Herbert West

Herbert West is a fictional character created by H. P. Lovecraft for his short story "Herbert West—Reanimator", first published in 1922. There have been several adaptations of the story including Herbert West as played by Jeffrey Combs in the 1985 Re-Animator movie and its two sequels, Bride of Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator.

Summary

Herbert West is the inventor of a special solution that when injected into a main artery of 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, after failed attempts to return to their own graves, have terrorized the communities into which they were reanimated.

In Lovecraft's tale, Herbert West was ostracized by his fellow medical students because he believed he could overcome death and had only one friend: the unnamed narrator of the story. After a series of successful experiments Herbert West is eventually torn to pieces by his own experiments.

Re-Animator films

The character of Herbert West returned to popular media in the Stuart Gordon film Re-Animator and its sequels, starring Jeffrey Combs as Dr. West. These films transplant the character into the modern day (1980s-2000s) rather than the Prohibition era and changes his hair from Lovecraft's specified blond to brown, but otherwise the character remains unchanged. The film is also set over a fairly short period of time where West and Cain are still medical students, whereas the short story played out over the span of decades from the years of medical students, practising doctors, war-time physicians and eventually retirement. In the first two films the equivalent of West's nameless companion is Dr. Dan Cain, who finds himself embroiled in West's experiments.

A pornographic parody, entitled Re-Penetrator also exists.

Other appearances

• West is a main character in the Zenescope Entertainment comic Chronicles of Doctor Herbert West, essentially a modern retelling of the Lovecraftian novel in which the hidden narrator is now Megan, who is his lover and girlfriend while in his college years, and his obsession with death is now explained as the byproduct of a childhood trauma: while going to Church with his devout family, he saw his mother and sister run over by a bus. He renounces the idea of an immortal soul reaching a heavenly afterlife, swearing he'll find a way to bring back his loved ones. It appears to currently be on hiatus.
• The online flash game Deanimator is based on H. P. Lovecraft's original character.
• The Splatterhouse video game series features a mad scientist called "Dr. Henry West", owner of "West Mansion", the setting for the series. This Dr. West was also conducting experiments to resurrect the dead.
• The character of Herbert West has had brief cameo appearances in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series novels The Bloody Red Baron and Dracula Cha Cha Cha, serving as a colleague of Dr. Moreau, Jakob Ten Brincken, and Doctor Septimus Pretorius.
• West is featured in the Dynamite Entertainment comic miniseries Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator, where he faces off against Ash Williams, hero of the Evil Dead film series.
• West also makes a guest appearance in the comic Hack/Slashin a crossover "Hack/Slash vs. Re-Animator" where the main heroine, Cassie Hack's father is an assistant to Herbert. During one of his experiments, he reanimates her mother the Lunch Lady, who almost starts a killing spree. However, with Cassie's help, he destroys and eventually disappears from Cassie and Vlad's sight. Its hinted that the government was now interested in his work.
• West is also a character in the Swedish Lovecraftian horror film Kammaren. The scriptwriters did a Swedish take on the name and it became Herbert Vest. He was played by the Swedish actor Kaj Stenberg.
• Herbert West has a main role in the parody musical A Shoggoth on the Roof, published by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society.
• The Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has a perfume called "Herbert West" in its A Picnic in Arkham collection.
• "Herbert West" is the title of a 2007 song by UK band Heartwear Process.
• "Herbert West" is also the title of a 2008 song by US band Pipe Supply, named by Jiggly J. Slickwood as a tribute to the Re-Animator movies.
• Randy MilHolland's webcomic Something Positive contains a musical adaptation of Herbert West in the "Out of Tune" storyline.
• Herbert West is the Doctor that Mayor Harvey Dent sees in the Batman Elseworlds comic book series, "The Doom That Came To Gotham"
• The Lovecraft-based anime series Demonbane reimagines Herbert West as a guitar-playing lunatic mad scientist.
• West is a main character in the Japanese video game Operation Darkness, a WWII-era tactical-RPG/third-person shooter about an Allied special forces unit that possess supernatural abilities. West is the team medic. (In the English version of the game, West is renamed "Herbert East.")
• West also made an appearance in Devil's Due Publishing's popular Hack/Slash Comic Book series, continuing his efforts to overcome death this time by experimenting on the supernatural killers known as "slashers" in the series.
• In the video game Obscure 2, the player picks up a keycard in the hospital belonging to a man named Herbert West.
• Herbert West is the main character in a novel by Audrey Driscoll entitled The Friendship of Mortals, published in e-book form in 2010.

References

• Herbert West : Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft
• Lovecraft, Howard P. (1986) [1922]. "Herbert West—Reanimator". In S. T. Joshi (ed.). Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (9th corrected printing ed.). Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-039-4.  Definitive version.
• Lovecraft, Howard P. (1999) [1922]. "Herbert West—Reanimator". In S. T. Joshi and Peter Cannon (eds.). More Annotated Lovecraft (1st ed.). New York City, NY: Dell. ISBN 0-440-50875-4.  With explanatory footnotes.

External links

• Herbert West at the Internet Movie Database
• Free public domain reading of the text