and Combs went on to make two sequels, both entertaining but never quite reaching the same heights as the original.
