See the introduction and full slate here.
What will our latest winner be? Stuart Gordon's 1985 cult classic Re-Animator:
Or Don Coscarelli's 2002 horror buddy-comedy Bubba Ho-Tep:
Guys, this is the first really hard one, and I know that no matter what I choose I'm going to be a little disappointed.
Re-Animator is delightfully bonkers, finding the humor not only in well-worn tropes of horror cinema but in the seminal but always ponderously self-serious writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Made by a true horror craftsman, who later adapted the work of Poe (probably the only American horror writer more important and influential than Lovecraft,) this is a true love-letter to the genre. It's absurd and messy and weird and never boring.
Bubba Ho-Tep was made by a director with an even stronger horror pedigree, and obviously made with a great deal of love. It's humor is less anarchic, but no less sublimely goofy. It's less a love-letter to horror specifically than an elegy for all of 20th century culture, pop and otherwise. It's a sweetly moving meditation on aging and decay.
Bruce Campbell, who was probably waiting his whole life for this role, gives one of his best performances as a nursing home inmate who insists he's not an Elvis impersonator, but the king himself. Ossie Davis, playing another retiree who insists with equal vehemence that he is John F. Kennedy, stuck in this hospital after the government faked his death and gave him plastic surgery, is better. I never knew I needed them to star in a buddy comedy about two crazy old guys fighting an evil mummy until I saw it, but there you are.
Re-Animator, though, has Jeffrey Combs, who provides a certainly deliberate Colin Clive impression and is HYSTERICAL.
I clap with glee anytime this loon does anything:
Combs achieves a rare version of high camp in his performance: he is constantly taking the ridiculous material seriously, but never enough to ruin the joke. He doesn't make fun of his mad scientist character; he finds the humor inherent in that character. He doesn't seem to approach the role as if he's looking for ways to make Herbert West ridiculous. He plays him completely straight, because part of what makes Herbert West ridiculous is how seriously he takes himself.
Look at him wrestle a damn cat like he's engaged in a battle for the ages, again obviously channeling Colin Clive in Frankenstein:
Combs maybe isn't as well known to non horror fanatics as Bruce Campbell is, but he deserves to be. And he doesn't have the well-earned gravitas of a legendary career that Ossie Davis brought to Bubba Ho-Tep, but his performance is just as good. He always gets from a scene exactly what there is to get out of it; he hits every note right in the center:
I wish I could find more clips of Bubba Ho-Tep, as it really is a special film, and Campbell and Davis have such nice chemistry. Re-Animator, partly because of its age, has more fans - I think Bubba Ho-Tep will earn at least as many as the years go by. I hope it will.
But as my enthusiasm makes clear, I've got to give this one to my guy Herbert West and Re-Animator. It's battle of the acknowledged classic and the underappreciated gem, and I'm going with the classic. A little of me wishes it didn't have to be this way, as Bubba Ho-Tep has a greater beating heart and a lot more to say about the way we throw things and people away. Re-Animator, though, is just barely more fun, and that counts for a lot.