Herbert West is a mad scientist and the main antagonist and killer of the film Re-Animator.
History[]
Herbert West, is an eccentric medical student expelled from a university in Switzerland due to his questionable experiments. This is how he is transferred to Miskatonic University, in Arkham, Massachusetts, where he again continues with his experiments, with the help of his housemate Dan Cain.
His experiments consist of the elaboration of a serum capable of reviving already dead human tissue, based on the fact that animation consists of two processes: physical and chemical. With the help of the serum, he fulfills the physical part, leaving the animated beings as a kind of undead.
Later, Megan, Dan Cain's girlfriend, has a bad feeling about West's experiments, who is too close to making his investigations successful. Dan decides to speak with the rector of the Faculty of Medicine, but he was not at all friendly and threatened Dan to stop the experiments or they would be expelled from the university. Due to the situation, West decides to blackmail Dan Cain; who, because of his status at the university, has access to the morgue so West can continue his resuscitation work.
After a complicated situation in the morgue, the rector decides to investigate what is happening with the students. However, he is involved in the disaster that the two students created, turning him into an undead, totally out of control. The police are tricked into understanding that the principal has gone mad, however Dr. Carl Hill is suspicious of the students and investigates the case. Eventually, he realizes about Dr. West's progress and makes the decision to steal his reviving serum, blackmailing his creator into going to the police and telling what really happened. To avoid this, West beheads Dr. Hill with a shovel and decides to experiment with the fresh corpse of him.
Dr. Hill is reanimated both his head and the remaining parts of his body; he attacks West to continue with his original plan: Steal the formula and kidnap Megan, for whom he has a hidden obsession!
Thus, West and Cain face a group of "Re-Animated Zombies" that Hill experimented with lobotomy in the brains of the "Re-Animated" so that they obey the orders of Dr. Hill, to be able to recover the formula, save to Megan and stop the doctor once and for all. Dan and Megan manage to escape, but not before being attacked by the "Re-Animated Zombies", who injure Megan.
Already in a hospital room, the doctors realize how useless it was to revive her after a series of electroshocks. She dies and Dan Cain's only hope of marrying her girlfriend is to inject her with a dose of the serum that West kept in his briefcase.