Just turned on Skyrim after a week or so of not playing and my reanimate spells are no longer working. Tried using Reanimate Corpse and Revenant on a dead Bandit outlaw about twenty times. All the spells did was push the corpse down the road...

I just this second started suffering the exact same problem

Anyone have anything?

Same thing here. Really frustrating since I′m playing a necromancer and this bug sort of kills the game for me!
Reanimate corpse works on a Mud Crab but not on a Bandit Outlaw. No error message about it being to powerfull or anything, the body just bounces around and nothing happens.
I just leveled to lev 16 (with 61 in Conjuration), dunno if that has anything to do with it?
Any help really appreciated.

I left the cell and went in a dungeon and it started working again, sad I had to leave that uber awesome bandit chief behind.

Bandit Chiefs respawn, so he will be there again in future.
It also means beware of where one stores them, though I think they tend to wander back to where their AI has them set to patrol or operate.
Mine wandered off when they respawned after some recent patch.

Named ones or those which are spawned dead, do not have this prob.

I noticed this a few times. Tried to reanimate a Draugr Overlord (yes I had a powerful enough spell and I had full magicka) and it had a spasm, then just laid there.
Second attempt worked, however.

As far as I'm concerned Beth ruined Necromancy with the stupidity and buggy Thrall behavior. I got into a fight in a dungeon, one of my Thralls turned tail and ran away. He ran out of the dungeon and disappeared. Three days later he arrived back at the place I found him, still Thralled mind you. How is necromancy an effective play style when your primary weapons behave so erratically.