The Lure of the Deviant: Queerness and Subversion in Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator

From black and white vampire movies of the 1930s to the slasher boom of the 70s and 80s to even the polished, well-respected movies today, horror has always thrived as a subversive, chaotic genre. This aspect shines brightest in the B-movies of the 1980s, made with big ambitions and shoestring budgets. Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985) is one of these films, a modern adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s series, “Herbert West - Reanimator.” The film tells the story of an ambitious experiment gone wrong, then attempted again, and again, and again, going wrong each time. Herbert West moves to New England to study medicine at Miskatonic University after leaving the University of Zurich, where he studied previously, after something terrible happened to the man he worked with. West is not just a dedicated medical student, however; he mainly focuses on a strange personal project: a serum he calls “Re-Agent” which brings the dead back to life. Needing a space for this work, he moves in with fellow medical student Dan Cain, who needs help with rent because his fiancé, Meg Halsey, will not move in with him yet. Though Herbert does not set out to find an assistant, he unexpectedly finds one in Dan, who he convinces of the importance of his work, and they begin to do experiments together. The film devolves into chaos, with reanimated corpses consistently becoming violent and every side character quickly becoming wrapped up in the collateral of Herbert’s work. This chaos centers entirely on Herbert: a small, dark, gaunt figure with no concern for social niceties or much human emotion. Herbert disrupts all sense of normalcy any character may have had in their education, job, relationships, and existence. He destroys families, relationships, and lives with a plunge of a syringe and shows no care or concern about any of it. Every time he subverts order and creates chaos, his queerness shows itself. I also assert that Herbert, and specifically his queerness, must be evaluated through a horror-specific lens, as the genre must be viewed from a perspective that differs from how we view other genres.

The horror genre is one that deals with the concept of the Other: a convention that lends itself to queer readings. In philosophy and psychology, the Other is defined as one that is different from the Self, or the Us. A constructed Other is believed to be necessary to construct the Self; you are defined by who you are not. In horror, the Other tends to be the villain. The ‘villains’ of horror stories are often in some way fantastical, over the top, or otherwise coded as different from the ‘good guys’. In his essay “Masculinity and Monstrosity: Characterization and Identification in the Slasher Film”, Klaus Rieser argues that the nature of Otherness presents itself through the lens of a character’s gender. He writes of the killer, “his monstrosity is almost always defined in terms of gender deviance or sexual deviance from a hegemonic masculine ideal. That is, he is a defective, abnormal, perhaps nonmasculine man” (Rieser 380). This defectiveness may have, narratively, driven him to his monstrous nature as we see it in the film. For example, an impotent or virginal man may be driven to murder sexually active teenagers as revenge against the universe for his plight. When reading a villain as queer, this cause and effect can appear problematic, enforcing the idea that gender non-conforming and/or otherwise queer individuals murder or cause harm to others because of their queerness. To an extent, this is true. Horror has a reputation as a problematic genre, due in no small part to its negative history of misogyny, ableism, racism, and homo/transphobia. However, the unique nature of horror forces us to view it in a different way than other genres. In his book Monsters in the closet: Homosexuality and the horror film, Harry Benshoff writes that in the horror genre “the conventions of normality are ritualistically overturned within a prescribed period of time in order to celebrate the lure of the deviant” (Benshoff 13). It is through this skewed lens that we must analyze horror. The slashers, monsters, demons, and ghouls are the reason the genre exists and continues to excite and inspire audiences. Without the deviant, there is no horror film. One does not watch a horror movie in the hopes that no one dies, or nothing terrible happens. The viewer wants it, needs it, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. In this way, the villain often becomes the protagonist and spectators can celebrate the atrocities they commit. This aspect of the genre helps to neutralize some of the negative associations one might have with seeing a queer coded villain.

