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Herbert West is a 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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) and changes his hair from Lovecraft's specified blonde to brunette, but otherwise the character remains unchanged. In the first two films the equivalent of West's nameless companion is Dr. Dan Cain, who finds himself embroiled in West's experiments.
Gordon is reportedly producing a fourth installment in the series, titled House of Re-Animator; this film is said to be a political satire wherein West moves into the White House and re-animates a deceased vice-president.
[edit] 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, 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 his kid sister run over by a bus, and renouncing the idea of an immortal soul reaching a heavenly afterlife, swore he'd be able to found a way to bring back his beloved ones.
- The online flash game Deanimator is based on H. P. Lovecraft's original character.
- The Splatterhouse video game series features a mad scientist "Dr. West", owner of "West Mansion", the setting for the game series.
- 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 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-style horror/fantasy story involving several characters from Victorian/early-20th-century literature. (In the English version of the game, West is renamed "Herbert East.")
[edit] References
- 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.
[edit] External links
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