Editing Re-Animator (section)

==Production==
The idea to make ''Re-Animator'' came from a discussion [[Stuart Gordon]] had with friends one night about [[vampire]] films.<ref name= "Brody">{{cite news | last = Brody | first = Meredith | title = We Killed 'Em in Chicago | work = [[Film Comment]] | pages = 70 | date = February 1987 }}</ref> He felt that there were too many [[Dracula]] films and expressed a desire to see a [[Frankenstein]] film. Someone asked if he had read "[[Herbert West–Reanimator]]" by [[H. P. Lovecraft]]. Gordon had read most of the author's works, but not that story, which was long out of print. He went to the [[Chicago Public Library]] and read their copy.<ref name= "Brody"/><ref name=Hallcom>{{cite book |title=Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914-2008 |url=https://archive.org/details/comedyhorrorfilm00hall|url-access=limited |last=Hallenbeck |first=Bruce G.|publisher=[[McFarland & Company]]|year=2009 |isbn=9780786453788|pages=142–145}}</ref>

Originally, Gordon was going to adapt Lovecraft's story for the stage, but eventually decided along with writers [[Dennis Paoli]] and William Norris to make it as a half-hour television pilot.<ref name= "Brody"/> The story was set around the turn of the century, and they soon realized that it would be too expensive to recreate. They updated it to the present day in [[Chicago]] with the intention of using actors from the Organic Theater company. They were told that the half hour format was not saleable and so they made it an hour, writing 13 episodes.<ref name= "Brody"/> Special effects technician Bob Greenberg, who had worked on [[John Carpenter]]'s ''[[Dark Star (film)|Dark Star]]'', repeatedly told Gordon that the only market for horror was in feature films, and introduced him to producer [[Brian Yuzna]]. Gordon showed Yuzna the script for the pilot and the 12 additional episodes. The producer liked what he read and convinced Gordon to shoot the film in [[Hollywood, Los Angeles|Hollywood]], because of all the special effects involved. Yuzna made a distribution deal with [[Charles Band]]'s [[Empire Pictures]] in return for post-production services.<ref name= "Brody"/><ref name=GallaDire>{{cite book |last=Gallagher |first=John Andrew |chapter=Stuart Gordon |title=Film Directors on Directing |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |year=1989 |pages=92–93 |isbn=9780275932725 |chapter-url-access=registration |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/filmdirectorsond00gall/page/92}}</ref> However, after viewing the initial [[dailies]] Empire became involved in the actual production, making a number of suggestions, including the recruitment of [[Mac Ahlberg]] as cinematographer.<ref name=GallaDire/>

According to Paoli, the first draft of the script contained no humor whatsoever, and the film's comedic elements only came out over further revisions and during the actual production.<ref name=Hallcom/>

Yuzna described the film as having the "sort of shock sensibility of an ''[[The Evil Dead|Evil Dead]]'' with the production values of, hopefully, ''[[The Howling (film)|The Howling]]''."<ref name= "Fischer">{{cite news | last = Fischer | first = Dennis | title = A Moist Zombie Movie | work = [[Fangoria]] | pages = 44 | date = August 1985 }}</ref> Gordon cited ''[[The Revenge of Frankenstein]]'' as a major inspiration for the film.<ref name=Hallcom/> John Naulin worked on the film's gruesome makeup effects, using what he described as "disgusting shots brought out from the [[Cook County]] morgue of all kinds of different [[Livor mortis|lividities]] and different corpses."<ref name="Fischer2">Fischer 1985, p. 45.</ref> The morgue set was based on the aforementioned Cook County morgue, which was newly built and featured cutting-edge technology; Gordon opted for this look since he felt old morgues had been overdone in horror films.<ref name=GallaDire/> Naulin and Gordon also used a book of [[forensic pathology]] in order to present how a corpse looks once the blood settles in the body, creating a variety of odd skin tones. Naulin said that ''Re-Animator'' was the bloodiest film he had ever worked on: in the past, he had never used more than a couple of gallons (7.6{{tsp}}liters) of blood on a film, but on ''Re-Animator'' he used twelve times as much.<ref name= "Fischer2"/>

[[Jeffrey Combs]] was cast as Herbert West. Combs had never read any H. P. Lovecraft before his casting and was taken aback by the script; he later said he only took the role because he needed the work and assumed the film would never reach a large audience.<ref name=Hallcom/>

[[Principal photography]] began on November 28, 1984, with a six-week shooting schedule,<ref name="AFI"/> though Gordon has boasted that they finished shooting the film in just four weeks.<ref name=GallaDire/> The biggest makeup challenge in the film was the headless Dr. Hill zombie.<ref name= "Fischer2"/> Tony Doublin designed the mechanical effects and was faced with the problem of proportion once the 9&ndash;10&nbsp;inches of the head were removed from the body. Each scene forced him to use a different technique. For example, one technique involved building an upper torso that actor [[David Gale (actor)|David Gale]] could bend over and stick his head through so that it appeared to be the one that the walking corpse was carrying around.<ref name= "Fischer2"/>

The "reanimating agent" itself was the [[Chemiluminescence|chemi{{shy}}lu{{shy}}mi{{shy}}nes{{shy}}cent]] agent [[luminol]].<ref name=GallaDire/>