The introductory scenes of the main characters and their relationships in Re-Animator establish roles and main functions for each of them quite clearly. We first meet Herbert in Switzerland, as the film opens on security guards and doctors investigating a commotion coming from a locked room at the University of Zurich. The security guards break open the door and they are treated to the sight of an older man, Dr. Gruber, screaming and moaning on the floor while a younger man with his back turned to them crouches before him. The security officers grab the younger man and pull him away from Gruber, who stands up and sprays blood from his eyes before collapsing again, dead. One doctor accuses Herbert of killing Dr. Gruber, to which he replies, “I gave him life” (Re-Animator). The viewer is introduced to Herbert at the same time that they are introduced to his work and his obsession with life and death. These are his defining characteristics and what drives the plot of the film, so this scene sets him up perfectly. After an opening credits sequence, we are introduced to Dan Cain, our other protagonist. He attempts to resuscitate a patient and argues with the lead doctor when she declares the patient dead. Much like Herbert, Dan wants to bring this woman back to life. He simply does not have the means to do so yet. Dan and Herbert contrast in a way that Margaret Tarratt describes as a commonality in science fiction films. She writes, “The scientist with his total dedication to advanced knowledge is an unbalanced figure, ruthless in defense of his own research. The hero is an ordinary man with a healthy physique, leadership qualities, a controlled sexual drive, and only average intellect - a good all rounder” (Tarratt 5). While Herbert seems unstable and completely dedicated to his work, despite the horrific consequences, Dan exemplifies the hero figure: a compassionate man simply doing his best. His sexual drive and urges are shown in his first scene with his fiancé, Meg, though that scene does not come until after he meets Herbert. While being given a tour of Miskatonic by the Dean, Herbert runs into Dan and Dr. Carl Hill, the film’s main antagonist, in the morgue. He gets into a small argument with Dr. Hill, lacking tact or the social skills necessary to prevent him from accusing a man he has just met of plagiarism. He presents a kind of tunnel vision here: when Dan asks “What were you researching?” and holds out his hand for Herbert to shake, West pushes past him, through his hand without acknowledging it, and responds plainly, “Death” (Re-Animator). While the Dean and Dr. Hill speak to each other, Herbert and Dan stand in the foreground of the shot and meet eyes. It is not exactly the meet-cute of a romantic comedy, but this moment of acknowledgment, particularly on the part of Herbert, who rarely cares enough to acknowledge anyone, carries significance nonetheless. Finally, we are introduced to Meg, another student at Miskatonic, the Dean’s daughter, and Dan’s fiancé. We see them together at school only briefly before the film cuts directly to them having sex. Through this editing style, the film quickly establishes that Meg’s primary function as a character is that of a sex object, with her only secondary function being that of Dan’s fiancé. This also serves to portray Dan as heterosexual, or at least in some part attracted to women. Establishing Dan as such is important to the implications of his character arc, especially in analyzing his relationship with Herbert.

In the first scene involving all three students, Herbert is established as a disruptive force and somewhat of a wedge between Dan and Meg. Dan posted a call for a housemate on a school cork board and Herbert takes it. His knock on Dan’s door to inquire about it is timed perfectly to interrupt Meg and Dan’s post-coital goofing around, the first indicator that he might come between them. Of this kind of triadic relationship, Harry Benshoff writes “the heterosexualized couple in these films is invariably banal and underdeveloped in relation to the sadomasochistic villain(s), whose outrageous exploits are, after all, the raison d ’etre of the genre” (Benshoff 11). With Herbert serving as a protagonist with villainous qualities, he brings out just how boring Meg and Dan are. This scene shifts in tone as soon as Herbert enters, switching from a moment of young romance back to a mad science movie. Herbert and Meg instantly start to butt heads, quickly establishing their interpersonal conflict throughout the movie: a fight over Dan. When Meg refers to him as “Mr. West,” he does not comment. When Dan refers to him in the same way, Herbert tells him instead to use his first name. Whether he has already decided to recruit Dan as an assistant at this point, we do not know, but this instant assertion of a more personal relationship, especially in front of Dan’s fiancé, feels pointed. After showing Herbert around the house (and ignoring Meg as she tries to convince him not to allow Mr. West to move in) Dan stands in the basement with the two of them to make a final decision. Meg stands between the two men, turned to watch them both as they make their deal. Herbert passes the first month’s rent to Dan, who takes it and says, “Done” directly to Herbert. Herbert instead turns towards Meg and repeats, “Done”, smugly, as though he has just won. (Re-Animator). He’s beaten her in the first of the small battles that indicate their rivalry over Dan.

