10 More Horror Movie Heroes Everyone Forgets About

Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator may be something of a cult classic of the ‘80s horror scene, but few of us remember much beyond crazed anti-hero Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) and the gory but frequently hilarious special effects.

Nevertheless, from the ashes of our memory rises an unsung hero in Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), who is the film's audience surrogate and main protagonist. A medical student who takes Herbert in as a housemate in order to make rent, Dan gets a whole lot more than he bargained for, finding himself helplessly drawn into West's experiments reanimating the dead.  

When the end of the film rolls around, Dan has lost pretty much everything that means anything to him, including his education, his pet cat, his medical license, and his girlfriend Megan (Barbara Crampton), who is strangled by the living dead in the film’s finale. Dan is the all-American classic hero turned inside out, but that’s precisely why we love him, providing the counterpoint to West’s madness, alongside just enough brain and brawn to see him through.