Herbert West

Herbert West is the main character in the 1985 Stuart Gordon film Re-Animator and it's original source "Herbert West - Reanimator" written by H.P Lovecraft in 1922. Herbert West is the typical "Mad Scientist" archetype and is obsessed with his experiments of bringing the dead back to life and "defeating death" with his new found solution called the "re-agent" which is a formula used to re-animate dead corpses when injected into the host found in all adaptations of Re-Animator.

Biography
While much is not known about West's early life, he did en-roll himself into the University of Zurich in Switzerland when he was a young adult and did independent research for 5 years which is possibly when he invented the "Re-agent" used to bring dead corpses back to life. He was later kicked out after the alleged murder of Dr. Hans Gruber after he tried to use his corpse for one of his experiments and eventually moved to the Miskatonic University Medical School. This led to the events of Re-Animator.

Re-Animator (1985)
During his years in Miskatonic he met Dan Cain; another Medical student and offered to pay rent for shelter inside of Cain's home. West would later cause trouble inside of Dan's residence such as being responsible for the murder of Dan's cat, Rufus and also starts acting very strange and secretive being very strict about his privacy which rises the suspicion of Dan's girlfriend, Megan Halsey (Who is also the daughter of the Dean in Miskatonic). One night while West was working in the basement of the house, Dan comes down to investigate the strange noises and is shocked to see his dead cat Rufus jumping around attempting to attack the both of them. Dan kills Rufus and West explains to him about his Re-agent and shows him what it's capable of by injecting the formula into the dead cat as it springs back to life. West eventually manipulates Dan into helping him with his experiments since he had access to many parts of the Medical School such as the morgue. The next day the two men sneak into the Morgue and West uses the Re-agent on a fresh corpse as it jumps up and begins to attack Dan until the Dean of the School walks in but is later killed by the crazed zombie. West then kills the re-animated corpse and uses the Deans corpse as his next subject which leads to them being caught by Dan's girlfriend Megan and the police take the zombie Dean in thinking that he had gone insane. Later that night one of the professors of the school, Dr. Carl Hill; who West despises, finds out about West's experiments and plans to steal it and take it as his own until he is beheaded by the angered West which his headless corpse and disembodied head are re-animated and escape the house to the Medical school in order to kidnap Meg Halsey. Dan finds out and gets West to come and help him and in the morgue they find that Dr. Hill has strapped and sexual harassed Megan but she is saved by West and runs off with Dan just in time to escape the re-animated corpses that Dr. Hill commanded. Meg is attacked by one of the zombies and later dies due to suffocation and West is left to confront Dr. Hill who he overloads with Re-Agent but gets attacked by Hill's re-animated intestines. While Dan is attempting to revive Megan in the hospital room he is told that she is dead and is left heartbroken. West (who survived the attack.) comes in to comfort his friend, Dan. he his wife is death.