Herbert West–Reanimator

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"Herbert West–Reanimator"
Short story by H. P. Lovecraft
March 1942 issue of Weird Tales advertising the story as "a new Lovecraft series"
Text available at Wikisource
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Horror, Science fiction
Publication
Published inHome Brew
Publication typeMagazine
Media typePrint (periodical)
Publication dateFebruary–July 1922

"Herbert West–Reanimator" is a horror short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written between October 1921 and June 1922. It was first serialized in February through July 1922 in the amateur publication Home Brew.[1][2] The story was the basis of the 1985 horror film Re-Animator and its sequels, in addition to numerous other adaptations in various media.

The story is the first to mention Lovecraft's fictional

Miskatonic University. It is also one of the first depictions of zombies
as scientifically reanimated corpses, with animalistic and uncontrollable temperaments.

Plot

Lovecraft originally serialized the story in Home Brew Vol. 1 #1–6, an amateur magazine published by his friend George Julian Houtain.

From the Dark

The narrator recounts his history with the title character, who has recently disappeared. He details his time as a medical student at

Miskatonic University, which is when the narrator became fascinated by West's theories, which postulate that the human body is simply a complex, organic machine which can be "restarted." West eventually realizes he must experiment on human subjects. The two men spirit away supplies from their medical school and set up their lab in an abandoned farmhouse. At first, they pay a group of men to rob graves for them, but none of the experiments is successful. West and the narrator then rob graves themselves. One night, they steal the corpse of a construction worker who died that morning in an accident. They take it back to the farmhouse and inject it with West's serum
, but nothing happens. Later, an inhuman scream is heard from within the room containing the corpse. Moved by instinct, they flee. West accidentally sets the place on fire, after tripping over a lantern while on the way out. West and the narrator escape. The next day, however, the newspaper reports that a grave in potter's field, violently molested the night before, displays the claws of a beast.

The Plague-Daemon

Some time after the fire, West's research is stunted when Dr. Allen Halsey, the dean of the medical school, refuses to allow him access to human

typhoid epidemic breaks out and West and the narrator are called to help tend to the many dying victims. West begins injecting his patients with a new serum, which has no greater effect than to cause some of the bodies' eyes to open. Eventually, Halsey succumbs to typhoid, and, as a final act of twisted respect for his former rival, West steals his corpse to reanimate. West and the narrator take Halsey's body back to West's room at a boarding house, where they inject it with the new serum. Halsey does in fact reanimate, but, inexplicably, he is less intelligent and more violent than their previous experiment. After beating West and the narrator into unconsciousness, Halsey embarks on a killing spree, beating and murdering over a dozen people before he is apprehended by the police. The cannibal
murderer is soon committed to a local mental institution. West curses the fact that too much time had elapsed and that Halsey's brain had deteriorated.

Six Shots by Moonlight

Now licensed doctors, West and the narrator go into practice together in the small New England town of Bolton, purchasing a house near the local cemetery to have easy access to corpses. The two experiment on several corpses with varying outcomes, but they do not achieve a breakthrough. Still intent upon successfully reanimating a human being, they claim the body of a boxing champion who died of a head wound in an illegal back-alley street fight. Gamblers betting on the fight arrange for West to dispose of the body, as it clears them of any crime. West and the narrator hurriedly take the body back to the lab and inject it with another new serum. When nothing happens, they take the corpse out to a meadow and bury it. Several days later, there are reports around town of a missing child. The child's mother dies during a fit of hysteria due to her weak heart, and the father tries to kill West in a fit of rage because West could not save her. That night, West and the narrator are startled by an aggressive pounding on their back door. Opening the door, West and the narrator come face to face with the boxer's corpse, covered in mildew and dirt and hunched over at the back entrance. Hanging from the boxer's mouth is the arm of the missing child. Almost instantly, West kills the boxer by emptying an entire revolver into him.

