Shearer: 'Re-Animator' still best in genre

October is here. For The Cinema File column, that means Halloween and horror movies all month long. It's my favorite holiday and my favorite time of year, so I wanted to do something special in observance. My initial idea was to go see a new scary movie each week and write up a review as I normally would, but after watching the completely unnecessary "Let Me In" and glancing at the trailers for upcoming genre releases, I decided it would kind of bum me out to chronicle a month's worth of disappointment here.

During my time as a video clerk, the most common question I would get from customers this time of year was, "What are the best horror movies you've seen?" The list rarely changed, and I never once had someone come back complaining I'd steered him or her wrong. So I thought over the course of the next four weeks, I'd share these films with you.

The first one also has the distinction of being my top film of all time, Stuart Gordon's 1985 masterpiece, "Re-Animator." Filled to capacity with dark humor, eye-popping special effects and buckets of blood, the movie is endlessly watchable and never makes a misstep, taking the viewer on an increasingly wild and unpredictable ride that's as funny as it is bizarre. From the opening score by Richard Band that shamelessly rips off Bernard Herrmann's classic theme from "Psycho," to the hospital massacre climax that must be seen to be believed, this relatively low-budget, independently produced gem has absolutely everything I ever could want in a movie.

Based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, "Re-Animator"