With Re-Animator, From Beyond and Dagon (among others), the late Stuart Gordon demonstrated a deep love and understanding of H.P. Lovecraft’s unnerving work and in particular its enchanting visions of the wonderful, ancient horrors that lie just outside our realm. That spirit is properly channeled by Suitable Flesh, director Joe Lynch’s adaptation of Lovecraft’s 1937 short story “The Thing on the Doorstep” that’s written by Gordon’s favorite screenwriter Dennis Paoli and co-stars his leading lady Barbara Crampton. An affectionate homage that captures the psychosexual delirium of its genre inspirations, it’s a throwback chiller steeped in blood, kink, and the terrifying thrill of violation.
Debuting in theaters and on VOD right in time for Halloween (Oct. 27, to be precise), Suitable Flesh is headlined by an excellent Heather Graham as Dr. Elizabeth Derby, a therapist who’s been locked up in a psych-ward padded room by her best friend Dr. Daniella Upton (Crampton). Elizabeth is panicked about a mysterious man who wants to get her, and to help Daniella better understand her situation, she relays her tale, which is subsequently told in flashback. A successful professional married to unemployed husband Edward (Johnathon Schaech), Elizabeth had her world torn apart by the unexpected arrival at her office of Asa Waite (Judah Lewis), a young man who sought her assistance because of her book-writing expertise on out-of-body experiences. Asa is intensely familiar with this phenomenon, and he soon demonstrates why, convulsing and contorting before Elizabeth’s eyes, after which he temporarily appears to become someone else.
Elizabeth initially diagnoses this as the most severe case of multiple personality disorder she’s ever seen. Moreover, she can’t get Asa out of her head, and Lynch—who’s already employed a De Palma-grade split diopter shot for maximum ’70s-’80s flair—proceeds to stage a sex scene between Elizabeth and Edward in which a TV plays crashing waves in the background, a ceiling fan spins overhead, and Elizabeth imagines her partner turning into Asa. The anachronistic aesthetics and attendant twisted-hothouse atmosphere are spot on; Lynch gets the slightly stilted and mannered look, feel and affected performances that marked Gordon and his ilk’s output. At the same time, however, he refuses to render his saga a one-note photocopy joke by resorting to outright shout-outs—save, that is, for a few character names (Huxley, Crowley) that subtly nod to genre ancestors.
Upon visiting Asa’s home, Elizabeth meets his father Ephraim (Bruce Davison), who’s gravely ill and whose hand is curled in the exact same way that Asa’s was during his writhing-and-shuddering office episode. He additionally boasts the same sneering, lascivious attitude that Asa briefly exhibited—a tip-off to the fact that the two are unnaturally connected. More disturbing still, Ephraim is sitting at a desk reading a book written in an ancient language and filled with illustrations of unholy rituals and unthinkable beasts, including one of Lovecraft’s iconic Cthulhu. The book also seems to soak up blood from a knife, in case there was any doubt that Elizabeth had stumbled into a Necronomicon-esque nightmare destined to pit her against unthinkable alien agents intent on possession, consumption, and annihilation.
A later drop-in at Ephraim’s abode underscores this point, with Asa striving to kill his dad by cutting off his head and setting him on fire because “his mind has power!” Ephraim’s ensuing Indecipherable incantations beget mind transference between father and son, although by this point, it’s readily apparent that Ephraim’s mortal shell is inhabited by a nefarious force intent on staying alive by hopping from one body to another. It takes three attempts for this process to stick, and Asa wants to end Ephraim before he can complete the third try. Alas, he’s unsuccessful, and once controlled by the entity, Asa seduces Elizabeth during the sort of impromptu sexual tryst that only happens in the movies, and is further complicated by mid-coitus mind transference between Asa and Elizabeth that director Lynch embellishes with feverishly rotating camerawork.
From there, Suitable Flesh dives headfirst into consciousness-swapping lunacy, with Asa toying with Elizabeth by trying to take over her body—something he accomplishes more than once, resulting in a sadomasochistic blade-assisted romp between Elizabeth and Edward. Graham, it turns out, was made for this kind of mayhem, vacillating between panicked heroine (when she’s Elizabeth) and alluring and canny villain (when she’s the entity) with just-barely-over-the-top verve. Whether leering at her prey or exploring her body with her hands, Graham handles her dual-role duties with requisite panicked hysteria and lewd poise. A finale that pits Elizabeth against Daniella is not simply the film’s gonzo highlight, but marks the actress as a kindred spirit to Crampton, a B-movie legend whom she resembles both physically and with regards to her blend of confidence, vulnerability, and wiliness.
Paoli’s script features a collection of touches—notably, two Elizabeth patients who have issues with anger and control—that contribute to the material’s atmosphere of furious carnal deviance. Even when it’s indulging in calmer moments of conversational psychobabble, Suitable Flesh operates at a frenzied pitch, its action energized by dreamy transitional fades, spooky iris shots, slumbering fantasy sequences, and routine clashes between the rational and irrational. Lynch goes full throttle with the stylization, and the effect is, if not quite scary, then charmingly reverential. The film feels less like a pantomime than a peak-era Gordon venture—all that’s missing is a Jeffrey Combs cameo.
Suitable Flesh trades in the otherworldly and yet refuses to tip into actual monster-movie terrain; instead, as befitting a story about the evil lurking within, it relies on its human cast to convey that which cannot be seen (or comprehended). That too is a staple of Lovecraftian fiction, and helps to trigger the viewer’s imagination by suggesting greater horrors just out of view. Presenting a hellscape in which identity is as unstable as reality itself, the film ultimately provides the goriness that its target demo craves and the wicked humor that its macabre narrative needs. A shrewd modernized update on its source that weaves together bits and pieces borrowed from various cinematic predecessors, it proves a retro head-trip that would make Gordon proud.