The Scream of the Dead

Some time after West's killing of the reanimated boxer, the narrator returns home from vacation to discover the perfectly preserved corpse of a man in the home he shares with West. West explains that during the narrator's absence, he perfected a type of

embalming fluid
that perfectly preserves a corpse as it is the moment the chemical is injected into the bloodstream; injected at the precise moment of death, the chemical prevents decomposition from even beginning. West reveals to the narrator that the dead man is a traveling salesman who had a heart attack during a physical examination; as the man died before West's eyes, he was able to preserve it with the embalming fluid and has been waiting for the narrator to return so that the two of them can reanimate the body together. West injects the body with his latest serum. Signs of life gradually begin to appear. When the narrator questions the man, he mouths words with seeming rationality and intent. Just before the man returns to the dead, he begins screaming and thrashing violently, revealing in a horrible scream that he was in fact murdered by West.

The Horror from the Shadows

Five years later, West and the narrator become involved in World War I as a means to procure more bodies. Serving as a medic in Flanders, West has gone beyond the point of simply trying to reanimate corpses; his experiments now include isolating parts of the body and reanimating them independently in an attempt to prove their machine-like quality. On the battlefield, West befriends his commanding officer and fellow medic, Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, and shares with him his theories and methods on reanimation. Shortly thereafter, Clapham-Lee suffers near-decapitation and dies when his plane is shot down. West immediately begins work on Clapham-Lee's body and injects the trunk of his body with his serum and places the head in a vat. The corpse comes to life and begins thrashing violently, reliving its last moments of life. Clapham-Lee's severed head begins shouting from across the room. The building is then destroyed by a bomb shell. West and the narrator survive, but there is no sign of Clapham-Lee's head or body. The two men assume that he was vaporized in the blast, although West is since known to speak fearfully of a headless doctor with the power of reanimation.

The Tomb-Legions

A year after returning from the war, West has moved into a house which is directly connected to an ancient system of

catatonic state until someone comes to the door. The narrator answers only to find a group of men. One of the figures presents the narrator with the large box, which the narrator then gives to West. West refuses to open the box and insists that they incinerate it. The two men carry it to the basement and burn it. As soon as the box burns, the zombies tear through the wall of West's home via the catacombs. Leaving the narrator alone, the zombies soon attack West. Realizing that his own death is imminent, West allows the zombies to disembowel
him. As a final insult, Clapham-Lee decapitates West's corpse before leading his army of zombies off into the night. The narrator does not reveal much to the police about West, and they disbelieve the information he does reveal since the catacomb wall seems intact and undisturbed. The narrator is forever haunted, considered mad, by his knowledge of what transpired and the lack of resolution regarding the raised corpses.

Characters

Herbert West
'Re-Animator' character
Cover art for ReAnimator #1 (April 2015) by Jae Lee.
First appearance"Herbert West—Reanimator"
Created byH. P. Lovecraft
Portrayed byJeffrey Combs
In-universe information
GenderMale
OccupationScientist
NationalityAmerican

Inspiration

According to his letters, Lovecraft wrote the story as a parody of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. [citation needed] He drops in numerous Frankenstein references (even hinting at the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as Shelley did).

Reaction

Lovecraft claimed to be unhappy with the work, writing it only because he was being paid five dollars for each installment.[1] He disliked the requirement that each installment end with a cliffhanger and begin with a recap of the previous installment.[4] The book Science Fiction: The Early Years called "Herbert West–Reanimator" "wretched work".[5] In an overview of the Re-Animator films, Bruce Hallenbeck commented that "'Herbert West: Reanimator' is not one of Lovecraft's better tales; it's over-the-top, clichéd and blatantly racist. ... What it does possess in abundance is a love of the Gothic horror tale; ultimately, the story is both an homage to and an affectionate parody of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein."[4] Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi claimed that "Herbert West–Reanimator" is "universally acknowledged as Lovecraft's poorest work".[6]

In 2013, West as portrayed by Jeffrey Combs was selected by Empire magazine as the 42nd greatest horror film character, describing him as "one of cinema's greatest mad scientists".[3] When the list was updated in 2020, West placed 43rd.[7]

Adaptations and appearances

Comics and periodicals

Films

Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West in Bride of Re-Animator.

