Feature Presentation: RE-ANIMATOR with screenwriter Dennis Paoli Q&A
Re-Animator
"A dedicated student at a medical college and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue when an odd new student arrives on campus." Well, that's what IMDB says, but we all know what Re-Animator is about, right?
Screenwriter of 2023's Suitable Flesh, directed by Joe Lynch and based on H. P. Lovecraft's "The Thing on The Doorstep", Dennis Paoli achieved his greatest enduring cult popularity by penning the wickedly witty scripts for two superior 80s H.P. Lovecraft adaptations directed by noted horror genre icon Stuart Gordon: the terrific Re-Animator and its equally excellent follow-up From Beyond. Paoli and Gordon first crossed paths working for the experimental Organic Theater in Chicago. Besides those two films, Paoli has also written The Pit and the Pendulum, Castle Freak, Dagon and the Masters of Horror episodes "H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House" and "The Black Cat" for Gordon. Paoli has done several screenplays for prolific low-budget movie producer Charles Band: a segment of the horror anthology Pulse Pounders, Spellcaster, Meridian, and Ghoulies II. He collaborated with Larry Cohen and Nicholas St. John on the script for Abel Ferrara's supremely creepy and underrated sci-fi/horror winner Body Snatchers. In addition to those credits, Paoli wrote the gruesome The Dentist for Brian Yuzna. Outside of writing screenplays, Dennis Paoli has a regular day job as a Writing Instructor and Coordinator of the Hunter College Writing Center at Hunter College in New York. He's especially knowledgeable on Irish literature and has taught a course on Gothic fiction.