Doctor Herbert West is based of the H.P. Lovecraft story “Herbert West, Re-Animator. The mad scientist has an unstoppable urge to find a way to re-animate the dead using science.
Most know of him from the movie The Re-Animator, Bride of Re-Animator, and Beyond Re-Animator. currently in production is House of Re-Animator. Most of the Re-Animator comics are based on this Herbert West.
Herbert’s most recent adventure led him into a battle with Ash from Army of Darkness in Army of Darkness vs Re-Animator. Dr. West was trying to harness the powers of the Nerominicon to help him bring back the dead.
Major Story Arcs
Army of Darkness vs Re-Animator
Dr. West has made a deal with a mystery man who promised West that if he Ash committed to Arkham Ayslum, the mystery man would show the Doctor how to use the Necronomicon to full fill his dreams of raising the dead. Dr. West fulfills his part, but the mystery man doesn’t trust him and chops off his head.
This doesn’t kill West, because he has experimented on himself and apparently already defeated death. It is later revealed that the Dr. West who made the deal is in fact a mirror version, and a Deadite trick. The Mirror Doctor is tricked into looking into a mirror and is replaced by the true Doctor who leaves the arrangement he doesn’t feel responsible for.
In Movies
Herbert West was the student of the brilliant Dr. Hans Gruber until Dr. Gruber mysteriously died. Using his knowledge of biology, West tried to bring his mentor back to life with a reagent he developed. The reagent brought the dead Dr. Gruber back to life, but ends up dying again by the strange side-effects of the drug. When the people who saw the re-animated Dr. Gruber die again claim West killed him, Herbert denies it. He says that he “gave him life”, but the dosage was too high. He later goes on to continue his research at Miskatonic University, meeting Dr. Dan Cain. Cain becomes West’s assistant after seeing the reagent bring a dead cat back to life right in front of him. They then continue to research the effects of the drug by using the corpses in the morgue.
During one of their experiments, a corpse becomes incredibly violent and tries to kill West and Cain. The dean of Miskatonic wonders what the noise coming from the morgue is coming from and goes there to find out. Unfortunately for him, he discovers the reanimated corpse, which kills him in a brutal beating. Cain and West manage to kill the violent zombie by stabbing it through with a bone saw. He then uses the reagent to bring the dead dean back to life. The dean runs away and is found an captured by Dr. Carl Hill. Hill discovers that West has successfully conquered brain death, a theory that West had claimed he’d stolen from his dead mentor. Hill confronts West and tries to take West’s reagent and claim it as his own creation through blackmail. While he is going over West’s notes, Hill is hit in the head with a shovel by West, who uses the shovel to cut his head off. Using this as a way to further his research, West reanimates Hill’s body and head. He questions Hill’s head until Hill’s body knocks him out. Hill and his body then escape West’s lab, taking some of the reagent with him.
When Cain goes into West’s lab, he finds the doctor unconscious on the table of his ruined lab. When West comes to, Cain informs him that Hill has captured and lobotomized the dean. West then informs Cain about Hill and decides to make more of the reagent for a final showdown with Hill. Cain goes to check on his girlfriend, who is the dean’s daughter, when they are attacked by the dean. Dan is knocked unconscious and his girlfriend is taken away by her zombie father. After Cain comes to, he and West go to the morgue, where Hill, the dean, and the dean’s
daughter are. When they get there, they are captured by the reanimated corpses in the morgue. Hill reveals that before he reanimated them, he lobotomized the corpses so that they would be completely under his control. He then states that he is going to use his new power to take control of the world using the dead. While Hill continues to talk to West, Cain and his girlfriend try to escape, only to be caught by the dean. Cain’s girlfriend is able to reach her dead father, who kills Hill’s head and holds off the other zombies long enough for them to escape. West uses the distraction to give Hill’s body a lethal dose of the reagent. As Hill’s body begins to destroy itself, its intestines wrap themselves around West and trap him. Before Cain and his girlfriend leaves, West tells them to take his research with them. A cloud of toxic gas accidentally released by one of the zombies fills the room and West disappeared in the thick clouds.
West ends up surviving this incident and reuniting with Cain. They continue to research reanimating corpses. They end up learning that the bodies they reanimate don’t have to be complete, that they can have put together random parts and reanimate them successfully. This give
West the idea of creating a wife for himself out of the body parts of the most beautiful women. Unfortunately, a doctor named Wilbur Graves finds Hill’s head and a vial of West’s reagent. He unknowingly reanimates Hill, who threatens to kill him (using a reanimated cop) into stitching bat wings onto his neck. He then gathers his surviving forces from the Miskatonic Massacre to attack West again. West completes his bride and injects her with the reagent just as the zombie forces attack West’s new lab, with Hill leading them. When West, Cain, Cain’s new girlfriend, and the newly animated bride lock themselves in his lab, the bride tries to give Cain her heart, literally. When Cain denies it, the bride begins to fall apart, and the zombies begin to break into the lab, West, Cain, and Cain’s new girlfriend attempt to escape into a crypt on the other side of the wall. There, his previous reanimated body parts experiment tries to attack them. Amazingly, West is able to control them and keep them at bay. As soon as Hill and his army enters the crypt, it becomes unstable and begins to collapse. Cain and his girlfriend are able to escape, but West, Hill, and the zombies appear to be trapped in the collapsed crypt.
Herbert West actually manages to escape again, only to be arrested and sent to prison for his role in a girl’s death by one of his zombies. In the prison, West tries to continue his research, but it goes very slowly due to the lack of material he has. It is then that he meets his new assistant, Dr. Howard Phillips. Together, they discover that the key to nearly bringing a corpse completely back to life is Nano-Plasmic Energy (NPE). Unfortunately, while these experiments are going on, the prison falls into chaos. The prison warden they reanimated with the reagent and NPE tried begins to act strangely and the the inmates have West’s reagent and uses it like a drug. Soon it becomes impossible to tell which inmates are dead, alive, or undead. In the confusion, Phillips’ girlfriend is killed and West escapes using Phillips’ ID.
Personality
In the films West seems to have a general disregard for not only human life but animal life as well.He is obsessed with continuing his work,this is where his disregard for life comes from since his experiments and further research into re animating the dead comes first and foremost.
He simply sees every death as further opportunity to experiment and re animate the dead and to record the results.
Powers
Herbert West is just a simple human, but he is a genius. He can reanimate dead corpses with a reagent, but only if they aren’t too badly decomposed.