Herbert West - Reanimator Part
2
Continuing where we left off last time,
we are looking at the serialized story of Herbert West Reanimator. This is an
odd story seen historically as Lovecraft's poorest work, but still has seen a
huge amount of cult success, mainly due to the Stuart Gordon film. This time we
are looking at the concluding three segments of the story. So far we have seen
West and his unnamed assistant try in every way to reanimate the dead back to a
calm thinking state. But with each new success, the undead victim has become a
more terrible beast.
Lovecraft disliked this work. In his
letters he often moaned about how it was far from the true art of writing for
oneself. But it is also apparent that with so little success at selling his
work and making any sort of living from his writing, Lovecraft also somewhat
loved that he was making anything on something he was writing. Perhaps that
dichotomy is what leads to an odd mix in his writing and the story not quite
being sure if it is a humorous parody or dark gory thriller, as we saw in the
end of section three.
In part four, "The Scream of the
Dead", a few more years have passed and the narrator is returning home, to
find West has created a new serum that when injected at the moment of death
preserves the body completely. With the worry of "freshness" dealt
with, West feels he can find new success in reanimating the dead to a cognitive
state. This story is a bit more of what we would expect from the horror fiction
of Lovecraft's day, and nowadays feels a bit like a darker Twilight Zone
episode. When West claims to have witnessed a man dying in his own home, it
doesn't take much imagination to jump to the "surprise" ending. But
this story is still quite good. I would have to say it is much better than some
of the other parts.
I like part five, "The Horror from
the Shadows" merely because of its period setting. It changes things up
for Lovecraft and gives a distinct historical background for a story. Set
during World War I, this story has a great pulp magazine feel to it. Our
protagonists have joined the war effort ahead of the rest of America, by
enlisting with the Canadian military as field medics. Not since the typhus
outbreak, have the two been so surrounded by the dead and dying. And on the
fields of Flanders, West continues his work. In this tale, Herbert West focuses
on his idea that the body is a system of machines, and that with work, one can
restart the basic parts of the larger system. Collecting the body parts of war
victims, the protagonists work to reanimate pieces of the dead before returning
again to the whole. After their commanding officer is killed in a plane crash
(his head and body separated in the wreckage), West is able to reanimate the
headless body, while the head sits in a vat of the new serum. Just as the head
becomes reanimated, the medical tent is shelled by enemy fire. Replacing
Lovecraft's love of ending with a bolt of lightning with a devastating mortar
shell.
All five previous stories build to part
six, "The Tomb-Legions". After each encounter in the previous
disjointed tales, West has left a wake of missing undead beings roaming the
earth. The haunting shadows of his past follow West where ever he goes and when
they return to their home by the cemetery, his past finally catches up with
him. All leading up to a frantic and exciting finale I will leave up to you to
read. Though some of the stories are rather mediocre, the finale makes up for
it all.
If you haven't yet done so, check out
the full text here: HPL's Herbert West - Reanimator
No comments:
Post a Comment