Herbert West--Reanimator
Encyclopedia
"Herbert West—Reanimator" is a short story by American
horror fiction
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. 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 notable as one of the first depictions of zombies, as corpses arising, through scientific means, as animalistic, and uncontrollably violent creatures.
'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.
, which was unlike his normal style. He also had to begin each installment with a recap of the previous episode. Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi
claims that "Herbert West–Reanimator" is "universally acknowledged as Lovecraft's poorest work."
ised 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"
is the inventor of a special solution, or "reagent
", that can resurrect the dead. He is portrayed as a brilliant, narcissistic and intensely driven young man of an amoral nature; traits carried over into the 1985 film. His arrogance and lack of respect for life (and death) prove to be his undoing.
mentality, awed at the daring of West's experiments. Over time, though, as West's experiments become more morally reprehensible, and West seems to lose interest in science and instead indulge in sheer perversity, the narrator comes to fear West and becomes a kind of slave to him, too afraid of West's capacity for evil to outright abandon him. In the 1985 film adaptation, the character is (ostensibly) named Dan Cain (played by Bruce Abbott
).
in 1950. In issue #14 of the magazine From the Tomb, released in June 2004, edited by Peter Normanton, various other 1950s horror comics homages to Herbert West are discussed, including "Atlas' Adventures" in Weird Worlds #24, where Dr. Karl Veblen created a "life generator" serum. He had a co-conspirator arranged to revive himself after death with it, but the co-conspirator returned Cleopatra instead.
It was Stuart Gordon
's 1985 film Re-Animator
that would prove the most famous adaptation. Updated to a contemporary setting, 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.
Bride was followed by 2003's Beyond Re-Animator
which moved the surviving characters to a prison, and had very little to do with Lovecraft's story. 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 vice president.
More recently, Dynamite Entertainment
has produced a comic, Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator, inspired equally by the film Re-Animator and the Lovecraftian roots of the story, with West as a villain in league with Yog-Sothoth
, amongst other Lovecraft references, battling Ash Williams
from the Evil Dead film series.
An audiobook version of the story, published in 1999, is performed by Jeffrey Combs
, who played Herbert West in the three film versions.
American literature
American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...
horror fiction
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
writer H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
. It was written between October 1921
1921 in literature
The year 1921 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan the Terrible*James Branch Cabell – Figures of Earth*Hall Caine – The Master of Man*Willa Cather – Alexander's Bridge...
and June 1922
1922 in literature
The year 1922 in literature involved some significant events and new books.Under the current U.S. copyright law, all works published before January 1, 1923 with a proper copyright notice entered the public domain no later than 75 years from the date of the copyright...
. It was first serialized in February through July 1922 in the amateur publication Home Brew. The story was the basis of the 1985
1985 in film
-Events:* 3 December - Roger Moore steps down from the role of James Bond after twelve years and seven films. He is replaced by Timothy Dalton.* The Academy Award for Best Picture was won by Out Of Africa, while the highest grossing film was Back to the Future.* Bliss wins AFI Award for best Movie...
horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
Re-Animator
Re-Animator
Re-Animator is a 1985 American science fiction horror film based on the H. P. Lovecraft story "Herbert West–Reanimator." Directed by Stuart Gordon, it was the first film in the Re-Animator series. The film has since become a cult film, driven by fans of Jeffrey Combs and H. P...
and its sequels, in addition to numerous other adaptations in various media.
The story is the first to mention Lovecraft's fictional Miskatonic University
Miskatonic University
Miskatonic University is a fictional university located in Arkham; a fictitious town which is said to exist in Essex County, Massachusetts. It is named after the Miskatonic River . After first appearing in the H. P...
. It is also notable as one of the first depictions of zombies, as corpses arising, through scientific means, as animalistic, and uncontrollably violent creatures.
Inspiration
According to his letters, Lovecraft wrote the story as a parody of Mary ShelleyMary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
's Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
. He drops in numerous Frankenstein references (even hinting at the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
, as Shelley did) and purposely makes scenes overly violent, gruesome, and clichéd.
Reaction
Lovecraft 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 cliffhangerCliffhanger
A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction...
, which was unlike his normal style. He also had to begin each installment with a recap of the previous episode. Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi
S. T. Joshi
Sunand Tryambak Joshi — known as S. T. Joshi — is an award-winning Indian American literary critic, novelist, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors of weird and fantastic fiction...
claims that "Herbert West–Reanimator" is "universally acknowledged as Lovecraft's poorest work."
