#Carl Hill

[astralbondpro]

Re-Animator (1985) // Dir. Stuart Gordon

[heliojart]

IM GOING INTO LABOR

[bonithica-art]

happy halloween to these freaks

[ornabl]

Just decapitated my professor and reanimated him!

[victoroni-cheese]

He's just being silly don't worry

[joe-spookyy]

finished the reanimator novelization and here are my notes.

stoner dan cain is real and true and he’s in my dream blunt rotation

in the comic his middle name was elston but in this it’s jonathan. what’s the truth…

canonically canadian herbert was shocking but not as shocking as the serum he used on his shitty roommate to turn his semen green forever.

also he’s 24. what a young fellow.

this book was not edited very carefully. not to be a dweeb but i haven’t seen anyone mention the amount of grammatical errors, incorrect references (looking at u larry talbot/tolbot), lack of attention paid to paragraph cuts in the reprint, and literal page by page contradictions on the lore. (claiming hill’s brain/head can feel every sensation that his body feels and then literally on the next page saying that there is no shared sensation)

meg gets a lot more character depth here and i love it i love her meg halsey you will always be famous

and yes she was a horse girl. this is very important to the lore in my opinion.

everyone’s seen the famous “dan cain tells a cop he has AIDS so he can sneak into the hospital scene” but i can tell you all with certainty that it doesn’t make any more sense in context. he could have lied about anything. how and why did he land on that.

they’re a lot clearer about how exactly the reagent works which i thought was neat, although they kept describing it as yellow. that shit is geen

herbert west canonically not Not queer (says nothing when accused of it, looks at floor awkwardly) and everyone in the hospital has clocked him.

way more in depth about how much of a freak dr hill is.

they named all the reanimated corpses which was nice cause even when i’m watching the movie there’s too much going on to recognize any of them so it cleared things up and i finally comprehended for the first time that it was hill’s intestines that strangled herbert and that it was because of the reagent overdose. or whatever. that was probably obvious but i missed it on every one of my watches.

herbert mentions saints and how he wishes gruber could be canonized. this fuels my raised catholic herbert vs raised protestant meg theory and adds to their already powerful beef.

the controversial laid to rest/plagiarist line is in the book sort of. and i’m sorry to say it’s laid to rest. they did swap up some other lines (side note: why did they mess with who’s going to believe a talking head get a job in a sideshow) so this could mean nothing it is just interesting.

this line was crazy.

TLDR: not the greatest piece of literature but pretty fun and adds some cool background information for the characters. would reccomended.

[starred-demation]

That one song from the musical

[kaptainandy]

Here Comes the Bride of Re-Animator article by Chas Balun

from Fangoria #91 | April 1990 (pg. 36 - 40)

bonus highlights because this article altered my brain chemistry:

Right out the gate we are off to the races. Chas really said, "this shit FUCKIN RULES and I will NOT be objective about it!!" Plus calling Herbert, "the bespectacled little guy???" This guy GETS IT!

I too am thankful Dan refuses to leave his "buddy." Is calling two guys "buddies" the gay equivalent of "gal pals?" More at 11.

Fellas....FELLAS??? Commenting on a shirtless Bruce's beefy physique and referring to Jeff as, "small, even delicate," HELLO??? Living for this guy being completely unapologetic in appreciating their physiques. Very understandable.

And lastly, you can't have a comment from Bruce without him being #1 Dan-hater. Calling him a wimp and then confirming that Dan is totally fucked up in the head. Get his ass, king!

[undeadbuzzard]

Re-Animator fandom… We need more David Gale appreciation like look at this guy. He is so neat and such a stunner like. Just needed to get that out of my system

[alxlxlx]

two hours late for reanimator anniversary but more reani reqs + doodles completed :D

[astralbondpro]

Re-Animator (1985) // Dir. Stuart Gordon

[nothingenoughao3]

Why Herbert West Was Never Hypnotized (short answer: he's a lying manipulative little shit who lies)

Since @green-stuff correctly asked why nobody talks about the crying scene from the Integral Cut. A version of the scene can be found here on YouTube:

It's me, I'm no one and I will talk about this forever. (See here where I went on a rant about hypnotism and The Human Will in Re-Animator.)

The popular interpretation I've seen is that Herbert is, indeed, hypnotized. He cries because Hill mentioned his dead mentor and he's vulnerable due to his hypnotic state. Then he shakes off the hypnotism because Hill talks about making Cain "disappear", and that's something Herbert would never do. Which, cool and good and shippable, I'm fine with that.

But like for real tho let's break this down a little more.

Earlier in the Integral Cut, Hill mesmerizes Dean Halsey. Other than the reanimates, this is the only successful hypnotism Hill pulls off in the entire story. Briefly, let's contrast this with the above scene.

Halsey's drinking and just had a full meal. The lighting has to be just right. He's relaxed and he trusts Hill.

Despite this, Halsey has to be slowly, carefully talked into accepting Hill's suggestions: they don't work at first! Hill tries going after Dan first, and when Halsey rejects the idea that Dan's dangerous, Hill links Dan with Herbert... and that works.

