There are two mad scientists at Miskatonic University, and that is one too many.  First, there is Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), a brain surgeon and a member of the faculty, who is motivated by sex, fame, and power.  The principal goal of his research is the location of the will in the brain.

The other mad scientist is Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), a medical student. He cares nothing about women or fame, being single-mindedly dedicated to conquering death.  Toward that end, he has developed a reagent, a green, glowing liquid with powers of reanimation, capable of bring the dead back to life. Hence, he is the title character in Re-Animator, the movie loosely based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft. West is so cold and devoid of feeling that he is indifferent to the pain he causes when he reanimates the dead, supposing himself to be doing them a favor.  Throughout the movie, when West injects his reagent into a corpse or a dead cat, he brings them back to life all right, but they are screaming in agony.  This Grand Guignol masterpiece is replete with hilarious scenes of horror and gore.  I especially liked the one where Hill inserts a cue tip deep into the brain of a cadaver.  Perhaps he was hoping to find some will-residue on the cue tip when he pulled it back out.

West is openly contemptuous of Hill, whose intellect he regards as inferior to his own. Having previously accused him of plagiarism, he says to him, right in front of the other students in Hill’s class, “You should have stolen more of Dr. Gruber’s ideas.  Then at least you’d have ideas.”

Hill finds out about West’s reagent and tries to coerce West into letting Hill get credit for it. While Hill’s back is turned, West whacks him in the head with a shovel and then uses that shovel to chop his head off. He places the head in a bowl, but it keeps falling over.  Off to one side, there is a paper spike.  West puts that in the bowl and jams Hill’s head down on it, making it stand upright.  Ah, that’s much better!

He reanimates the separated head and body, all in the name of scientific research, of course. The body knocks West out while he is examining the head, and then it picks up the head and the bowl it is in, steals all of West’s reagent, and leaves. After kidnapping Dean Halsey’s daughter, Megan (Barbara Crampton), with whom Hill is obsessed, he has her stripped naked and strapped to a table. Then Hill’s head lasciviously watches as his headless body feels her up.  After that, Hill’s body holds Hill’s severed head and moves it around so that he can violate Megan with his tongue.  This scene of ludicrous love is interrupted when West shows up, leading to a final struggle between the two mad scientists, with Hill in control of reanimated corpses from the morgue.

During the final struggle, West overdoses Hill’s body with two syringes full of reagent.  In response, the intestines of Hill’s body wrap around West, dragging him to his doom.  Unfortunately, Megan is also killed in the chaos.  Dan (Bruce Abbott), another medical student, who is in love with her, rushes her to the emergency room.  Standard methods are employed to revive her, but all fail.  Dan looks at Megan, brings his lips to hers, and tenderly kisses her.  For a moment, we think that she will be revived in a fairy-tale way, like Sleeping Beauty.  But no, she’s still dead.  With grim determination, Dan picks up a syringe and fills it with the reagent.  He injects it into her brain.  Darkness closes around.  And then we hear her scream.

There are many versions of this movie.  Usually, a director’s cut has more than was shown theatrically, but not so here, where the director’s cut resulted in many scenes being deleted that should have been left in. First of all, these include scenes that make it clear that Hill has mesmeric powers. It is fitting that the man whose research focuses on the location of the will in the brain should have the power to control the will of others. More importantly, it helps us understand why Hill has so much influence over Dean Halsey, Megan, and even West, though only briefly; we understand how he can control his own body with his severed head; and we understand how he can control the corpses he has reanimated in the morgue. Without these scenes of mesmerism, we don’t fully understand how he can do these things.

Second, the deleted scenes make for a smoother plot.  For example, Hill is jealous of Dan because he is Megan’s boyfriend.  In the director’s cut, when West tells Dan that Hill wanted to make him “disappear,” we wonder if West is just making that up; in a deleted scene, we see Hill telling West that Dan will be made to disappear.

Third, several of the deleted scenes further develop West’s character. Both in his physical appearance and his manner, he reminds me of Dean Stockwell’s portrayal of Judd in Compulsion (1959). Judd, of course, was that movie’s version of Leopold in the notorious Loeb and Leopold case, in which two psychopathic geniuses from wealthy families decide to commit the perfect crime in order to prove they are Nietzschean supermen. Without seeing the deleted scenes, I might not have made that connection.  It may be that the director, Stuart Gordon, never intended such a connection, but he should have, because it fits perfectly.

Fourth, there is a deleted scene where West is discussing with Dan what they are going to do about Dr. Hill. West seems to be bothered in some way, and he lurches toward his room. When Dan goes to see what West is doing, he finds him with a syringe and a bottle of reagent, about to mainline himself. West assures him it is just a weak solution, only enough to keep the brain sharp, so he won’t have to sleep. Dan helps his shoot up, after which West is rejuvenated, in complete command of every faculty, and ready to make a plan.

Gordon said he deleted these scenes because he felt that they slowed down the pacing, and that is a shame. The scenes are included in the DVD, and it is worth making the effort to watch them. Not every deleted scene should have been kept in, of course. The dream sequence, in particular, does not belong in the movie, and its deletion was appropriate.  Supposedly, there is a version called the “integral cut” that puts the deleted scenes back in.  That sounds great, but as I have not seen it, I cannot vouch for it.