"Herbert West has a very good head on his shoulders... and another one in a dish on his desk," and you can see both with renewed clarity on Umbrella Entertainment's inaugural "Beyond Genres" Region B Blu-ray two-disc set of RE-ANIMATOR.

After his experiments with reanimating the brain after death come to a tragic end in Switzerland, medical student Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs, THE LURKING FEAR) transfers to Miskatonic University's teaching hospital and immediately clashes with instructor Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale, SYNGENOR) whose own studies to prove that the human will resides in the brain have been plagiarized from the work of West's late mentor. Against the concerns of his girlfriend Megan (Barbara Crampton, PUPPET MASTER), medical student Daniel Cain (Bruce Abbott, BAD DREAMS) takes Herbert in as a roommate and is forced to keep him when they suspect he has killed their pet cat when he holds his knowledge of their relationship over their head and threatens to tell Megan's college dean father (Robert Sampson, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD). Cain soon discovers that West has made leaps and bounds in his study of brain reanimation with a chemical reagent. When the dean expels Cain for his relationship with Megan and the implications of his collaboration with West, he continues to help West in the next step in their work: reanimating a human corpse. Dr. Hill, however, has stumbled upon West's work and decides that he wants to take credit for the discovery, causing West to take drastic steps against the equally mad doctor.

An overnight success critically and financially upon its unrated theatrical release, Stuart Gordon's feature film debut RE-ANIMATOR pushed the boundaries of genre film sex and violence as well as reinvigorating mainstream cinema's interest in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft (with Gordon's follow-up FROM BEYOND, Jean-Paul Ouellette's THE UNNAMABLE, David Keith's THE CURSE, Dan O'Bannon's THE RESURRECTED, and David McCormick's lesser-seen DARK HERITAGE following soon after). Boasting an ambitious amount of impressively-realized special make-up effects by Anthony Doublin (NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR), John Naulin (MANIAC COP), and John Carl Buechler's Magical Media Industries (THE PREY) – the latter furnished by Empire Pictures' Charles Band who provided no funding – the film is a thrill-ride that aptly balances horror, grue, tragedy, and humor into a fast-moving eighty-odd minute package carried along by Richard H. Band's PSYCHO-homage/rip-off orchestral score. It still impresses with repeat viewings, but one does become aware of the narrative leaps the film makes through dialogue and some unexplained subplots like Hill's use of mesmerism. Gordon planned the adaptation initially as a multi-episode PBS adaptation of Lovecraft's serialized story and screenwriter Dennis Paoli (SPELLCASTER) was tasked with expanding and modernizing the original episode one teleplay by William Norris while integrating the content of the other installments of the story, and Gordon's original cut ran over two hours before it was trimmed down by producer Brian Yuzna and editor Lee Percy (THE KILLING OF AMERICA). Over twenty minutes of deleted scenes would work themselves into the severely-pruned R-rated and television versions of the film that would shed light on some of the subplots and provide greater character depth, but it is perhaps the mark of inexperience on the parts of Gordon and Paoli, as well as Gordon's lack of involvement in the fine-turning editing due to work obligations with his theatre company, that the necessary content was not better finessed into a workable length at the scripting and assembly edit stages. Yuzna would direct the sequel BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR as part of a two-picture deal that also included SOCIETY. Gordon also developed THE LURKING FEAR and DAGON for Empire Pictures but they were unrealized, with C. Courtney Joyner mounting the former for Full Moon Pictures in the nineties and Gordon returning to DAGON with Brian Yuzna in 2006 as part of a co-production deal with Spanish company Filmax.

Released unrated theatrically by Empire Pictures, RE-ANIMATOR was made available in unrated and an R-rated version – the latter created without the input of Gordon or Yuzna – on video by Vestron and on laserdisc as the R-rated version (labeled unrated) by the label, with the censored version actually longer as it replaced violence and nudity with deleted scenes. Image released the unrated version on laserdisc in 1991, and that was followed in 1995 by Elite Entertainment's special edition laserdisc featuring a new transfer, two commentaries on the analog tracks, and a selection of the deleted scenes for the R-rated version. In 1998, Elite carried over the transfer and extras – including a rediscovered dream sequence – to non-anamorphic DVD followed by a 2002 Millennium Edition two-disc set with an anamorphic transfer, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS remixes, Band's score isolated in Dolby Digital 5.1, and a host of new video extras. Anchor Bay would follow this up in 2007 with the same extras as well as a new seventy-minute documentary "RE-ANIMATOR: Resurrectus", all of which would be carried over to Image Entertainment's 2012 Blu-ray, but the dated HD master received criticism including some claiming that it was an upscale (which at the time was not hard to buy given the quality of Image's early Blu-rays). Five years later, Arrow Video's US arm got the rights and utilized the German 4K restoration – put out on Blu-ray in Germany by Capelight and the UK by Second Sight – and released a deluxe two-disc package featuring the unrated and integral cuts, followed by a limited edition three-disc US set from Arrow.

