Re-Animator (also known as H. P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator) is a 1985 American comedy horror film loosely based on the 1922 H. P. Lovecraft serial novelette "Herbert West–Reanimator". Directed by Stuart Gordon and produced by Brian Yuzna, the film stars Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West, a medical student who has invented a reagent which can re-animate deceased bodies. He and his classmate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) begin to test the serum on dead human bodies, and conflict with Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), who is infatuated with Cain's fiancée (Barbara Crampton) and wants to claim the invention as his own. Originally devised by Gordon as a theatrical stage production and later a half-hour television pilot, the television script was revised to become a feature film. Filmed in Hollywood, the film originally was released without a rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, and was later edited to obtain an R rating. It garnered its largest audience through the unrated cut's release on home video. Re-Animator is the first film collaboration between Gordon and Combs, the second being From Beyond, released in 1986. It is the first film in the Re-Animator film series, followed by Bride of Re-Animator in 1990 and Beyond Re-Animator in 2003. Released to mostly positive reviews, Re-Animator has since been considered a cult film. Plot At the University of Zurich Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, Herbert West brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber, back to life. There are horrific side-effects, however; as West explains, the dosage was too large. When accused of killing Gruber, West counters: "I gave him life!" West arrives at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts in order to further his studies as a medical student. He rents a room from fellow medical student Dan Cain and converts the house's basement into his own personal laboratory. West demonstrates his reanimating reagent to Dan by reanimating Dan's dead cat Rufus. The cat behaves viciously that night forcing Dan to kill it again before West reanimates what is left of it. Dan's fiancée Megan Halsey, daughter of the medical school's dean, walks in on this experiment and is horrified. Dan tries to tell the dean about West's success in reanimating the dead cat, but the dean does not believe him. When Dan insists, the dean implies that Dan and West have gone mad. Barred from the school, West and Dan sneak into the morgue to test