Campy excess is the name of the game in Stuart Gordon’s celebrated 1985 cult hit Re-Animator. His comedy-horror movie has all the hallmarks of a schlocky zombie movie, with tawdry special effects and a storyline that isn’t particularly original. This B-movie sensibility seems at odds with its source material, H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “Herbert West–Reanimator,” which paints a chilling picture of a brilliant mad scientist who pushes the limits of amorality. In Gordon’s film, Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is brash and impulsive, in spite of his clinically aloof nature. He’s obsessively dedicated to his mission to reanimate corpses. Brian Yuzna’s 1991 sequel, Bride of Re-Animator, keeps Herbert’s obsession alive, but this wacky follow-up lacks the innate charm of Gordon’s movie.

Hollywood’s action genre owes a massive debt to John Woo. The Face/Off and The Killer director had his breakthrough with 1986’s A Better Tomorrow, whose stylized gun-fu sensibilities subverted expectations associated with Hong Kong’s martial arts-saturated action scene back then. Stylized gunfights and operatic choreography soon became a part of Woo’s signature artistry, along with the effective use of slow-motion and multiple angles to convey a sense of urgency. In 1992, this specific genre of action filmmaking (termed “heroic bloodshed”) led to Woo’s critically-acclaimed Hard Boiled, featuring an iconic buddy-cop routine with a no-nonsense detective and a morally ambiguous undercover agent.