Plot summary
Lovecraft originally serialSerial (literature)
In literature, a serial is a publishing format by which a single large work, most often a work of narrative fiction, is presented in contiguous installments—also known as numbers, parts, or fascicles—either issued as separate publications or appearing in sequential issues of a single periodical...
ised the story in Home Brew Vol. 1, No. 1–6, an amateur magazine published by his friend George Julian Houtain.
"From the Dark"
- The reader is introduced to the narrator, a doctor who went to medical school with the titular character. Informing the reader that West has recently disappeared, the narrator goes on to say that now West is gone from his life, he can truly appreciate West's insanity and can at last express the feelings of terror which West inspired in him.
- The narrator goes on to explain how he met West when they were both young men in medical school, and the narrator became fascinated by West's theories about human life, which postulated that the human body is simply a complex, organic machine, and that with the proper combination of chemicals injected into the body upon death, the machine could be "restarted." West initially tries to prove this hypothesis on various types of vermin, but none of the results are successful. His ultimate goal being human reanimation, West realizes he must experiment on human subjects, as each serum differs from species to species. The two men spirit away numerous supplies from the medical school and set up shop in an abandoned farmhouse. At first, they pay a group of men to rob graves for them, bringing them back corpses for experimentation, but none of the experiments are successful and West concludes that it is because of the "poor quality" of his specimens. West and the narrator go into grave robbing for themselves, scanning the obituaries for recent funerals so that they might have as fresh a corpse as possible. One night, West and the narrator slip into a potter's fieldPotter's fieldA potter's field was an American term for a place for the burial of unknown or indigent people. The expression derives from the Bible, referring to a field used for the extraction of potter's clay, which was useless for agriculture but could be used as a burial site.-Origin:The term comes from...
and steal the corpse of a workman who died just that morning in an accident. They take it back to the farmhouse and inject it with West's solution, but nothing happens. As West and the narrator prepare another solution for a second attempt there comes an inhuman scream from the room with the corpse as the two students instinctively flee into the night. In the ensuing chaos, a lantern is tipped over and the farmhouse catches fire. West and the narrator escape, assuming that the reanimated corpse burned to death in the fire. The next day, however, along with news of the fire, the newspaper reads that a grave in potter's field had been molested violently the night before, as with the claws of a beast and not the careful spade-work with which West and his assistant had dug originally.
"The Plague-Daemon"
- Some time has elapsed since West and the narrator resurrected the corpse of the accident victim. Since the farmhouse burned down West has been unable to perform many experiments, and as college Dean Halsey refuses to allow him access to human cadavers and the university's dissection lab his research has been stunted. West has a stroke of luck, though, when a typhusTyphusEpidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
epidemic breaks out and West and the narrator are called to help tend to the dying victims. West—now finding himself consistently surrounded by the dead and the dying—begins injecting his patients with a new serum, which has no greater affect than causing some 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 West's new serum. Halsey does in fact reanimate, but is inexplicably less intelligent and more violent than their previous experiment. Halsey beats West and the narrator into unconsciousness and then embarks on a killing spree, beating and murdering over a dozen people before finally being apprehended by the police. The cannibal murderer is committed to a mental institution.
"Six Shots by Moonlight"
- Now licensed doctors, West and the narrator have gone into practice together as the physicians in the small New EnglandNew EnglandNew England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
town of Bolton, purchasing a house near the town's cemetery so as to have consistent access to corpses. Still intent upon successfully reanimating a human being, West and the narrator claim the body of a black boxing champion who died of a head wound in an illegal back-alley street fight. The men gambling on the fight arrange for West to dispose of the body, as it clears them of any crime; West happily agrees and he and the narrator hurriedly take the body back to West's lab and inject it with another new serum. When nothing happens, West and the narrator take the corpse out to a meadow and bury it. Several days later, there are reports around town of a missing child. The mother dies during a fit of hysteria, and the father tries to kill West in a fit of rage that 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 corpse of the boxer, covered in mildew and dirt, hunched over at the back entrance. Hanging from his mouth is the arm of a small child. Almost instantly West empties an entire revolver into the beast.
"The Scream of the Dead"
- Some time after West killed the reanimated boxer, the narrator returns home from a vacation to discover the perfectly preserved corpse of a man in his and West's home. 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 in their home 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 man 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 a final death he begins screaming and thrashing violently, revealing in a horrible scream that West was in fact his killer.
