H. P. Lovecraft's The Unnamable

(1988) **1/2

There are a lot of ways that checking out the work of H.P. Lovecraft can be annoying. The cosmology he put together is spread throughout various short stories, then later expanded by different authors. And his imdb page, forget about it. He's got writing credit on 70 different properties, but even leaving out the video games and episodes of Night Gallery, there's a slew of 20-minute-or-less indie films that only ever showed at festivals or in some guy's basement. That leaves the actual full-length Lovecraft cinema rather thin on the ground, and the good stuff even thinner.

Besides using certain names common to H.P.'s tales (Miskatonic Univerisity, the shelf-worn Necronomicon), The Unnamable doesn't actually capture anything truly Lovecraftian. Then again, few movies that try actually do.

This is fairly ridiculous, but fun. It plays out as your basic family-monster-in-the-attic kind of thing. 100 years ago an old guy in a nightcap gets his heart yanked out by a monster-cam POV shot, and the house is sealed up, the surrounding graveyard becoming a popular hangout spot for college kids. Soon the story veers ever further from Lovecraft's style by involving us in the romantic politics of a small batch of students. I've read a bunch of Lovecraft, and Miskatonic U. is where med students conduct hideous experiments in their rented basements while professors swap minds with ancient alien races -- not where girls talk about dating the captain of the rowing team and whatnot. Oh well.

A scouting trip to the scary house (for a fraternity bash, of course) soon turns into a body count, as student after student is pursued by a backlit silhouette and then done in by a pair of monster hands coming from offscreen. Some gore, one exposed (and very fake) boob later, and the monster is finally revealed in the last scene and is...surprisingly kind of cool. It's just a woman in a costume, but it's a fairly eeirie design and the beast's ferocity is better-acted than I would've thought. The picture doesn't really do it justice, since you don't have the sound and the moves. They are so stingy about showing you the monster during the bulk of the action, I thought it was going to look a lot worse. They should have shown it more.

This one just barely squeaks by with three stars*, which is earned with the twin bonuses of the good monster and the odd character of Randolph Carter (another Lovecraft name). Carter is entertaining as Miskatonic's quirky, resident folklore weirdo who somehow gets respect from the ladies despite the fact he's some sort of chicken-man dressed in tweed.

* (next day) No fraggin' way it does! I've had a day's reflection and decided the only reason I was so generous was that the decent monster shocked me out of the boredom the movie had already induced. Two and a half, sucka!