Herbert West--Reanimator
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"Herbert West—Reanimator" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written between October 1921 and June 1922. It was first serialized in February through July 1922 issues of the amateur publication Home Brew. The story was the basis of the 1985 horror film Re-Animator movie and its two sequels, Bride of Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator.
The story is the first to mention Lovecraft's fictional Miskatonic University.
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[edit] Inspiration
According to his letters, Lovecraft wrote the story as a parody of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He drops in numerous Frankenstein references (even hinting at the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as Shelley did) and purposely makes scenes overly violent, gruesome, and clichéd.
[edit] Reaction
Lovecraft himself, who penned the Herbert West stories when he was in need of money, hated them and called them drivel written for the masses. In correspondence with others, he claimed to be unhappy with the work, writing it only because he was being paid five dollars for each installment. Moreover, he disliked the requirement that each installment end with a cliffhanger, which was unlike his normal style. He also had to begin each story with a recap of the previous episode.
[edit] Synopsis
Lovecraft originally serialised the story in Home Brew Vol. 1, No. 1–6, an amateur magazine published by his friend George Julian Houtain.
- "From the Dark"
- "The Plague-Daemon"
- "Six Shots by Moonlight"
- "The Scream of the Dead"
- "The Horror From the Shadows"
- "The Tomb-Legions"
[edit] Characters
[edit] Herbert West
Herbert West is the inventor of a special solution called "reagent" that when injected into a recently deceased person causes the body's mechanical, living functions to return. However, most subjects that have undergone the "re-animation" process have turned violent and have shown barely any control over their higher level functions, such as talking and thinking.
The character makes brief cameo appearances in Kim Newman's vampire novels The Bloody Red Baron and Dracula Cha Cha Cha (also known as Judgment of Tears). He most recently showed up in the Dynamite Entertainment comic miniseries Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator, wherein he faced off against Ash Williams, hero of the Evil Dead film series.
[edit] The narrator
In Lovecraft's tale, Herbert West was ostracized by his medical students because he believed he could overcome death and had only one friend: the unnamed narrator of the story.
[edit] Adaptations
The films Re-Animator and its sequels were based on "Herbert West--Re-Animator", updated to the present era. Re-Animator takes its plot and characters from the first two episodes of the serial, depicting West as a medical student at Miskatonic University, while Bride of Re-Animator uses material from the last two episodes.
Director Stuart Gordon has been quoted on several occasions as expressing a desire to make a fourth installment in the series, titled House of Re-Animator; this film would, he claims, be a political satire wherein West moves into the White House and re-animates a deceased Dick Cheney.[citation needed]
There is also an online flash game called Herbert West--Reanimator based on the books. The Splatterhouse video game series was heavily based on this story, with a "Dr. West" owning the mansion.
[edit] References
- Lovecraft, Howard P. [1922] (1986). “Herbert West—Reanimator”, S. T. Joshi (ed.): Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, 9th corrected printing, Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-870-54039-4. Definitive version.
- Lovecraft, Howard P. [1922] (1999). “Herbert West—Reanimator”, S. T. Joshi and Peter Cannon (eds.): More Annotated Lovecraft, 1st, New York City, NY: Dell. ISBN 0-440-50875-4. With explanatory footnotes.
