Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy: Barbara Crampton Gets Head From a Severed Head in 'Re-Animator'

<< Blog | Editorial Features Tuesday, October 15, 2:00 PMTue, 15 Oct 2019 @ 2:00 PM by Thrustin' Hoffman

In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around them, and their legacy. This October, we'll be looking at some famous horror movie nude scenes and this week a disembodied head goes down on poor Barbara Crampton in Stuart Gordon's 1985 cult classic Re-Animator.

Based on the H.P. Lovecraft short story "Herbert West—Reanimator," Stuart Gordon set out to make a modern-day Frankenstein tale that was more in line with the current, more gory, more no-holds-barred style of horror that was now pervasive in the mid-80s thanks to the emergence of home video. The film underwent a number of changes and edits thanks to securing an X-rating on its first three submissions to the MPAA. Convinced that he couldn't maintain the film's integrity andachieve the less restrictive rating, Gordon eventually made two cuts of the film. One unrated with his original vision intact and an R-rated version for home video release that cut most of the gore and added in scenes deleted from the original cut.

Gordon cast a then mostly unknown character actor by the name of Jeffrey Combs to play the lead character, a medical student who has created a "reagent" to reanimate dead bodies. After the death and reanimation of his mentor Hans Gruber (this movie predates Die Hard by 3 years), Westmust relocatefromSwitzerland to New England in order to continue his studies. He moves into the home of another med student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott)—who is covertlyengaged to Megan (Barbara Crampton), daughter of the school's dean—and West soon comes into conflict with Dr. Hill (David Gale), a former colleague of Dr. Gruber.

West starts slowly at his new school, bringing Dan's dead cat back to life before eventually moving on to humans. Through a convoluted series of events, West ends up decapitating Dr. Hill and then separately re-animating his head and body. Hill absconds with West's reagent and uses it to revive the dead dean, whom he then uses to kidnap Megan. He holds her hostage, knowing that West and Cain will soon come looking for him, but in the meantime, Hill gets a little frisky at the sight of Megan and decides to use her dead father to strip her nude on a table in a morgue...

Unable to contain his lust, Hill's body picks up his head and holds it so that he can kiss her all over before heading south to yodel in her canyon, so to speak, all while the reanimated corpse of her father looks on. Sadly, West and Cain burst through the door before he can actually do anything...

By this point in time, the scene has passed into legend and is used by both the film's ardent supporters and detractors as the scene that encapsulates the film as a whole—which is a touch unfair since there's only one other brief nude scene in the film. The scene was also hilarious talked about by Lester Burnham and Ricky Fitts while sharing a joint in American Beauty. It's the stuff of legend now, a beautiful microcosm of a rather bonkers 80s horror comedy.

At the end of the day, though, we can just chalk it all up to movie magic. Surely no one was actually harmed by this scene in real life. Not so fast... David Gale, the actor playing the randy Dr. Hill, actually suffered some rather horrific consequences as a result of his participation in this scene. Stuart Gordon confirmed that when Gale's first wife saw the scene for the first time, she shouted "David, how could you?!" and stormed out of the screening. According to producer Brian Yuzna, it was the end of their marriage...

"And after the first screening she split on him. She didn't come home."

His wife filed for divorce, and though it's never been directly said by either party actually involved in the split, it's intimated by these stories and by conversation on the film's cast commentary. As if this all weren't awful enough, co-star Robert Sampson says during the commentary that shooting the scene took its toll on Gale...

"David felt spiritually bereft. Those were the words that he used. He said 'I feel awful doing this.'"

Further salt in the woundis the fact that the hands actually fondling Crampton's breasts belong to director Stuart Gordon...

It's a shame that this scene would cause anyone's marriage to dissolve, because it's such a sublimely ridiculous scene in an equally ridiculous motion picture. It's not as if his wife could've thought she was sitting down to watch the next Out of Africa, sheshould have known what kind of movie this was by the title alone. Who knows, perhaps he lied to her about the whole thing. Told her he didn't shoot any scenes where he licked a woman's naked body while special effects magic made it look like he was a severed, re-animated head.

That was probably a doomed marriage if this was the tipping point, but remember kids, don't ever let anyone tell you that actors don't take risks with real life consequences by appearing in movies. Just look at what happened to the late David Gale, may he rest in peace.

Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy...

—The "Real Sex" ofDon't Look Now

—Scarlett Johansson's Nude Debut inUnder the Skin

—The 2 Very Different Sex ScenesofBasic Instinct

—How Halle Berry's Nude Debut Led Her toMonster's Ball

—HowMulholland Dr.'s Legendary Lesbian Scenes Deepen the Film's Mystery

—Showgirlsand the Dangers of High Camp

—Rosario Dawson Laid Bare for Danny Boyle'sTrance

—Katie Holmes MakesThe GiftWorth Remembering

—Jennifer Connelly Comes of Age inThe Hot Spot

—Lisa Bonet's Bloody Nude Debut inAngel Heart

—Monica Bellucci Gets Brutalized in Gaspar Noé'sIrréversible