Dr. Allan Halsey is a fictional character created by H. P. Lovecraft for his story "Herbert West--Reanimator", in which he serves as the dean of the medical school of Lovecraft's imaginary Miskatonic University. He made his first appearance in the February 1922 issue of the amateur press publication Home Brew.
Halsey becomes in effect a zombie after being subjected to Herbert West's experiments in reanimation.
The character appears in adaptations of Lovecraft's story--notably the 1985 film Re-Animator, where he is portrayed by Robert Sampson.
In Lovecraft's Fiction[]
Lovecraft introduces Halsey as "the learned and benevolent Dr. Allan Halsey, whose work in behalf of the stricken is recalled by every old resident of Arkham." The story suggests that Halsey, the dean of Miskatonic's medical school, is of the “professor-doctor” type—"kindly, conscientious, and sometimes gentle and amiable, yet always narrow, intolerant, custom-ridden, and lacking in perspective."
Halsey naturally comes into conflict with West, a Miskatonic student obsessed with using science to raise the dead. Even as an undergraduate, "West clashed disagreeably with Dr. Halsey...in a wordy dispute that did less credit to him than to the kindly dean in point of courtesy." After "the scientific slaughter of uncounted small animals" to further his "freakish work", West was "debarred from future experiments" by the "sceptical dean".
By the summer of 1905, West has graduated from Miskatonic and is taking post-graduate medical classes when Arkham, the town where Miskatonic is located, is hit with a typhoid epidemic. During the crisis Halsey "distinguished himself in sacrificing service, applying his extreme skill with whole-hearted energy to cases which many others shunned because of danger or apparent hopelessness." The "fearless dean" becomes a "popular hero," though he "struggled to keep from collapsing with physical fatigue and nervous exhaustion."
On August 14, 1905, Halsey himself succumbs to typhoid.[1] His "hasty funeral" is attended on the 15th by Misktatonic's students, who buy "an impressive wreath" that is "quite overshadowed by the tributes sent by wealthy Arkham citizens and by the municipality itself" in honor of the "public benefactor". West is "shaken by the death of his chief opponent", but sees Halsey's death as an opportunity to vindicate his "notorious theories". On August 16, about 3 a.m., West brings Halsey's corpse back to his boardinghouse, where it is reanimated; the revivified Dean attacks West, escapes through a window, and goes on a killing spree, starting with the watchman of Christchurch Cemetery, who is "clawed to death in a manner...too hideous for description".
Over the next few nights, "seventeen maimed and shapeless remnants of bodies [are] left behind by the voiceless, sadistic monster that crept abroad." Fourteen of these are killed and sometimes partially eaten; three are corpses desecrated by the now-ghoulish Halsey, who when spotted is described as looking like "a malformed ape or anthropomorphic fiend".
After an organized hunt, Halsey is captured after being shot and wounded in a house on Crane Street near the Miskatonic campus. The miscreant is recognized as once human, "despite the nauseous eyes, the voiceless simianism, and the daemoniac savagery." When taken to the asylum at Sefton, where the creature is treated and cleaned up, attendants are horrified by the creature's "mocking, unbelievable resemblance to a learned and self-sacrificing martyr who had been entombed but three days before".
Halsey remains at Sefton for sixteen years--"where it beat its head against the walls of a padded cell", a "carnivorous thing that gnawed and pawed at Sefton bars."
Finally, in 1921,[2] other victims of West's experiments assault the asylum, freeing the reanimated Halsey after killing four attendants. The "mad-eyed monstrosity" is part of a horde of "fabulous abominations" that rips West to pieces in his Boston laboratory.
In Other Media[]
Robert Sampson as a reanimated Dean Halsey in Re-Animator (1985).
In Brian Yuzna's 1985 film adaptation, Re-Animator, the character of Dean Alan Halsey is played by Robert Sampson, a veteran TV actor who appeared on shows like Bonanza, Mission Impossible and Star Trek.[3] The movie version gives Dean Halsey a daughter, Megan Halsey (played by Barbara Crampton), who calls her father "the world's last living Puritan". When the dean learns that Megan has been exposed to one of West's experiments, he vows to expel West from the university; when Halsey is killed by West's first successfully reanimated human, West reanimates him as well, though the nearly mindless dean must be kept in a padded cell.
Later, Halsey falls under the control of West's nemesis, Dr. Carl Hill, but at the film's climax he turns on Hill to protect Megan.
References[]
- ↑ The year can be inferred from other dates given in the text. See The Chronology out of Time: Dates in the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, by Peter Cannon (Necronomicon Press, 1997).
- ↑ Lovecraft Ezine, "Herbert West Timeline", by Peter Rawlik (via Mike Davis), May 28, 2013.
- ↑ Wikipedia, "Robert Sampson (actor)".