Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, "The big noise is Combs, a small, compact man of terrific intensity and concentration." David Edelstein, writing for Village Voice, placed the film in his year-end Top Ten Movies list. In their book Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft, Andrew Migliore and John Strysik write: "Re-Animator took First Prize at the Paris Festival of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, a Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and even spawned a short-lived series of comic books. Even though it was a hit with audiences, the film generated a huge amount of controversy among Lovecraft readers. Fans thought the film a desecration of Lovecraft; their literary hero would never write such obvious exploitation! But the final criticism of the film might have been a bit more muted if these fans had actually read the 'West' stories, which are pure exploitation. Lovecraft himself acknowledged as much, and female love interest and black sex humor aside, Re-Animator really is one of the more faithful and effective adaptations." Bruce C. Hallenbeck, in his book Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914-2008, said the film was one of the few to successfully combine genuine scares with genuine laughs, and praised Combs's performance as retaining the theatricality of classic horror stars. He remarked that "Re-Animator broke down the barriers between 'splatter movies' and comedy-horror films. Its buckets of gore mixed with barrels of laughs, and it opened up a whole new realm where nothing was sacred and nothing was taboo." Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 62 reviews and gave the film an approval rating of 94%, with an average rating of 7.81/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Perfectly mixing humor and horror, the only thing more effective than Re-Animators gory scares are its dry, deadpan jokes." Metacritic gave the film a rating of 73 out of 100 based on reviews from 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Entertainment Weekly ranked the film number 32 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films," and number 14 on their "The Cult 25: The Essential Left-Field Movie Hits Since '83" list. LegacyRe-Animator was followed by two sequels: Bride of Re-Animator in 1990 and Beyond Re-Animator in 2003. Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon directed another film based on an H. P. Lovecraft story, From Beyond (1986); though it featured a story unrelated to Re-Animator, it also