Overview: The fraternity brothers at Delta Epsilon Delta are your typical red-blooded American party animals, that is except for Edgar Allen Lovecraft. He’s locked up in his room trying to cure death and finds a serum that works on the severed head of a recently deceased comedian.

When a mafia hood steals the serum to use on his murdered squeeze, her reanimated corpse goes on a campus killing spree - let the corny puns and one-punch decapitations fly!

Reanimator Academy was produced down and dirty for the booming early 90s video store rental market by legendary producer David DeCoteau (Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama) and directed by the equally renowned Bret McCormick (The Abomination), under what is possibly the best pseudonym ever used in a film.

This silly send-up of Lovecraftian lore and cinematic tropes will leave you feeling as hungover and headless as a three-kegger blowout would.

This is the first time ever on disc following its initial VHS release.

Blu-ray Verdict: I had this on VHS many years ago and remember I got excited by Reanimator being in the title. I was hoping for a kind of gory, funny rip off of that classic. Unfortunately, we get a non-gory, slightly funny kind of rip off. It starts out awful, sorry, but it does, with some very unfunny humor from a panderer, his enforcer and what I assume is his favorite ho.

But the movie picks up after this as the humor gets slightly more increasingly better, believe it or not. The films highlight is at a frat party and one of the partiers drinks out of a fish tank with a floating severed arm in it thinking it is full of spiked punch. This scene is noteworthy because the character is played by the dude from Redneck County Fever who affected a Wayne/Garth/Bill/Ted accent through that entire film.

He talks somewhat regular here. While this might not sound like a highlight to most, it was nice to see him. The film also features a talking, rotten, reanimated severed head making wisecracks throughout with a hit to miss ratio of about 1 out of 50. It’s at least endearing in a cheap, amateurish, well at least they’re trying sort of way.

Eventually the ho from the beginning is reanimated and she quickly needs a second serum as all women who are reanimated immediately become shrewish! While 99% of the humor here is childish and non-vulgar we do get one kind of naughty scene. A man asks her for a head job and she gives him one! She punches his head off, now having super strength!

In fact, she punches a number of John’s heads off and the characters hilariously pick them up with a spiked pole you use to pick up litter. The movie ends with the head giving a painful standup routine, which in and unto itself looks pretty good. If you like really, really cheap and, for the most part, stretched comedy and horror scenes with some really bloody horror moments than this is most definitely the film for you, my friends. Plus, it’s only 68 minutes long. [M.H.]

Bonus Features:
Transfer from existing SD tape masters
Commentary from Sam Panico of B&S About Movies and Bill Van Ryn of Drive-In Asylum
Talking Heads: director Bret McCormick Interview
Back To School: Reanimator Academy Location Tour
Brainwaves: Scoring Reanimator Academy
Interview with actor Tom Fegan
Fred The Head interview
Reanimator Academy: 2023 director’s alternate soundtrack cut
Bonus film: Bret McCormick’s Children of Dracula (1994)
Bret McCormick interview: Children of Dracula
Bret McCormick Reanimator Academy Q&A - Nitehawk Cinema
Visual Vengeance trailers
Optional English Subtitles
Folded mini-poster
Reversible sleeve featuring original VHS art
‘Stick Your Own’ VHS stickers (FIRST PRESSING ONLY)
Limited Edition slipcase art by Giorgio Credaro (FIRST PRESSING ONLY)
Limited Edition Video Store Card (FIRST PRESSING ONLY)

Reanimator Academy | Official Trailer

Official Purchase Link