Wrote an outline for another "Re-Animator" film.

[Neville]

Too much spare time and too much beer make Neville write scriptments...

Feel free to add ideas and comments...


The Re-animating Week aka Re-Animator Unbound.
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Prologue: Herbert West makes menacing phone calls to his formar associate Dan Cain. He doesn't pick them, but we see him in the background (face un-revealed, let's make the audience think we couldn't get Bruce Abbott this time) preparing a doctor's bag with several obscure tools and a revolver as the answer machine records the messages.

Segment 1: Herbert West, just escaped from jail, stops at a crowded train station to retrieve money and documents from a locker. Later we see him driving until the point of exhaustion until he reaches an small gothic village that may resemble those described in a Lovecraft or Stephen King novel. It is obvious (although this point is never clarified) that the setting is New England. This early scenes must be shot parodying Hitchckock's style, his sense of suspense (when he picks his things from the locker) and Marion Crane's escape at the beginning of "Psycho" (his driving to the village).  

Segment 2: Using his talent for blackmail and his natural inteligence, West manages to buy a decrepit funeral parlor. There, needless to say, he continues his work with the reanimating fluid and his new discobery, the NPE (in short, soul contained in a electricity capsule). This time, though, we don't know what *exactly* he is doing until later on.

Segment 3: Night. We see a young blonde woman in a cocktail suit (Maeve) having drink after drink in one of the town's bars. She also discuses with the bar owner how rarely the new owner of the funeral parlor and she is encouraged to "ask again for your old job". Finally, when she seems to have joined enough valour, we follow her to West's headquarters. West is at first angered that someone has dared to interrupt his work "Do you think they (re: the dead) can wait?" he snorts. However, he soon realises that a) Maeve, in her completely out of place black night suit, is planning to seduce him in order to recover her old job in the place and b) that she is a necrophile, and that she recognised West almost inmediately, although some weeks have passed since the prison riot. "You should have altered your face surgically", she notes. After some tense moments, they reach an agreement: She will help with his experiments in exchange for her old job. West knows that while her antics remain secret he has leverage over her, and that she won't turn him over the authorities because he's the perfect boss for her.

Segment 4: West enters in conflict with the local sheriff. He distrust foreigners, and being an authority he is forced to deal with the new owner of the funeral parlor. Tension surfaces inmediately: he notices something strange about this new doctor who keeps his activities secret and has hired again Maeve. The sheriff knows Maeve well: they used to date when they were teens and he is perfectly aware of her inclinations. He's also suspicious that she may be sleeping with West.

Segment 4: A well-known bank robber is killed when he tries to rob the local bank. West inmediately takes care of the corpse and offers to keep it at his parlor. Soon it become the center of his new investigations.

Segment 5: The sheriff enters West's place to claim the body and sees something suspicious. He is knocked out by Maeve and West decides to use the NPE: Maeve and the Sheriff exchange bodies. Maeve instantly likes the position of power and takes advantage of it: When the sheriff is asked to inspect a crime scene, she goes to the site and, before the astonished cops, she asks to be left alone with the corpse "for further interrogation". Moans soon start coming out from the closed room.

Segment 6: While Maeve goes through the village doing what she pleases in the sheriff's body, he (in Maeve's body) is kept in the parlor's basement, while West shows him his latest creations, resurrected versions of every person in power that died in the village in the recent years plus a new zombie created from the remains of the robber he calls "Adam". Trough the lobotomy method invented by Hill, he now can control all of them, and plans to take over the village first and then the whole world. West's hatred and comtempt for mankind has reached a point he no longer wants to break natural laws to improve mankind's living conditions, but to rule mankind instead. That he is even using Hill's methods should give us a clue how far he is going.

The Sheriff, however, manages to knock out West and to recover the NPE kit. He instantly races to catch Maeve, and after some fighting manages to get both in their old bodies again. Maeve, back in her own body, freaks out and calls the state police. Scared to death, she goes back to West's place, where West discobers what she has done. Disgusted, he gives her an anesthetic shot, and punishes her attaching her (in coital position!) to Adam. His small army ready, he proceeds to the streets with them (yes, even with the one attached to Maeve) only to find his old pal Dan Cain with a similar army of re-animated... state policemen. Turns out that after helping to put West in jail, he stole the remains of his work and continued it. Moreover, he has become a plastic surgeon, and his face, despite the numerous Botox injections and other "enhancements" shows that he has also re-animated himself somehow at least once (as stated in "Bride of Re-Animator", he is a better surgeon than West). With his white smock and his medical case he looks like a parody of a doctor or a vampire hunter. West is enraged to hear of this other treason (Despite his efforts somebody stole his work without him even suspecting!!) Their armies and themselves fight each others, soon joined by the inhabitants who see somebody attacking the state police. The Sheriff tries to placte the armed mob, but his latest antics (well, Maeve's) don't precisely improve his credibility. Fighting explodes, everybody attacks everybody and the village burns.

TODO List:
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1) Ending.

2) Time sequence. All, including prologue and epilogue, has to take place in seven days.