Herbert’s relationship with Dan becomes queer-coded in ways other than his petty interactions with Meg; namely in his impulse to care for the other man. In his book The Trouble With Normal, Michael Warner establishes a form of queer ethics based on intimacy that David Church summarizes as, “a queer ethics insists on forms of intimacy and care that are not limited to normative constructs like the nuclear family or the monogamous couple, instead embracing a far more multiplicitous range of erotic connections among partners, friends, and even strangers” (Church 11). Herbert embodies this ethic in Dan’s life, being intimate with and caring for him in ways that are perhaps a bit grotesque but nonetheless important and notably different from Dan’s monogamous, heterosexual relationship. When Dan’s cat, Rufus, dies and he and Meg find it in Herbert’s fridge, Herbert speaks curtly to Meg but with Dan, his tone softens and he says, “I was going to tell you … I knew you were fond of it” (Re-Animator). Even Herbert’s attempts to reanimate Rufus’ corpse is as an act of care, trying to bring back something he knew Dan would want to see alive again. Visually, the most obvious instance comes when Dan collapses to the floor in shock after their first, disastrous attempt to reanimate human corpses. He curls up on the floor of the morgue, shaking and afraid. Herbert enters the frame from above him, holding a blanket that he covers Dan with and gently attempts to wrap around him. He pats Dan on the chest before getting up to continue his work. He needs his assistant but not so badly that he cannot allow the other man to rest. In an uncharacteristic moment of tenderness, he considers Dan’s needs and attempts to provide for him. His impulse to care for Dan sets their relationship apart especially because it does not appear that Herbert cares for anyone else at all. Each of these acts of care is in service of Herbert’s greater purpose, but that in and of itself is an act of intimacy. He wants Dan to be a part of the work that he has dedicated his entire being to. If the Re-Agent were to be perfected, theoretically both men would use it on themselves, as implied by Herbert’s “and live lifetimes” comment to Dan while convincing him to assist. This mirrors a ‘til death do us part’ vow and pushes it even further, as death would no longer exist.

Through Herbert’s subversion of the natural order of life and death, he reveals a desire within himself to birth, which in itself has warped, queer connotations. Standing with Dan as they watch Rufus, clearly in pain, raise from the dead a second time, Herbert remarks, “Birth is always painful”. Here he acknowledges his birth impulse, but with a marked difference from a procreative one. In his book No Future, Lee Edelman argues that “queerness … figures, outside and beyond its political symptoms, the place of the social order’s death drive” (Edelman 3) and goes on to state that “queerness attains its ethical value precisely insofar as it aceeds to that place” (Edelman 3). He asserts that queerness is inherently non-procreative and is ethically obligated to be the force of society’s “death drive” (Edelman 3). Herbert brings life, but it is not new life. He simply tries to maintain the lives of those who already exist, reaching a stalemate, a kind of stasis. This existence somewhere between life and death challenges the idea of “reproductive futurism” (Edelman 4). In Herbert’s ideal world, the Re-Agent works and the need to maintain your legacy after death through reproduction is gone, because death is gone. Science fiction movies “arrive at social comment through a dramatization of the individual’s anxiety about his or her own repressed sexual desires, which are incompatible with the morals of civilized life” (Tarratt 2). Though Herbert’s birthing desire is not explicitly sexual in nature, nor is it necessarily repressed, it is incompatible with so-called “civilized life” (Tarratt 2). The social comment Re-Animator then arrives at is a queer one, with it’s main character taking a stand against reproductive futurism. Herbert has no desire to nurture those that he re-animates, so his instinct is not to ‘mother’ but simply to rebirth and maintain stasis.

