Suitable Flesh

Believing a young man to be suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder as a result of abuse at the hands of his father, Psychiatrist Elizabeth Derby inserts herself into his life, unwittingly beginning a terrifying, sexually-charged journey, unaware of the horrible fate that awaits her.

This is a story about a seemingly immortal body thief forcibly leaping through the bodies of his descendants, and the psychiatrist who accidentally stumbles onto this horrible legacy and tries to stop it, all at the cost of not just her professional and personal life, but her own body, as well as her very sanity...

So, the first red flag I noticed was when the film immediately announces that it is set in the Miskatonic Medical School in Arkham, Massachusetts.

Great… Lovecraft.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was a writer who specialized in science-fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction, and is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.

A child born to affluence, whose family lost their wealth when his grandfather died, and who saw both of his parents institutionalized, Lovecraft’s literary work is mainly concerned with the idea that humanity is naught but an insignificant speck in the cosmos and could be swept away at any moment. Incorporating fantasy and science fiction, his stuff is usually set in, or mentions, a fictionalized New England, often the town of Arkham, Massachusetts, and Miskatonic University.

Lovecraft also believed that Western Civilization was in decline, believed Democracy was bad, and that the United States should be governed by a white aristocracy. This is because he was a huge racist and a strident White Supremacist. A lot of his fans try to contextualize this, saying he wasn’t that bad, or he was just “of his time,” or that he also held some positive opinions about people who weren’t white, as he once said that Orthodox Jewish people looked really nice in their little hats. But in reality, Lovecraft had a vicious, clenched-jaw hatred for any person of color, and his stories often went out of their way to showcase his unrestrained and cartoonish racism, the kind of shit that is still well at home among the ugly bigoted monsters frothing at the mouth at your local Trump’s rallies, or really whenever a random white suburbanite gets caught on camera spewing their hatred during one of their entitlement-driven meltdowns.

So yeah, turns out, this film is an adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep," which was also part of the book and tv show "Lovecraft Country" Had I known that this was the source material before I pressed play, I wouldn't have bothered, but here we are. Because while Lovecraft’s stuff can sometimes be adapted into something good, at this point, I feel like we should all just admit that when this does happen on occasion, it's the exception, not the rule. Also, maybe it's past time for us to also admit that, much like Steampunk, Lovecraft's stories might have a great aesthetic, but the truth is, nothing truly great is ever going to be adapted from any of them.

I am 100% most definitely including Suitable Flesh in this.

Barbara Crampton is a soap opera actress who has appeared in several beloved, but lesser known horror films like Chopping Mall and Puppet Master and perhaps best of all, Re-Animator, so in certain genre-loving filmhead circles, she is a queen, and her presence sends the gathered thongs into absolute titters. She’s fine, sure, but I’ve never really understood the devotion. Heather Graham, on the other hand, I get. For me, Heather Graham is most well-known as hot babe Mercedes Lane in License to Drive, one of the last films from that bygone era of Hollywood known as The Time of the Coreys. Granted, that was a very, very… very… long time ago, but still, seeing her here, I can't help but feel like… how the mighty have fallen.

Maybe that’s just me.

Here she plays, Dr. Elizabeth Derby, a woman driven crazy by a terrible knowledge, and as the film opens, we see her bloody and disheveled in a padded room. Then the film does that classic sci-fi/horror thing where the entire story is being recounted by the main character, after the fact, to another character. And if you ask me, unless you’re an adventure novel from the late 1800s-early 1900s, this is a terrible narrative decision. But then, it’s soon clear from the lighting and sets that this whole movie is basically one bad decision of all-around poor quality, and with all the cinematic subtlety of a boot to the face too.

Above all else, this is yet another film that proves that lighting is so incredibly important when it comes to making a good movie. And while you can definitely make a bad movie with good lighting, you absolutely cannot make a good movie with bad lighting. Especially when the lighting you do have is on the same flat level of a daytime soap opera, and most especially when this is coupled with the kind of overbearing melodramatic musical cues that you’d expect from a daytime soap. Oh man, and then there’s the Wipe transitions too?

It’s all so bad and cheap and ugly.

Suitable Flesh is a horror film that is not scary. It’s not gory. It’s not gross. It’s not clever. It’s not surprising. It’s not funny. It’s not well shot. It’s definitely not well-written. Why was this film made? Who liked this shit so much that they were willing to fund it?

Worst of all, or maybe most embarrassing of all, there are multiple sex scenes in this film, multiple sex scenes, like way more than you’d expect, and they are all so weirdly chaste, like basic cable softcore porn quality. Each one is a bunch of wildly performative dry-humping, the grunting and moaning projected with full-throated enthusiasm to the cheap seats in the back of the theatre, all accompanied by jazzy saxophones, nonexistent chemistry, and the showcasing of Heather Graham’s bare flank, and occasionally a single naked tit, all quivering as she jackhammers herself to a totally believable– TOTALLY BELIEVABLE--orgasm atop the guy who played the lead singer from That Thing You Do, someone who, I'm sad to report, the years have not been kind to.

The whole film is just… embarrassing.

It’s so inept, so weirdly prudish, but also way too horny, but horny in the way of a virginal and desperate teenage boy. It's fumbly and sweaty and nervous and just... bad at everything. Just imagine a pretty typical hallmark movie, but instead of a christmas-set romance, it’s a “horror” film. That’s what Suitable Flesh is. 

I think this film is trying to be camp—and to Heather Graham’s credit, she totally gives her all here—but since camp can never be intentionally created, and can only be camp because that’s just what it is, what we end up with is a crappy film hoping to ride the coattails of horror masters that went before them.

(Extended fart noise) Thumbs way down.