Umbrella Entertainment's Beyond Genres inaugural volume is actually their second issue of the film, their first single-disc edition utilizing the 4K restoration of the unrated version and a handful of extras for what turns out to be the same content as the first disc of their new two-disc set which adds the integral cut on a second disc along with some additional extras (presumably the first Blu-ray is the same as the single-disc edition since Umbrella chose to do two BD25 discs for the set rather than one BD50). The new transfer reveals more picture on all sides of the frame over the Image disc and is considerably sharper without out seeming oversharpened, as well as sporting healthier hues and grain. Whereas the previous US and UK editions included both a 5.1 remix and the original mono mix, the Umbrella edition features only the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks for both cuts of the film. While purists may prefer the mono, the 5.1 track expands the soundstage without being too gimmicky (which may be a good or bad thing for a film of this tone).

The unrated version on disc one is accompanied by the original two commentary tracks: the first with director Gordon, and the second with producer Yuzna and cast members Abbott, Combs, Crampton and Sampson, both ported over from the DVDs, dropping the newer Arrow track with Gordon accompanied by RE-ANIMATOR the musical creators Jesse Merlin and Graham Skipper. Gordon discusses his initial idea to produce a film utilizing the members of his Chicago-based Organic Theatre company, and the suggestion of Bob Greenberg (THE LOST EMPIRE) that a horror film made for under a million dollars was guaranteed to make its money back even if it was not a success. After he expressed a desire to put a new twist on Frankenstein, a friend recommended that he track down the H.P. Lovecraft story "Herbert West – Re-Animator" which was out of print at that time. He initially developed the first story in the serial as a thirty-minute TV episode for PBS, and then as an hour-long script before meeting Yuzna (who had raised funding for a project that fell through) and he proposed making it into a feature film. Especially telling for the script, Gordon's initial overlong cut, and the structural issues of the final cut is Yuzna's suggestion that they work everything in the six-part serial into the script since they might not get the chance to do a sequel. Of the production, he discusses the research that went into the make-up effects realizations of the corpses, Band's providing Buechler and recommending the replacement of original DP Robert Ebinger (THE BEING) with Mac Ahlberg (HELL NIGHT), and Cain's original importance in the script and film as the relatable character. He also recalls a test screening that some of their initial attempts to push things to the extreme were more disgusting than entertaining (cutting down Hill's extraction of a medical specimen's brain from five minutes to a few cutaways during the class lecture). The second track with Yuzna and the cast is a more raucous but just as entertaining and informative track as Combs, Crampton, Abbott, and Sampson recite lines, get jabs in, recall the atmosphere on the set while Yuzna provides such trivia as the main gurney coming from the set of Dan O'Bannon's RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD with a hole already cut in the metal for Hill's head to go through. The group also affectionately recalls working with Gale, and how the "head gives head" scene left him feeling "spiritually bereft" (it is also mentioned that his wife walked out on him after seeing this sequence during the cast/crew screening).

The rest of the extras are the tried and tested ones from the earlier DVD and Blu-ray releases, which were pretty stacked without the additions to the German and Arrow sets and should more than satisfy the casual viewer. The "RE-ANIMATOR Resurrectus" documentary (68:35) covers a lot of the same ground as the commentaries with the input of more collaborators. Gordon discusses the origins of the project almost verbatim from the commentary (although he has probably told the story a million times for various extras and interviews), Yuzna about coming onto the project, and the pre-production period in which they discovered that all of the fantastical elements in the script broke down into eighty-nine separate effects. Doublin and Naulin come on to describe their work on the film, employing students from Naulin's effects courses, and Buechler about his contributions (including an animatronic version of Hill's head). Gordon also concedes his lack of technical know-how in terms of filmmaking and that he was greatly helped by the Empire-mandated replacement of Ebinger with seasoned Ahlberg who is on hand here to discuss how Gordon's visualization and blocking of scenes may have looked good to him as a stage director but not through the eye of the camera. Combs, Crampton, Abbott, Sampson, and Gordon's wife Carolyn Purdy-Gordon (DOLLS) are on hand to discuss working with each other and Gale (who Gordon regarded as "Karloff-like") as well as commenting on the deleted scenes and the mesmerism subplot. The last part of the featurette focuses on the film's Cannes reception and the surprisingly positive American critical reviews from the likes of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, as well as how the success led to a three-picture deal with Empire for Gordon (DOLLS, FROM BEYOND, and ROBOT JOX). Also included on the disc are the extended scenes (19:55) and a deleted nightmare scene (2:42) featuring more nudity from Crampton.