An important component of any horror movie is who makes it out alive. Does the villain win or is he defeated by a Final Girl, bruised and bloodied and forced to kill? In Re-Animator, this is difficult to pin down. According to the sequels, Bride of Re-Animator (1989) and Beyond Re-Animator (2003), Herbert lives. However, in looking at just the end of Re-Animator (1985), it is clear that Herbert dies, killed by a mass of re-animated corpses. As I am analyzing the original Re-Animator as a standalone text, Herbert’s death is the canonical ending I will use for this paper. In that case, the only protagonist to survive the film is Dan. Herbert’s death is of his own design, killed by the very beings he strove to create. His hubris and chaos catch up to him and he is choked by his monstrous desires. Dan, despite undeniably helping Herbert, is forgiven by the narrative and allowed to live. This represents a pattern of punishing the queer-coded character for their ‘unnatural desires’ while allowing the ‘normal’ character who was drawn to the unnatural to get off scot-free. Harry Benshoff ties this to real world attitudes, particularly in the 40s, around homosexuality in the Army. He writes, “it was acknowledged that the same-sex environments of the Armed Services might lead ‘normal’ men and women into such vices, it was the ‘habitual’ effeminate male homosexual or the mannish lesbian who was most often singled out for persecution. When ‘normal-seeming’ men and women … were caught in homosexual situations, they were more likely to be given another chance, since they weren’t ‘true’ homosexuals, but had simply given in to understandable, situational temptations,” (Benshoff 83). In the same way that a ‘normal-seeming’ man in the Army might be given another chance by his superiors, Dan is given another chance by the narrative of the film by allowing him to live. In the case of film, Benshoff also argues that this trope “masks the ‘normal’ person’s universalizing desire for the minoritized queer” (Benshoff 114). I assert that Re-Animator does not fall into this erasure, based on what Dan does with his ‘second chance’. After Meg and Dan escape the final frenzy in the morgue, Meg is attacked and choked by a re-animated corpse that has made its way out into the hallway. Despite Dan and the hospital staff’s best efforts, Meg dies and Dan is faced with a choice. In the hospital room with him is a bag containing Herbert’s work, including some vials of the Re-Agent. In an attempt to restore his own heterosexuality and bring back the woman he was supposed to marry to solidify a ‘normal’ life for himself, he attempts to re-animate her. We are not shown what happens, but based on the re-animations demonstrated by the rest of the film, we can assume it does not go very well. In continuing to return to Herbert’s work and therefore to their relationship, Dan’s desire is not erased. He is proof that there is no ‘situational homosexual’, only people who either do or do not have queer desires. Dan’s own presumably previously repressed desires are engaged by Herbert’s presence, and once they have been brought to the surface they cannot be shoved back down again.

When analyzing queer coding in horror, particularly in villains or morally grey characters, one has to recognize when they are falling into and inadvertently celebrating homophobic tropes. Daniel Humphrey sets up a good analytical framework in his essay “Gender and Sexuality Haunts the Horror Film” by discussing The Exorcist. He writes:

"The Exorcist offers up the possibility of an appalling horror that few have recognized, and one that ultimately begs a key question: is The Exorcist haunted by a queer spirit or a homosexual demon? If the first is the case, if a puckish queer spirit inhabits the film … an argument can be made that The Exorcist has the power to subvert and undermine the cultural values standing behind mainstream assertions of heterosexual normalcy. If the latter is the case, however, and the demon possessing the young Regan might be thought of as a homosexual … The Exorcist ultimately must be considered for its potentially reactionary or homophobic inferences. "(Humphrey 47-48)

