Panel: Herbert West as Cultural Icon
For sixty years Herbert West lingered as a minor character in a minor story overshadowed by Lovecraft's more cosmic creations. That all changed in 1985 with the release of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator. Since then Herbert West has become an icon comparable to Freddy Kruger, Michael Meyers, and Jason Voorhees spawning competing films, comic books, novels, short stories, and even a pitch for a TV series. What are the origins of this iconic character and how has he been fantastically and macabrely transformed over the years.
Mike Davis is the founder and editor of The Lovecraft eZine, an online magazine which is published monthly and is a prime internet source for original Lovecraftian fiction (it has featured new works by W. H. Pugmire, Peter Rawlik, Molly Tanzer, Jeff Thomas, Mark Rainey, Ann K. Schwander, and Joe Pulver) and information about Lovecraftian films and audios, memorabilia, books, art, and happenings within the Lovecraftian community. Mike conducts weekly video chats and interviews on Sundays. Many notable Lovecraftians such as Robert M. Price, S.T. Joshi, and Ellen Datlow have been interviewed in the weekly video chats. Information regarding the weekly Lovecraft eZine video chats can be found online at: www.lovecraftzine.com/chat. Mike lives in Texas with his wife and son, 3 cats, and 1 dog.
Screenwriter of 2023's Suitable Flesh, directed by Joe Lynch and based on H. P. Lovecraft's "The Thing on The Doorstep", Dennis Paoli achieved his greatest enduring cult popularity by penning the wickedly witty scripts for two superior 80s H.P. Lovecraft adaptations directed by noted horror genre icon Stuart Gordon: the terrific Re-Animator and its equally excellent follow-up From Beyond. Paoli and Gordon first crossed paths working for the experimental Organic Theater in Chicago. Besides those two films, Paoli has also written The Pit and the Pendulum, Castle Freak, Dagon and the Masters of Horror episodes "H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House" and "The Black Cat" for Gordon. Paoli has done several screenplays for prolific low-budget movie producer Charles Band: a segment of the horror anthology Pulse Pounders, Spellcaster, Meridian, and Ghoulies II. He collaborated with Larry Cohen and Nicholas St. John on the script for Abel Ferrara's supremely creepy and underrated sci-fi/horror winner Body Snatchers. In addition to those credits, Paoli wrote the gruesome The Dentist for Brian Yuzna. Outside of writing screenplays, Dennis Paoli has a regular day job as a Writing Instructor and Coordinator of the Hunter College Writing Center at Hunter College in New York. He's especially knowledgeable on Irish literature and has taught a course on Gothic fiction.
Peter Rawlik is a prolific author of Lovecraftian Fiction including the novels Reanimators and The Weird Company. His fiction often focuses on characters and events forgotten by Lovecraft and his successors. His latest novel is the Lovecraftian noir Reanimatrix, which tells the story of both Robert Peaslee and Megan Halsey, the second generation of Lovecraftian Heroes.
Cody Goodfellow has written ten novels and five collections of short stories, and has won three Wonderland Book Awards. His comics work has been featured in Mystery Meat, Creepy, Slow Death Zero and Skin Crawl. As an actor, he has appeared in numerous short films, TV shows, music videos by Anthrax and Beck, and a Days Inn commercial. He wrote, co-produced and scored the Lovecraftian hygiene films "Baby Got Bass" and "Stay At Home Dad," which can be viewed on YouTube.