Fantasia 2010 Viral: Re-Animator

In honor of the 25th anniversary of classic splatter-comedy Re-Animator, Fantasia hosted a midnight screening of a 35mm print of the film, followed by a mammoth Q&A session presided over by director Stuart Gordon, actor Jeffrey (Dr. Herbert West) Combs, and screenwriter Dennis Paoli. We were there to capture the festivities on video (below).

Re-Animator, about a doctor who has discovered – but not perfected – the secret to bringing the dead back to life and the rival doctor who will stop at nothing to claim the discovery as his own, holds up surprisingly well after 25 years. It’s a film best seen on the big screen with an audience, as the over-the-top gore and most memorable lines elicit the wildest of responses from the crowd.

Gordon, Combs, and Paoli may have been the busiest men at the fest, at least during their three days there. After the Friday midnight screening of the film, all three hosted a chat with the audience that amounted to an almost hour-long love-in, following which Gordon announced that the night owls could stick around to watch rehearsal footage of his next project, a stage musical of Re-Animator. Then, on Saturday and Sunday night, Gordon directed Combs for two performances of Nevermore…An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe, their critically-acclaimed one-man play in which Combs takes us back in time to one of Poe’s public recitals near the end of his life. Combs delivers an astounding performance as a man descending into madness, ranting and raving – and getting progressively drunk! – on stage. And yet, Combs as Poe is at his best when doing readings of two of his most beloved works, “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart“. The emotion and flair for the dramatic with which he reads them is enthralling, making the audience almost forget that they are watching a play rather than actually witnessing the writer proudly reading from his own works.

And that’s not all. On Sunday afternoon, Gordon and Paoli paid a visit to Montreal’s newly-minted Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, where they held a master class on adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s works for the screen. In the intimate setting (the ‘classroom’ seats approximately 60 people), Paoli discussed the challenges of modernizing the author’s tales and making his mythos more accessible to the masses, while the duo presented and discussed clips from their Lovecraftian films like Re-Animator and From Beyond.