I’ve never wanted to be one of those people who declares their generation’s movies the best simply because they are incapable (or unwilling) to move with the times, however, I’m always stoked when someone manages to accurately invoke the types of genre films I saw during my formative years.
Step forward Joe Lynch who, with Suitable Flesh, has managed to successfully replicate the glory days of the late Stuart Gordon’s wet and wild H.P. Lovecraft adaptations that proved to be an unforgettable highlight of my teenage horror education.
Flanked by Gordon’s frequent screenwriting collaborator, Dennis Paoli and longtime female lead-turned-producer, Barbara Crampton, Suitable Flesh not only aims to follow in the bloody footsteps of such raucous, perverse extravaganzas as Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak, it actually nails that chaotic aesthetic better than anyone else in the last thirty years.
In the psychiatric wing of Miskatonic University, Dr. Daniella Upton visits her incarcerated friend and colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Derby after musing over the horribly mangled murder victim she’s apparently responsible for. However, the agitated Elizabeth tries to convince Daniella that the person she’s so gruesomely mangled hasn’t been mangled enough and relates her harrowing, fantastical tale in an effort to get some understanding before it’s too late.
Rewinding back a short while and we find Elizabeth having a therapy session interrupted by the panicked Asa Waite, a young man who has become convinced that his domineering, yet dying, father has been occasionally possessing his body and fears that the switch will soon become permanent. After witnessing a seizure that causes Asa to adopt an entirely different personality, Elizabeth not only feels that he could make quite an impressive case study, but she starts fantasizing about the young man sexually thanks to feeling bored in her vanilla marriage.
It’s this urge that inspires her to visit Asa’s house and once there, she meets his father, the sneering Ephraim, who hasn’t let his heart attacks, strokes and cancer softens his cruel demeanor. However, during another visit, things rapidly lose all sense of control when it’s revealed that Ephraim, with the help of ancient, eldritch gods, a messed-up spell book and some guttural incantations really has been occupying his son’s body and intends to permanently replace him in order to continue to draw out his existence in order to indulge in his extreme appetites.
Before you know it, Elizabeth finds herself in the middle of a terrifying identity crisis as Ephraim’s malignant consciousness strives to mix things up by occupying her body next.
A loose, fittingly gender flipped adaptation of Lovecraft’s bodyhopping, The Thing On The Door Step, Suitable Flesh wears its Gordon inspired themes on its sleeve like a splatter of crimson gore on a white shirt. Not only does Paoli’s script deal with a central villain with extreme, sexual appetites (paging both Dr. Hill and Dr. Pretorius), but the movie goes as far as using the same font as From Beyond on its poster and I for one am utterly here for it. While a lot of directors would attack such material with a cold, clinical, almost Cronenbergian air of detachment to add an extra layer of discomfort, Lynch instead opts for a more tongue-in-cheek approach, amusingly aiming for the sort of vibe you got from 80s and 90s set erotic thrillers that usually featured Shannon Tweed. As a result, we enter a world where psychologists are middle-aged, blonde and stunning and turn up at the homes of potential patients in lavish silk shirts and women mull over things in their offices at night while being mysterously backlit by the moon shining through their window. While some might not get the tone Lynch is swinging for, those in on the joke will have a blast as the majority of questionable decisions made by its lead character can be justified by the campy notion that her unfettered horniness has mercilessly overridden anything close to common sense.
However, once the cat is out of the bag and Ephraim is out of his failing meat sack, all hell breaks loose as the unhinged script gleefully toys with gender roles, sexuality and excessive gore as the characters caught in this brain swapping nightmare are irrevocably altered by their outlandish experiences. In a fascinating switch, the old-school Ephraim finds that becoming a woman in this day and age comes with way more power and influence than they did in his day and embarks on an awesomely twisted affair with Elizabeth’s husband while wearing her body. In a darkly humourous twist, he actually enjoys the more sexually adventurous experiences he has with this imposter and even admits to having better orgasms to a horrified Elizabeth once she’s temporarily back in her own body.
With such gleefully exaggerated sexual politics lodged within such an eccentric story, Lynch manages to turn in something akin to Paul Verhoven remaking a nightmarish version Freaky Friday and thankfully his cast is admirably dedicated to nailing the bizarre tone.
Taking the lead as Elizabeth (and technically everyone who enters her body) is Heather Graham who is more than a little familiar with the odd cheesy erotic thriller or two (Anyone remember Killing Me Softly? Anyone? Just me then…) and comes at the material full force, playing Elizabeth with the stilted performance of a lame TV movie but switching to full-on, leering, roll-up smoking villainy whenever Ephraim takes up residence in her body. Elsewhere, Judah Lewis similarly shifts gears from traumatised son Asa, to his sexually voracious father with creepy ease, Bruce Davidson gives us the bench mark for Ephraim himself in his aged, decrepit state and Crampton herself plays a role endearingly close to the one she played in From Beyond – she even has those humongous glasses.
Of course twisted sexual politics and throwbacks to glossy-but-randy thrillers are great and all, but to really nail the Stuart Gordon/H.P. Lovecraft effect, Lynch has to give us some really fucked up shit and from fiendishly spurty decapitations to an inspired scene where someone is repeated crushed by a reversing car with the ever more mangled body showing up on the rear monitor, Suitible Flesh delivers nicely.
Devilishly original, yet weirdly familiar, some unfamiliar with the movie’s influences may find that this particular flesh might not be quite so suitable after all, but those weaned on Gordon’s particular brand of depraved insanity will be tickled pink that that this filmmaking team has raised his distinctive style from the great beyond. In fact the only thing it’s truly missing is a cameo by Jeffrey Combs.
All hail the great old ones.
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