Combs has been all over TV, in a variety of roles, including different characters on different incarnations of the Star Trek franchise, but horror fans know him more for his work in various genre films of the last thirty years. His best known role, Dr. Herbert West, has stayed with him for three Re-Animator films, the first coming out in 1985, from Charles Band's Empire Pictures, directed by Stuart Gordon.Herbert West, originally an H. P. Lovecraft creation, is a phenomenal role, played so strangely and perfectly by Combs, a scientist hellbent on resurrecting the dead, acting out quite bizarrely on a regular basis, uncaring how any of his co-workers or associates digest his various eccentricities. Combs does amazing things with these sort of bizarro roles, and played another offbeat character in another Stuart Gordon film, From Beyond, the year after Re-Animator. From Beyond, also based on a Lovecraft story, has Combs playing another scientist, this time attempting to breach another world through a machine called the Resonator. It's jus
t as gruesome as Gordon and Combs' last collaboration, though without nearly as much dark humor.That humor, and Combs' expert way of using it throughout gory scenes of shock and horror, is part of what keeps Re-Animator fresh in the minds of horror fans years later, and is considered by many to be one of the best examples of the genre.
After Empire folded, Charles Band started up direct-to-video outfit Full Moon, which got a fast start thanks to the popularity of Puppet Master (1989) and its sequels. Combs, who apparently had a good working relationship with Band at Empire, j
oined for Full Moon for a string of films, including The Pit and the Pendulum (1990), Trancers II (1991), Doctor Mordrid (1992), and the extremely dark (particularly for a Full Moon movie) Castle Freak (1995).Combs doesn't always play a psycho, but his more demented roles are the fan favorites. He played Herbert West again in Bride of Re-Animator (1989) and Beyond Re-Animator (2003), both of those films directed by Re-Animator producer Brian Yuzna. Combs has played characters based on Lovecraft creations a total of eight times, often with either Stuart Gordon or Brian Yuzna, or both.
Perhaps the most distinct aspect of a Combs performance is his odd speaking style, which is entirely an affectation, and not the manner in which the man speaks when not in front of a camera.
Combs has had roles, large to small, in various genre films since the eighties, and has appeared in studio films such as I Still Know
What You Did Last Summer (1998) , The Frighteners (1996), and House On Haunted Hill (1999), as well as a number of low budget features. Check out the complete list on wikipedia or imdb.com.
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