10 Dead Movie Franchises That Hollywood Must Revive

I’m just going to set out my stall, here: Jeffrey Combs is the gift that keeps on giving. He’s a dramatic actor of some heft who tends to get typecast in creepy, sweaty and obsessive roles because he’s just so damn good at them - but he’s also got magnificent comedy chops and is utterly unafraid of making himself look ridiculous.

All of which is marvellous, because returning to the Re-Animator franchise that made him famous would require all of those things. The Lovecraft-inspired madhouse where Dr. Herbert West lives is a place of horrific tragedy, leavened by perfectly acidic one-liners and occasional gory slapstick, and some of the most amazingly stupid, hilarious practical creature and slime effects that the imagination can bring to bear.

And let’s not forget that Dr. West is the cinema’s finest creepy, sweaty and obsessive mad scientist: a near-sociopathic Frankenstein for the body horror generation. If I had my way, there’d be a new instalment of Re-Animator every Halloween until I need re-animating myself.