The question of a “homosexual demon” versus a “queer spirit” (Humphrey 47) is one that should be considered when analyzing Re-Animator as well. Is Herbert a homosexual villain or is he a radical and subversive queer force? To answer this question, it must first be determined whether Herbert is the villain of the story. This is complicated, as he is the cause of much destruction and is the catalyst for most of the violence in the film. However, the presence of Dr. Hill, an arguably more clearly established antagonist, muddies the water. Dr. Hill is a rapist, a plagiarist, and a man who exists only to serve his own desires. Though Herbert is similarly single minded, there is something charming about the way he does it, especially since he does not enact sexual violence. If Herbert is not the villain, what is he? That, again, is complicated, and an aspect of the subversion he presents. In being morally grey, he overturns the idea that the protagonist must be good (at least mostly). As argued previously, his work aims to rebel against heteronormative, procreative ideas of life, death, and birth. Finally, through his interactions with Dan we see him subverting the traditional ideas of who provides intimacy and care to another and how they do it. Through these radical acts, Herbert moves past being simply a villain queer coded for shock value. Indeed, he goes further than being just a “queer spirit” (Humphrey 47) inhabiting the film. His presence is active, rallying against tradition in every aspect of his life. Though it does not turn out well for him, he pushes boundaries and encourages others (Dan) to do the same.

Of horror, Carol Clover writes “I will never see any kind of movie with quite the same eyes again” (Clover 20), exemplifying the transformative nature of the genre. Horror is polarizing, with some denouncing it as extremely harmful and others worshipping at its altar. Despite its many issues and the dangerous tropes it often falls into, this genre has such potential, more so to me than any other. Horror allows creators to break rules they wouldn’t break in any other genre. It’s freeing, and allows often for no holds barred madness. Re-Animator becomes completely mad at the end, with the final climax of the movie being a huge fight between the three protagonists and an army of re-animated corpses all controlled by Dr. Hill’s severed head. It’s wacky, but that is what is so perfect about the film. Re-Animator is funny, it is gory, it has plot holes, and extremely memorable one off lines. Most importantly, It has Herbert West. Small, gaunt, snarky, single minded, queer Herbert West. He is so sure of himself, so determined to be exactly who he is that he forces the world around him to distort and shift to fit him. There is something contagious in his determination. I have personally watched Re-Animator a number of times and each time I do I am awestruck by Herbert and wish, in many ways, that I could be more like him. To look the world in the face and say “I’m not going to do it that way” is a brave act, but a draining one. Queer people in the real world are often forced to do it every single day, challenging many people’s worldviews just by existing. But Herbert relishes in it, he chooses to go above and beyond and dare even the immutable forces of life and death to bend to his will. In reading him as queer, we bring his otherworldly subversions to the worldly plane and celebrate them. Yes, celebrate. In spite of the violence and destruction, we should celebrate him. That is what horror is all about, after all: “celebrat[ing] the lure of the deviant” (Benshoff 13).

Works Cited

Benshoff, Harry M. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester

University Press, 1997.

Church, David. “Queer Ethics, Urban Spaces, and the Horrors of Monogamy in It Follows.”

Cinema Journal, vol. 57, no. 3, 2018, pp. 3–28.

Clover, Carol. “Carrie and the Boys.” Men, Women and Chainsaws, Princeton University

Press, 1992, pp. 3–20.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Duke University Press, 2007.

Gordon, Stuart, director. Re-Animator. Empire International Pictures, 1985.

Rieser, Klaus. “Masculinity and Monstrosity: Characterization and Identification in the Slasher Film.” SAGE Social Sciences Collection, Sage Publications, Inc, 2001.

Tarratt, Margaret. “Monsters of the Id.” Film Genre Reader IV, University of Texas Press,

2012.

Warner, Michael. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. Harvard University Press, 2003.