3) Add references to other God's creations before man within the first seven days of Earth according to the Bible. Some are easy (no day sequences until day 2), others will be more tricky.  
Other notes: Completely unbound from the restraints of the previous movies, West here has to behave like a pagan god. His comptempt and anger for mankind has finally reached, after the previous movies, its highest points. The movie's structure must be contained in seven days, with day 1 for the prologue and day 7 for the epilogue. During this seven days West will do its own version of the creation of the world, and the village will become his toy. West will judge all behaviours, administer "divine" justice (Maeve's punishment for treason) and finally create new life.

[odinn7]

I like what you've got there. Would be interesting to see it actually become a movie but that won't happen because it's too original.

[Neville]

Actually not original at all. Simply I'm trying to move West's character from the traits that defined him in the first three movies (they are quite exhausted) and turn  him into a American Gothic version of the latter Viktor Frankenstein. The use of the "Psycho" theme gave me the idea to add some Hitchcock parodies, and the other main things (characters with abnormal sexual tendencies, West fighting authority figures when they threaten his work) are present on the other movies.

Still, it could be interesting if somebody helps me to find  a good ending.

[Dave Munger]

What if the bank robber is successful only to be killed after stashing the money? Then when he's reanimated he want's to go to get it.

I don't think I really get what you're going at with the Genesis thing, is it just a structure imposed on the story for the sake of the allusion, or is it really basic to the story? Do you mean that the guy has to create plants and fish before mammals? This kind of reminds me of a notion I had, encoding the mark of the beast into the plot structure of a horror novel in the way that Revelation has that 7-7-7 outline structure in it.

I have an image (not really an idea) of the beggining of the ending, kind of like the beggining of 28 Days Later. You see the town burning, it fades to black, then a title card or whatever those are called says "The Seventh Day". You see the remains of the place, it's a ghost town now, and ... then the ending. The last survivor sees the Statue of Liberty and realizes it's Earth or whatever.

[Neville]

>What if the bank robber is successful only to be killed after stashing the money? Then when he's reanimated he want's to go to get it.

I don't see that nesary. Adam's reanimated corpse appears only towards the end, and his only function (so far) is to make West and the sheriff collide, be part on Maeve's punishment and then have an interesting death. Adding the "lost money subplot" would only draw interest from the main characters, which the way I see it are West and Maeve.

>I don't think I really get what you're going at with the Genesis thing, is it just a structure imposed on the story for the sake of the allusion, or is it really basic to the story? Do you mean that the guy has to create plants and fish before mammals?

The point is that since West believes himself a god, the plot is suppossed to remind us God's creation of thew world. West is not supposed to create again light, water or plants, to neme just a few things, but I think it would be interesting if we could squeeze some references into the film. Nothing too blatant, like keeping all scenes night until day two, thus hinting creation of light. Not even all God's creations prior to man have to make an appearence, just a couple of references to hint that West sees his task as god-like.

> I have an image (not really an idea) of the beggining of the ending, kind of like the beggining of 28 Days Later. You see the town burning, it fades to black, then a title card or whatever those are called says "The Seventh Day". You see the remains of the place, it's a ghost town now, and ... then the ending. The last survivor sees the Statue of Liberty and realizes it's Earth or whatever.

Drop the Statue of Liberty thing and we may have something there. Instead of a brand new world in the seventh day (the day God rested), West manages to destroy the whole town and its inhabitnats in seven days. I like it.

Thank you for your contribution.

[Dave Munger]

Yeah, the bank robber looking for the money thing would sort of be too much like a seperate mini-movie, probably more appropriate for a ghost story where the guy dosen't realise he's dead. I should probaly mention that I've only seen parts of the Re-Animator movies, and this was quite awhile ago.

Like the seven days thing. If you keep telling what day it is, could give it the suspense of a countdown (in addition to the coolness of the allusion), especially if you heavily forshadow that the whole thing's coming to head by day seven. Maybe just have someone blatantly say so somehow, like "I'm giving that psycho a week to get out of town, or I'll git im out, dagnabit!"

Thought last night that maybe you could throw in a tiny bit of sypmathetic material tending to justify his lust for power. Maybe the doctor himself could briefly mention some bad stuff that wouldn't have happened if he'd been more powerful before, maybe how circumstances have led to him having no better use for his gifts than this.

Statue of Liberty thing isn't really an idea for an ending, just sort of a notion that you could close with a dramatic image. Maybe the doctor literally has become like Prometheus, the villagers have crucified him for trying to be God, but he's done something to himself so that he can't die.

Thank you, for speaking to my imagination.

[Neville]

>Thought last night that maybe you could throw in a tiny bit of
sypmathetic material tending to justify his lust for power. Maybe the doctor
himself could briefly mention some bad stuff that wouldn't have happened if
he'd been more powerful before, maybe how circumstances have led to him
having no better use for his gifts than this.

I had thought of placing a speech by West as he shows his creations to the sheriff-in-maeve's-body, but I still haven't though of it in detail. He would speak of how he tried to create new horizons for mankind (defeating death) and how mankind rewarded him with 13 years in prison.

About the seven days thing, I still think it should stay in the background, nothing too blatant. The caption "Day 7" at the end should be more than enough if people haven't "get it" by then.

Now I know what you meant with the "Statue of Liberty" thing... Yeah, a powerful image would be a great way to finish the film. I'll try to think about several.