Wicked #4, Fall 2000
Ever since the actor's delightfully over-the-top performance as Herbert West in 1985's cult classic Re-Animator, Combs has proven his knack for bringing off-kilter geniuses to the screen. And while many genre fans know Combs from his Star Trek: Deep Space Nine days, it is his performance as West or demented (The Doc sez: huh?!?) Ph. D. Crawford Tillinghast in 1986's From Beyond or incorporeal mute madman Dr. Vannacutt in 1999's big-budget remake of House on Haunted Hill that have won him a devoted cult following. The man does have his own fan club, after all.
Now, Combs is at it again. This time around, he dons the white lab coat and spectacles for The Attic Expeditions' devious Dr. Ek, the chief operating officer of a private sanitarium who visits all varieties of mental duress upon hero Trevor, played by Andras Jones. And you can bet Combs is up to the task - there is simply no other actor who could bring to the role all the sinister glee of a marauding toddler on a post-pixie-stick rampage.
"He's sort of successful, perhaps self-important, fellow," says Combs of Ek. "But what the main character doesn't know is that I want something he has, and I will go to any lengths to get it - including putting him to sleep and when he wakes up three hours later, telling him he's been in a coma for four years to see if perhaps he can remember where he put this thing I want. I play a lot of mind games."
The actor says the film's complex narrative most intrigued him about the project. "It was really much more complicated and dense and kind of daring in its intricacy than most of the scripts I get in the genre," Combs explains. "A lot of them seem to be pretty dumbed down with a lot of special effects. There's not a lot of thought about who these people are and how they interact."
It was still a challenge to bring the role to the screen, however, Combs originally agreed to play Ek three years ago, but just before he was scheduled to film his scenes, a severe financial crunch forced the production to shutter. In the intervening months, filmmakers Jeremy Kasten and Rogan Russell Marshall struggled to find sufficient backing to complete the movie. Against the odds, they succeeded.
"To their credit, they stayed faithful to their vision to have me be this character," Combs says. "They worked and scrapped and scrapped and finally, last September or so, they called and said, "Wev'e got the money. We're going to finish this thing." It's a credit to their tenacity and to their enthusiasm for just not letting the bone go. It's really quite a remarkable little tale that it was able to rise up from the dead - like Lazarus."
Combs' extensive scenes were shot over the course of three very long days. "I just got ready so that when the camera rolled, we just hit it, " he says. "There's an energy about that that's good. There was a lot of material to do in a week, but we did it. We were buzzing through there. I got done at like 2 o''clock in the morning and jumped on a plane 7 o'clock the next morning to got to Spain to do Faust."
So, when Combs was in Europe shooting Faust with director Brian Yuzna (the man behind the Re-animator films), did the conversation ever turn to the possibility of a third installment of the adventures of Dr. West?
"Brian and I over the years have sort of kicked around different ideas and storylines." Combs reports. "It was just a matter of picking the right writer and getting it going and yet that's not happened. It's kind of in limbo, which is where it's been for a long time. I guess I'm not the one to ask."
Perhaps Dr. Ek would know...
