37 years after the release of Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator follow-up From Beyond, the late director’s presence can be felt heavily in Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh. It should; it was a story Gordon and long-time friend and writer Dennis Paoli had on the back burner for many years as the next Lovecraft adaptation to create.
But the industry changed, and Suitable Flesh‘s content made it a hard sell, so it looked like it may never see the light of day when Gordon passed away three years ago. But thanks to Re-Animator and From Beyond star Barbara Crampton, the ball was set rolling on making Gordon’s final piece in his lewd Lovecraftian power fantasy anthology a reality. So Brian Yuzna, Dennis Paoli, and Barbara Crampton reunited to make that happen.
Joe Lynch, who directed the delightful office bloodbath movie Mayhem with Samara Weaving and Stephen Yeun had his own connection with Gordon. Suitable Flesh is good evidence he understood what made those classic Gordon Lovecraft adaptations so uniquely mesmerizing. It is a deliberately theatrical mix of cosmic power fantasy and fantasies of the flesh.
From Beyond, which starred Crampton alongside Jeffrey Combs, and Ken Foree, dealt with the alluring power of seeing beyond our own reality and its effects on a person (spoiler; they are not great in the long term), but its real focus is in kinky body horror. Lovecraft’s dense cosmic horror is pureed with the glittering sleaze of 80s horror movies. As with Re-Animator, the fusion worked a treat. It’s theatrical, disgusting, and a mad joy to behold.
The New Flesh
For Suitable Flesh, we see that formula updated. It’s less about grisly monsters and more of a Getting Freaky Friday with a heavy dollop of softlit TV Movie of the Week (which feels very much an intentional choice). The tale is adapted from Lovecraft’s The Thing on the Doorstep and sees Heather Graham as a psychologist who encounters a body-swapping demonic entity. It’s a horny one at that, and throughout the movie we get variations of people inhabiting each other’s bodies as the creature engages in all manner of carnality and sometimes violence.
It’s a plot device that allows for some fun flip-flopping character work for Graham, Barbara Crampton, and Judah Lewis (he of The Babysitter and The Christmas Chronicles). It’s a film that doesn’t like to sit still, and plays up to its salacious side with over-the-top glee. Understandably that’s not for everyone, and as noted earlier, a harder sell 37 years removed from the kind of film it pays loving tribute to. Still, it should be commended for its commitment to evoking that lewd Lovecraftian power fantasy formula without devolving into pastiche.
The critical difference between these films is in the approach. The power fantasy was very much in the human camp with Beyond Flesh with the monstrous side effects on the human body there for all to see, whereas Suitable Flesh flips that by having an entity getting all the pleasure as it forces its unwilling hosts into sick and twisted situations using their bodies.
There’s that, and the sheen is somewhat cleaner than the dirty, grubby film on top of From Beyond. The soft focus TV movie look has largely to do with the fact it’s mostly being told from memory, but it works as a sneaky way to catch you unawares. I must admit it caught me off guard at first. It felt a lot more ’90s than ’80s, but it’s a choice that Lynch runs with and clearly feels confident using.
It’s a movie out of its own time and space at times, but that’s why it successfully captures something of that Gordon spirit. Of course, it’s not identical to what was served up in the ’80s, and it shouldn’t be. It’s not just a love letter to a genre great; it’s a continuation of his legacy.
