THE RESURRECTED

The Resurrected is an H. P. Lovecraft movie from Dan O’Bannon, the mad genius who worked on Return of the Living Dead and Dark Star. It isn’t quite a horror-comedy, but it definitely has a healthy sense of humor about itself.

The film involves a Frankenstein-like character, played by Chris Sarandon. At the beginning of the film, he looks like himself, a dashing movie actor with good teeth.

Eventually, Mr. Sarandon is replaced by an ancient wizard who coincidentally looks exactly like him, except with awful teeth and bad skin.

The entire movie is a strange thrill ride with a strong Raymond Chandler vibe. The main character, a PI played by Jack’s dad on Lost, does the kind of voiceover that can either make or break a movie like this. I enjoyed it. 

Perhaps the most welcome surprise is that the film has some awesome creature effects and nasty gore. There are dead bodies involved, of course, but the story takes some weird turns that involve human-like creatures and beasts and other goodies that H. P. Lovecraft invented.

It is a fun film from a time when special effects didn’t involve computers. Things were more natural, more gloopy, and a lot more fun.

THE UNNAMABLE

STATS:

The Unnamable

1988

Directed by Jean-Paul Ouellette

Written by the same guy... and H. P. Lovecraft, I guess

WHA’ HAPPENED?

Not much. After an opening prologue tailor-made for the fast-forward button, we meet two groups of college students (geeks and fraternity/sorority idiots) who decide in completely unrelated conversations to sneak into a haunted house. Why? Because holy crap this movie makes no sense.

From there, the characters wander around Scooby Doo-style in a big spooky house. Something unnamable (which I would totally be able to name; let's call him Fraggle) kills them a lot. One of the college students, a Lovecraftian fellow who annoyed the crap out of me, defeats it by invoking tree spirits or something.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

I am not much of a Lovecraft fan, but I am a fan of bad early-90s horror films based on Lovecraft stories. And while this had a few Lovecraftian touches (the university, the Necronomicon, the fact that two women faint within two minutes of each other), it uses the bare bones of a story to tell a pretty standard slasher plot. I liked that combo. And by "liked," I mean "was intrigued by."

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

The film stars three handsome-ish college nerds, two hot jocks, and two sorority girls. As expected, the two girls get to show some skin. The cute guys, not so much.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

There was a lot of dripping blood and snapped necks (via a flopping puppet hand), but very little gore. There was, however, a half-decent fake head (the other half was less "decent" and more "papier maché").

PLOT HOLES:

There wasn’t a lot of plot to speak of, thus the amount of holes was limited. However, there was one major flaw with this film: they should not have shown so much of the unnamable creature. From its lustrous, silken leg fur to its comically large ears (or horns?) this creature is way too stupid to be unnamable. Like I said: Fraggle. Every time I saw its cute little cloven feet, I had one of two thoughts: 1) Well, he’s really white. And 2) He kind of gestures like Jim Carrey pretending to be a velociraptor.

OK. IS IT GAY?

The filmmakers have taken a story by one of the most influential horror writers of all time and turned it into a repetitive, pointless slasher flick that barely scores brownie points by name-dropping the Necronomicon. That said, I had a freaking blast. It is not gay, nor is it much of a movie. If you asked me why I liked it so much, I would say it’s unnamable.

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