For the past year or so, the 1986 version of Re-Animator has been my favorite horror movie—if not my outright favorite movie—for a lot of reasons. Its audacious score and campy spirit, for one. But more specifically for the character of Herbert West. I can’t exactly explain why beyond the fact that he’s this tiny man willing to fight god himself (what a mood) and the projection that I reflect onto many of my other favorite characters through the virtue of how I engage with films. Overall, he has this very black and white, mechanical mindset and his lack of social skills and difficulty with empathy lends easily to a potential autism-coding. His relationship with Dan Cain and his utter disregard for women beyond the parts of their sum makes him very easy to read as gay-coded. And anybody with the raw theatrical ability to end a sentence with “I will not be shackled to the failures of your god!” simply cannot be cis.

However, to backtrack a little, how does Dan Cain work his way into this characterization? Why is he present at all?

Occam’s razor would say it’s simply because there was a lab assistant featured in the original tale of Herbert West: Re-Animator. Because this is an adaptation of this specific source material, he has to be present for it to be recognizable as the same piece of media. Re-Animator was published across 6 chapters in Home Brew magazine in 1922, and indeed, the story was told from the second-hand perspective of Herbert West’s unnamed lab assistant who seems to, at the very least, view West as a friend, if not a foil to his overall perspective of what life is and what it means. This comes from the fact that many of HP Lovecraft often wrote from a second-hand perspective for many of his pieces with few contradictions to this status quo, a perspective character who does not outright suffer the unimaginable horrors the story may convey, but is nonetheless touched by them in a way that leaves them forever marred.

But, this is the silver screen. The perspective is -- unless under extremely specific circumstances -- going to be that of an objective third-person who is not any more or any less sympathetic to any given character without greater context. Dan Cain is not necessary to the greater narrative, nor the nameless lab assistant he once was. But, Dan Cain is not a man who exists for his own sake, for his own means, but to serve the purposes of Herbert West, and all that may apply to.

Of course, this is already somewhat commonly understood. Dan Cain exists as the emotional throughline for Re-Animator, as well as effectively acting as a foil for West as the more hopeful humanist of their heart-brain dyad. We’re here for West, we’re here for the titular re-animator, but Dan Cain helps the uninitiated audience get there, that’s his narrative purpose.

However, this line of thinking is treating the characters like dolls in a playhouse, thrust into the wind with no whims of their own, only the perspective of an outside actor and that actor’s material means to execute on their ideas. In order to truly explore the thoughts on this manner, we must close the dollhouse walls, and trust the toys to act on their own terms in the privacy of their respective world.

As in, we must ask why, as a character, does Herbert West keep Dan Cain so invested in his life at all?

The first answer that comes to mind is the most uncharitable, yet likely the most fitting for Herbert as a character; narcissism. Genius needs an audience, and when you yourself are building your own genesis from the soil, you too, were born from, a desire for somebody to witness your second coming becomes much more understandable. If Herbert West were to bring a former corpse to life, only for something to go terribly wrong, and nobody is around to see it, did he really accomplish anything at all? Did he really capture a flicker of life, or did it all just go down in flames? Are these even the kind of questions he’d contend with? Who’s to say. He himself states plainly why he desires Dan Cain’s companionship, “You’re hard-working, bright, people respect you, and you have access to certain authorities.” A purely utilitarian purpose to fulfill his purely utilitarian purposes, simple as that.

But, it’s not that simple, really. For starters, Dan cannot give him that supposed respect or access for a very long period of time in the story, after the two get kicked out of med school. Technically speaking, Dan only got Herbert into the morgue after that due to general incompetence, anybody could’ve done that for him at that point, and Dean Halsey lost his fondness for him pretty fast. If it was really only about getting access to these resources, then logically, Herbert would’ve moved onto the next med student unfortunate enough to make eye contact with him, hell, Megan Halsey has access, but he...stays. And they stick together through a majority of the second movie, primarily because Herbert won’t let him leave. At some point, the egotism ends, and something else replaces it.

That something else also happens to be my second answer to this question, and is the general reason why we maintain relationships in real life; compassion, or fondness.

Herbert West is often more respectful with Dan Cain, and will actually go out of his way to try to get closer to him. This is seen in the scene where Herbert moves in, as he refers to Cain as “Dan” and Megan only as “Ms. Halsey” despite the fact that he clearly knows her name, he’s just doing this to estrange himself from her in a way that can feel respectful, as that’s how Herbert handles most conflicts. In addition, he willingly tells Dan about his reagent and what it’s capable of—the first person since Dr. Gruber to know of its capabilities—and involves him in not just his projects, but every other facet of his life after this point; from experiments to the South American war to playing Miskatonic MDs when they’re not too busy playing Frankenstein in the basement of their shared house.

This article may primarily be focused on the compassion found in companionship in the most benign of terms, but when there are versions of the sequel movie that come with queer theory essays within the DVD set, you really gotta evaluate some things. For example, the movie title, Bride of Re-Animator makes it sound like there’s a girlfriend to be found for the titular re-animator, but the effort is done all for Dan as Herbert is little more than creator to her, and he can only take interest in her as her when talking through the lens of Dan and what might interest him—such as knowing that the legs of the bride came from a sex worker. And when Dan is finally out of the picture in Beyond Re-Animator, and Herbert is left on his own with an entirely different doctor, he still takes the time to bring him up, even imply that he was the one who ratted him out, and West doesn’t look angry about this—rather, scorned.

There’s the need to have the ego flattered and fawned over, but then there’s this -- and this seems like a lot of needless effort for somebody you can only care about within the sphere of the self and the few other utilitarian purposes they may supply.

It’s important to note that although his relationship with Dan Cain is the most fully developed—as well as the one with the most screen time—it’s common for the Jeffrey Combs version of Herbert West to always be accompanied by another person, and a person he seeks out at some point in the narrative, at that. Whether that be your average blond doctor in a prison that’s most “definitely” based in Massachussats or the man, the myth, the legend; Ashley Williams himself, Herbert West textually refuses to stand alone when faced against whatever threat comes his way. Sure, this is the standard protagonist move; stronger together and all that. But Herbert West has never acted like a standard protagonist. Everything about his personality, his goals, and his morals gives off the idea of a loner, with the only thing contradicting this being the very text he resides in.

And there’s something so soberingly human about that, coming from a man who hopes to someday call himself god. There are better reasons, both character-wise and narratively, to explain Herbert West and his attachment tendencies, but there’s this strange beauty to the inelegant lengths he’ll go to keep the people he desperately wants to hold onto in his life. In Bride of Re-Animator, when Cain can’t handle all that has happened and plans to walk, West does not bring him back with his logical reasoning, his promises of important research opportunities to come, he brings him back by holding out the heart of his first love, Megan Halsey.

It was done with the promise of bringing her back, or bringing back somebody who could love him just the same, sure, but in the end...Herbert West chose a display of love above all else to keep one of the most important people in his life the only way he knew how. He was clumsy about it. Inelegant. It all came back to his ever so special reagent, but he’s trying. Desperately. He’s not the best at it, he’ll never be the best at it with where his head is at, but he does try.

And maybe it’s only beautiful to me, as I see this man who sees himself as his own kind of deity who I try to sculpt into my own image. But, sculpting must feel good to God, too, so I’m sure he could understand the compulsion. The same way I too feel the compulsion to hold the necessary viscera in my bare and bloody hands that’ll draw the people I hold the most dear forever back into my life, even on the fringes of it.

It’s not that easy. It’s never that easy. But we try, because what else is there to do?