"The Horror From the Shadows"
- Five years have passed since West temporarily reanimated the traveling salesman and West has joined the Great War as a means to procure more bodies. Now serving as a medic in FlandersFlandersFlanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
during World War IWorld War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, 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 the machine-like quality of the human body. On the battlefield, West befriends his commanding officer, Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, also a medic, and shares with him his theories and methods on reanimation. Shortly thereafter, Clapham is killed as his plane is shot down (along with the pilot, Lt. Ronald Hill). West immediately begins work on his body. Clapham was nearly decapitated in the crash and West finishes the job and injects the trunk with his serum, the head being placed in a vat (West could not use Hill's body as it was torn to pieces in the crash). The corpse comes to life and begins thrashing violently, reliving its last moments of life. Clapham's decapitated head begins to speak from across the room, shrieking out, "Jump, Ronald, for God's sake, jump!". Just then the building is shelled. West and the narrator survive, but there is no sign left of their commanding officer. 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 World War I, West, now described by the narrator as degenerating even further in his thinking, has moved into a house which is directly connected to an ancient system of catacombs which served as tombs for early settlers. One night reading the newspaper, West comes across an article detailing a series of strange, seemingly nonsensical events involving a man with a wax head and a riot at an insane asylum: a wax-headed man (Clapham) followed by a group of disturbing-looking followers carrying a box demanded the "cannibal" killer (Halsey) who was locked up in the asylum 16 years prior be released to them. Witnesses claimed his voice came not from himself, as his lips or wax face did not move, but he seemed to speak as if a ventriloquist. When the invaders were refused the killer they took him by force. West spends the remainder of the night in a near catatonic state until someone comes to the door. The narrator answers it 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 up; as the box burns, the zombies tear through the wall of West's home via the catacombs to which it is connected. Leaving the narrator alone, the zombies attack West; realizing that his own death is imminent, West allows the zombies to disembowelEviscerationAn evisceration is the removal of the eye's contents, leaving the scleral shell and extraocular muscles intact. The procedure is usually performed to reduce pain or improve cosmesis in a blind eye, as in cases of endophthalmitis unresponsive to antibiotics...
him. As a final insult, Major 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 the missing Herbert West, and the information he does reveal they refuse to believe since the catacomb wall seems intact and undisturbed. He is forever haunted, considered mad, by his knowledge of what transpired and the lack of resolution regarding the raised corpses.
Herbert West
Herbert WestHerbert 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...
is the inventor of a special solution, or "reagent
Reagent
A reagent is a "substance or compound that is added to a system in order to bring about a chemical reaction, or added to see if a reaction occurs." Although the terms reactant and reagent are often used interchangeably, a reactant is less specifically a "substance that is consumed in the course of...
", that can resurrect the dead. He is portrayed as a brilliant, narcissistic and intensely driven young man of an amoral nature; traits carried over into the 1985 film. His arrogance and lack of respect for life (and death) prove to be his undoing.
The narrator
West's only friend, the narrator initially attaches himself to West in college out of a kind of hero worshipHero worship
Hero worship is defined as the foolish or excessive adulation for an individual. In Wikipedia, you may be searching for:*Hero Worship , an album released by Sandra Bernhard*Hero Worship...
mentality, awed at the daring of West's experiments. Over time, though, as West's experiments become more morally reprehensible, and West seems to lose interest in science and instead indulge in sheer perversity, the narrator comes to fear West and becomes a kind of slave to him, too afraid of West's capacity for evil to outright abandon him. In the 1985 film adaptation, the character is (ostensibly) named Dan Cain (played by Bruce Abbott
Bruce Abbott
Bruce Paul Abbott is an American actor. He has appeared in movies such as Re-Animator, Bad Dreams, The Prophecy II, Out of Time, and Bride of Re-Animator, and the TV series Dark Justice....
).
Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee
West and the narrator's commanding officer during WWI. As the narrator does not know him terribly well, little information is given about him, other than he shares West's perverse fascination with cheating death. After Maj. Clapham-Lee dies when his plane is shot down, West decides to "honor" Clapham by chopping off his head and trying to bring his body back to life. The experiment backfires when the decapitated body revives acting out its final actions before dying in a plane crash and the severed head also revives yelling for his co-pilot to "jump". The zombie, now wearing a head of wax and the original head in a black case, spends the next year finding the "survivors" of West's experiments, which West wasn't fast enough to kill off, leading them in an assault on West in revenge for his attempts to use them to play God. West is torn apart, while the zombie of Clapham-Lee takes the head, since West took his.Adaptations
The story first saw adaptation in EC's Weird ScienceWeird Science (comic)
Weird Science was a science fiction anthology comic book that was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. Over a four-year span, the comic ran for 22 issues, ending with the November–December, 1953 issue...
in 1950. In issue #14 of the magazine From the Tomb, released in June 2004, edited by Peter Normanton, various other 1950s horror comics homages to Herbert West are discussed, including "Atlas' Adventures" in Weird Worlds #24, where Dr. Karl Veblen created a "life generator" serum. He had a co-conspirator arranged to revive himself after death with it, but the co-conspirator returned Cleopatra instead.