Games

  • The story's narrative forms part of the plot of a video game based on Lovecraft's work, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land (2012).
  • The online flash game Deanimator is based on H. P. Lovecraft's original character.
  • 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 possesses supernatural abilities. West is the team medic. (In the English version of the game, West is renamed "Herbert East.")
  • In the video game
    Obscure 2
    , the player picks up a keycard in the hospital belonging to a man named Herbert West.
  • In the endless runner game
    Zombie Tsunami
    , the player at one point unlocks a potion called "Herbert West's Finest Reanimation Serum".
  • In the video game Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter, a pamphlet promoting Bedlam Asylum states to "Contact Dr. Herbert West for questions"

Literature and audiobooks

  • An audiobook version of the short story, published in 1999, is performed by Jeffrey Combs, who played Herbert West in the three film versions.[11]
  • Audrey Driscoll's novel The Friendship of Mortals (2010) expands on Lovecraft's story. Driscoll's primary focus is the relationship between West and the narrator, who is neither nameless nor a physician, but a Miskatonic University librarian named Charles Milburn. The plot roughly follows the original but adheres to the premise that West is undone by his experiments. He also the main character in Driscoll's Islands of the Gulf (2012) and Hunting the Phoenix (2012).
  • A radio-drama adaption of the short story was published in 2017 by the Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast, with Herbert West being played by Patrick Kelly and the narrator being played by Jamie Keagy.[12]
  • In 2015, writer Joshua Chaplinsky remodeled the cover of the film Re-Animator, starring
    hip hop scene.[13]
  • Herbert West and elements form The Plague-Daemon feature prominently in Lovecraftian: The Shipwright Circle by Steven Philip Jones. The Lovecraftian series reimagines the weird tales of H. P. Lovecraft into one single universe modern epic.
  • 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 an important, but peripheral character in Pete Rawlik's novel Reanimators (2013), in which his previously unnamed colleague is identified as Daniel Cain, using the name assigned him in the Stuart Gordon movie. The novel tells the story of a previously unknown rival of West's, as well as the secret history of Lovecraft's Arkham country.

Anime

  • The Lovecraft-based anime series Demonbane reimagines Herbert West as a guitar-playing lunatic mad scientist.

Music

  • "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.
  • "Herbert West Starter Kit" is the title of a 2016 song by US rapper Extra Kool.
  • "Herbert West" was also the name of a rock band based in Barrow-in-Furness in the 1980s.

Other appearances

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 1-931082-72-3
    .
  2. ISBN 978-0974878911
    .
  3. ^ a b "The 100 Best Horror Movie Characters". Empire. October 29, 2013. Archived from the original on October 29, 2016. Retrieved August 3, 2021.
  4. ^
    ISBN 9780786453788
    .
  5. ISBN 9780873384162
    .
  6. ^ Scriptorium - H.P. Lovecraft Archived 2005-07-18 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ "The 100 Best Horror Movie Characters". Empire. October 31, 2020. Archived from the original on August 4, 2021. Retrieved August 3, 2021.
  8. ^ "First Look at DR. WEST: A Reanimated Parody Free". allevents.in. Archived from the original on 2019-12-27. Retrieved 2019-12-27.
  9. IMDb Edit this at Wikidata
  10. ^ Bachman, Mara (December 12, 2020). "Castle Freak 2020: How A Post Credit Scene Teases A Re-Animator Remake Movie". Screen Rant. Archived from the original on August 4, 2021. Retrieved August 3, 2021.
  11. ^ "The future never sounded so good". SFFAudio. 7 March 2007.
  12. ^ "Tales from Beyond the Grave: Herbert West - Reanimator". The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast: A bi-weekly podcast about board games, card games, miniatures and role playing games. Archived from the original on 2018-02-09. Retrieved 2018-02-08.
  13. ^ "Yeezy gets Lovecraftian in 'Kanye West - Reanimator'". EW. August 20, 2015. Retrieved 2016-01-08.
  14. ^ "EXCLUSIVE: Behind the Scenes of 'Miskatonic U: The Resonator'". Signal Horizon. 22 January 2021.

Sources

External links

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