Hill plants a few trigger words/phrases, all of which Dan detonates by accident when he tries to talk to Halsey later. Mentioning West in that scene brings back "And Cain is with [West] all the time", and thereby, "Cain is dangerous". Mentioning Meg brings back Hill's implanted suggestion that Dan's involving Meg with dangerous activities. Halsey repeats certain phrases/words Hill planted, but presents them as though he's just thought of them--not as though he's deliberately remembering them.

Everything Carl plants must comply with Halsey's normal judgments and personality--his protectiveness over his daughter is baseline, so it matters more than anything else.

And let us consider the above scene's beats with a similar bullet-point list.

Herbert is tired and angry at the interruption. It's been a long time since he got a shot of reagent. He's filling in time while waiting for Dan, and he's almost certainly anxious. And, also, most relevant, he does not trust Carl Hill.

Herbert appears to give in immediately, with all of Hill's suggestions working instantaneously. No lulling, no manipulation. Huh. Weird.

Hill tries to plant trigger words/phrases, but they don't work. Herbert obviously does not think of himself as Hill's assistant after this. He also recalls Hill saying that Dan must disappear--but as a memory, not as something he just thought of out of nowhere.

Everything Hill tries to plant in Herbert is contrary to literally everything we know about West. Herbert doesn't care about being famous; that's bait he gave Dan to lure him in as an assistant, and note he said "You'll be famous", not "We'll be famous". Killing Dan, obviously, would be contrary to Herbert's baseline personality, and so would handing over his discovery with no opposition, and so would being Carl Hill's assistant, and...

In fact, Herbert's scene here has stronger corollaries with Meg's multiple scenes where Hill tries to mesmerize her.

She's often tired, distracted, or desperate to leave. The setting is never 'right' and Carl can't seem to set the mood correctly. Even before she knows what a creep Hill is, part of her does not trust him--and she seems to trust him less the more he attempts to control/dominate/hypnotize her.

Meg reacts to his hypnotic attempts by appearing as dazed and confused as her father, at first... only to (sometimes visibly) shake it off and react strongly against whatever he was talking about. The one time Hill gets Meg to do what he wants and authorize the lobotomy, he just... convinced her it was the right choice! When he tried to use his Will on her to plant suggestions, he fucked it all up.

None of the attempted trigger words/phrases take. Meg never says "Dr. Hill is someone I can trust", or any of the other crap he tries to feed her.

And in part, it's because he's trying to override her personality by telling her to say/do/believe things she doesn't/isn't.

If we can agree that Meg is not successfully hypnotized by Hill in the film, and that her father is, then there's only one conclusion:

Herbert is not hypnotized when he's crying.

Then what the hell is Herbert doing?

There are certain stereotypical outward "symptoms" that people who are in hypnotic trances present with. Hill does not appear to have a mystical ability to detect if anybody's been properly hypnotized by him. (Because, as I argued before, The Human Will is not necessarily a mystical force in this universe, but a known physiological phenomenon which can be quantified, like any other biological byproduct.) He'd have to use the same kinds of indicators as any other hypnotist to determine his success.

The most obvious signs of successful hypnosis are glazed eyes/a dazed expression, a slowness of speech, and delayed responsiveness to stimuli. This makes sense, given what we saw with both Halseys.

Slightly less known as a sign is lacrimation, or the abnormal production of tears. Abnormal, in this case, because there is no physical or emotional cause for crying. Herbert shedding some fake tears would absolutely convince Hill that his hypnosis had worked, along with Hill's vain belief that he had more willpower than Herbert Goddamned West.

"But Nothing!" I hear you cry, "you don't have any proof that he's pretending to cry! There'd be no way to verify that!"

Ah, but there is. If you want to fake cry, and you don't want to draw on your emotions, the best way to do that is to not blink. Your eyes will begin to water as a protective measure.

If you watch the scene carefully, you'll note that Herbert doesn't blink when the camera's focused on him. The moment after he gives Hill his notes, you can see that he's actively trying not to blink and allowing the tears to continue to build up, before they finally, conveniently spill just as Hill compliments his work and mentions Gruber.

The question then becomes why Herbert would bullshit such a thing. But I think that's the easiest thing to argue of all.

He knew he couldn't win a fair fight with Hill. He also couldn't escape him without leaving his lab, notes and reagent behind for Hill to ransack. He read about hypnotism--that's certainly something that would have been taught to med students, if only as part of relatively-recent medical history--and he could have picked up on the signs of mesmerism from there. Herbert might suspect that Hill did this to Halsey earlier in the film, as when he said that "Hill has gotten to him".

When told "You will do what I tell you to do", West picks up that Carl's trying to mesmerize him... so he goes along with it. And he gives such a masterful performance that Hill is convinced to turn his back on Herbert, and remain distracted for a fatal thirty seconds.

Again, I grant that the popular interpretation of this scene is popular for a reason... but I'm more inclined to think we're seeing Herbert being a lying little shit. And I love that for him.

[ianhoolihandeluxe]

i spent 30 minutes editing this

i have 0 artistic skills... can someone redraw this as them 🙏

[heliojip]

time stamps for THAT (sa) scene in re-animator for when ur rewatching and want to skip 🕺

1:08:44 (meg is carried in by the dean and u get a gist of what happens next) - 1:12:08 (herbert distracting hill) stay safe everyone 💚

[n8tesoup]

coughs

[grrrenadine]

Who's going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow.

An illustration for one of my favorite horror movies, Re-Animator!