It was Stuart Gordon
Stuart Gordon
After the University of Wisconsin demanded future theatrical productions by Screw Theater be overseen by a University Professor, Gordon cut his University ties to form Broom Street Theater. Its first production, the new translation of the risque Lysistrata, premiered in May 1969. Gordon is...
's 1985 film Re-Animator
Re-Animator
Re-Animator is a 1985 American science fiction horror film based on the H. P. Lovecraft story "Herbert West–Reanimator." Directed by Stuart Gordon, it was the first film in the Re-Animator series. The film has since become a cult film, driven by fans of Jeffrey Combs and H. P...
that would prove the most famous adaptation. Updated to a contemporary setting, Re-Animator takes its plot and characters from the first two episodes of the serial, depicting West as a medical student at Miskatonic University
Miskatonic University
Miskatonic University is a fictional university located in Arkham; a fictitious town which is said to exist in Essex County, Massachusetts. It is named after the Miskatonic River . After first appearing in the H. P...
, while Bride of Re-Animator
Bride of Re-Animator
Bride of Re-Animator is an American horror film released in 1990. It was directed by Brian Yuzna and was written by Yuzna, Rick Fry and Woody Keith. H. P. Lovecraft wrote the original series of stories, titled Herbert West–Reanimator, from which the characters were derived. The plot roughly...
uses material from the last two episodes.
Bride was followed by 2003's Beyond Re-Animator
Beyond Re-Animator
Beyond Re-Animator is a horror film, directed by Brian Yuzna. It is the second sequel to Re-Animator. The film premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel . This showing was cut to a TV-PG rating...
which moved the surviving characters to a prison, and had very little to do with Lovecraft's story. Director Stuart Gordon
Stuart Gordon
After the University of Wisconsin demanded future theatrical productions by Screw Theater be overseen by a University Professor, Gordon cut his University ties to form Broom Street Theater. Its first production, the new translation of the risque Lysistrata, premiered in May 1969. Gordon is...
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
Political satire
Political satire is a significant part of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing political arguments where such arguments are expressly...
wherein West moves into the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
and re-animates a deceased vice president.
More recently, Dynamite Entertainment
Dynamite Entertainment
Dynamite Entertainment is an American comic book company that primarily publishes licensed franchises of adaptations of other media. These include adaptations of film properties such as Army of Darkness, Terminator and RoboCop, literary properties such as Zorro, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Alice in...
has produced a comic, Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator, inspired equally by the film Re-Animator and the Lovecraftian roots of the story, with West as a villain in league with Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth is a cosmic entity of the fictional Cthulhu Mythos and the Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft. Yog-Sothoth's name was first mentioned in his novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward...
, amongst other Lovecraft references, battling Ash Williams
Ash Williams
Ashley J. "Ash" Williams is the protagonist in the Evil Dead horror film franchise, played by Bruce Campbell, and created by director Sam Raimi. Throughout the series, Ash has to face off against his loved ones inside an abandoned cabin as they are possessed by "deadites", the evil souls of the dead...
from the Evil Dead film series.
An audiobook version of the story, published in 1999, is performed by Jeffrey Combs
Jeffrey Combs
Jeffrey Alan Combs is an American actor known for his horror film roles and his appearances playing a number of characters in the Star Trek franchise.-Early life:...
, who played Herbert West in the three film versions.
Other appearances
- The SplatterhouseSplatterhouseis a beat 'em up arcade game developed and published by Namco. It is also subsequently the title of the entire series of games released in home console and personal computer formats....
games, taking place in a zombie-infested mansion owned by "Dr. Henry West", seem to take their cue from the story. - The Lovecraft-based animeAnimeis the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series DemonbaneDemonbaneis a series by Nitroplus with mecha and Cthulhu Mythos elements. Beginning as an eroge for the PC, it was ported into a PlayStation 2 non-eroge remake, a sequel visual novel, a prequel novel, a television anime adaptation and a conversion to manga...
reimagines Herbert West as a guitar-playing lunatic mad scientist.