Customer Reviews

Jeffrey Combs Reads H. P. Lovecraft's Herbert West - Re-Animator

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Lovecraft was a writer for whom I always felt a certain ambivalence, but as I've grown older, I've been able to appreciate his nightmare visions and imagery much more than I did as a callow teen. I believe Lovecraft tended to disavow the Herbert West story as pulp melodrama, but it's always been among my favorite volumes of horror. Although it adheres to a deceptively conventional horror framework in terms of its plot development and living-dead theme, it is profoundly creepier and more disturbing than anything that was being done at the time, or that's been done subsequently. A tale of pseudo-scientific necromancy, Lovecraft charts the degeneration of Herbert West from his early days as a fervent visionary to his final dissolution as an obsessed madman. Forget King or Koontz; Lovecraft is still the only heir apparent to Poe. The story benefits from a restraint (Lovecraft had an unfortunate tendency to be verbose) and descriptive conciseness, but its ultimate efficacy comes from the multitude of disturbing, chilling images that populate the narrative. Unlike the movie version (in which Combs played the title character sublimely), there's little humor here to lessen the miasmic atmosphere of steadily-increasing horror and menace. This CD hasn't been all that easy to obtain, but for me its been well worth the effort I put into acquiring it and has become an indispensable part of my Lovecraft collection. The nightmarish horrors that West (Lovecraft) evokes from the grave will haunt your dreams long after you've listened to this CD.

Lovecraft is an author whose works are inherently ill-suited to film adaptations, and inherently suited to audio adaptations. Much of the thrill of his stories is in his words and in the unseen, something that plays out so much better in the Theater of the Mind.

I bought this CD many years ago (thankfully, considering the after-market price tag) and I still listen to it without fail a few times a year. This is an audio book rather than an audio play, with Jeffrey Combs dramatically reading Lovecraft's "Herbert West: Reanimator." Combs, of course, made the role infamous with the loose screen adaptation Re-Animator, and it is nice to see him here pay homage to the origin of the cult classic movie. Fans of the film might be surprised at how dissimilar the original is to the film, but I personally enjoy both versions.

Lovecraft himself was not fond of "Herbert West: Reanimator," calling it "stuff done to order for a vulgar magazine, and written down to the herd's level." The world has never agreed with him on that score though, and in this story Lovecraft introduces the concept of the flesh-eating zombie, something that would come to be an entire genre unto itself.

Combs has a great voice for reading the story, as seeing as how "Herbert West: Reanimator" is largely told from a first-person point of view having a single voice works well for the production. There are minimal sound effects or music, and the effects are very subtle. Combs acts the story (more so that simply reading it) in a controlled way, with effective emotion in his voice when appropriate.

The cover of this CD is done by artist Dennis Detwiller, who would go on to found Pagan Publishing which produced the modern Call of Cthulhu setting Delta Green.

With crisp, clear audio and minimal music or sound FX - sometimes almost unnoticeable in its subtlety - Jeff Combs brings his unique voice and cadence to one of Lovecraft's least favorite yet most popular stories. Combs' delivery is suffused with the quiet dread he is so good at affecting, and which so well suits this tale. A great listen.

I was going to buy this audiobook from Amazon.com but I thought that the price tag of $60.00 was a BIT much...So I searched around and found a website called dagon.com. It offered the CD for $15.00 with shipping! "What a DEAL!" I said to myself and bought it right then and there. The story was very complelling but very different to what is portrayed on screen, for example, Dr. Carl Hill isn't even in the book, there is a character call Sergent Clapam Lee in his place and the story follows Herbert West from his college days to his death at the hands of own creations, much like Dr. Frankenstein. But the really cool thing was that Jeffery Combs was reading it, so you got the feel of the films and the voice of Herbert West himself relating the events to you. BTW dagon.com also offers Cthulu, Arkham Massachusetts and Arkham Mistonic University merchandise.