Reanimator Academy (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Bret McCormickRelease Date(s)
1992 (August 25, 2026)Studio(s)
Visual Impediment (Visual Vengeance/Wild Eye Releasing)- Film/Program Grade: F
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: A
Review
Visual Vengeance decided to scrape the bottom of the Bret McCormick barrel delivering to us this virtually unwatchable film. The director of Highway to Hell and The Abomination, here credited as Judith Priest (cough), delivers this straight to consumer video parody of Re-Animator much in the way one would deliver a pizza. Reanimator Academy doesn’t have much of a story and looks like crap—that’s my tl;dr review. The film follows Herbert West-clone Edgar Allen Lovecraft (cough-cough) who has invented a reanimating fluid that brings the head of Fred, a stand-up comedian who burned up in a terrible car accident to life. Lovecraft eventually crosses paths with a gang of 1940s mobsters clad in fedoras, trenchcoats and spouting Jimmy Cagney lines left and right in the 1990s. When the gang steals his serum to bring their priced sex worker, Hot Lips, back to life (whom they just murdered, BTW), things go off the rails. Their reanimation is successful, but they learn the hard way that when you bring back women, there’s a side effect—they come back to life as mean natured “shrews” (cough-cough-cough). Their sex worker, Hot Lips, escapes the gang’s control before she can be given the anti-shrew serum Lovecraft invented when he first learned of the Shrew Syndrome (after bringing a friend’s girlfriend back to life after she falls on a set of small steps), and Hot Lips goes around as a super shrew with enormous strength, punching heads off people to a musical montage. And that’s it—that, no joke, is the movie. The movie is a little over an hour long and by all accounts has been lost to time with its previous home media appearance being a super rare VHS.
Presented in full frame in 1080/60p and pulled from the original tapes, it feels like a home video found in the bottom of your parent’s bottom drawer. Sound is a Dolby Digital 2.0 with English subtitles, with an optional version of the film with a remastered Dolby Digital 2.0 track that sounds even worse somehow (it’s louder but pulls all the background noise to the foreground which is distracting).
As with all the Visual Vengeance releases I’ve seen, the extras are really the thing here. First up are autoplay trailers for other McCormick films Highway to Hell, The Abomination and Repligator. Kinda sorta making the film a bit more watchable is a commentary track featuring McCormick fan Sam Panico of B&S About Movies. He’s joined by Bill Van Ryn of Drive-In Asylum who doesn’t have much to say about anything but has a great dry sense of humor about what he does. Sam tries his best to throw out bits of trivia, but it sounds like most of his knowledge comes from the same special features on this release. The boys do try and it ends up feeling like a hang with friends who know more about a movie than you do, but what they know isn’t much. Those special features start with an interview with McCormick entitled Talking Heads where we learn about how the film came to be, how McCormick came up with his pseudonym for the film and his thoughts on the legacy of his films. McCormick then takes us on the road in the featurette Back to School: Reanimator Academy Location Tour where he revisits shooting locations in Fort Worth, Texas. Brainwaves: Scoring Reanimator Academy is an interview with Greg Synodis (Lithium X-mas) who sheds light on his working relationship with McCormick (he scored Highway to Hell) and the amount of effort he put into scoring this film. There’s also an interview with actor Tom Fegan (he’s the cop who is the first to lose his head over Hot Lips), an interview with Fred the Head and video from a Zoomed Q&A with Bret McCormick captured from a screening at Nitehawk Cinema on December 21, 2023. Thrown into the set is a bonus McCormick film from 1994 entitled Children of Dracula. Narrated by Joe Estevez, Children of Dracula is less a film and more a failed pilot for a potential 90s era Discovery docuseries featuring interviews with people who believe they are vampires, supported by experts and dramatic recreations. It’s presented similarly to the main feature, full frame encoded at 1080/60p with Dolby Digital 2.0—but no subs. There’s also a Bret McCormick interview about the making of Children of Dracula. Rounding out the set is a Visual Vengeance trailer for Reanimator Academy and the Visual Vengeance packaging—folded mini-poster, reversible sleeve art, limited edition slipcase, stickers and a high quality replica video store card for Movie Galaxy that has no connection to this film.
I may sound pissy about this one, and maybe I am, but I still fully support these Visual Vengeance releases, and acknowledge that not every movie is going to be a gem. But this one was a bit of a slog and may have been better served as the bonus film on Repligator. Even the guys doing the commentary knew this one wasn’t watchable—but I’m thankful they helped make this one a bit more enjoyable, so thanks guys.
- Todd Doogan