REVIEW: The Unnamable (1988)

There's nothing quite like taking a dip in the macabre and many-tentacled world of H.P. Lovecraft. Unfortunately for us cinephiles, it's usually not very rewarding. For each of the decent Lovecraft film adaptations out there, there's a million zillion (actual figure) wastes of time and money in the growing abyss of VHS and DVD. I can probably count the number of decent Lovecraft flicks on one hand: there's Re-Animator, which was certainly fun, and probably the most famous. Then we've got Dagon, which I thought was more entertaining than most people did, and From Beyond was a hoot. I've also got hope for the recent Call of Cthulhu, a new silent picture from the twisted minds over at the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which looks incredible.

Sadly, The Unnamable does not earn a rank on my good hand. If I'm feeling particularly generous, it might have an honorable mention on my other hand somewhere down by the pinky.

We begin with the tragic tale of Joseph Winthrop, who 100 (or possible 300) years ago made a startling discovery: his pregnant wife was giving birth to something...unnamable. Actually, "giving birth" was probably too polite a term, considering that he later mentions in his journal that the creature "ate its way to the light, and then recoiled just as quickly." Nice imagery, huh? Luckily for the residents of Massachusetts, Winthrop was also an amateur sorcerer and used his mystical manuals to trap the creature forever inside the walls of his home, but as he notes, the rotting wood will not last forever.

Curiously, Old Man Winthrop also bucks the status quo and names his creature "Elyda." So much for the title, eh?

The story jumps forward to the present day (or what was passing for the present day back in 1988), where pretentious grad student Carter is telling the legend of Winthrop and his beastly daughter to his pals Joel and Howard. Science major Joel thinks the story is just the stuff of local superstition, and sets out to prove it by offering to spend some time in the decrepit place that evening. Howard, being weak-willed, follows Carter back to the library, while Joel walks into the house and gets the no-trespassing speech from Elyda's ancient claws.

Meanwhile, Wendy and Tanya are hanging out at the university library discussing the many problems of being hot freshman girls. This was "1988 hot," so when we adjust that for inflation they're both about "2005 pretty okay." Maybe they'd be upgraded to "nice-looking" if their hair weren't so damn frizzy. They're not about to mess with their hair, though, because frat guys Bruce and John walk over and invite them to check out the creepy old house at the edge of town, which they're planning to use for hazing pranks later on. I think that Lovecraft was ahead of his time, because his accounts of freshmen girls being duped turned out to be eerily accurate.

Elsewhere in the library, Howard starts to wonder what the hell happened to Joel -- it's been an entire day since anyone's seen him! After much begging and counter-rationalizing, Carter agrees to join Howard on his search for Joel.

For the sake of brevity, I'll run through the rest:
-Wendy gets naked. Bruce and John die. Wendy dies.
-Howard earnestly tries to save everyone, and gets Tanya's respect.
-Carter treats Howard like he's retarded, but still saves him with magic spells that incite the "tree spirits."
-The end!

I'd recap those parts, but it's really just forty-five minutes of running through hallways and screaming. I won't try to hedge and kinda-recommend the movie, because it's pretty bad. The acting is passable at best, the special effects are terrible (the tree spirits are really shaky tree branches), the make-up is mediocre, and the plot stretches the boundaries of credulity. A one-hundred year old house with dozens of local legends based on it, and there are still centuries-old sorcery books on the dining-room table? Considering that seven characters in the movie walked to the house would seem to indicate that it's not that damn hard to find. The more likely scenario would be that Joel would walk in and trip over homeless people and junkies, and then Carter would have to stop rebellious high school kids from spray-painting fakey Satanic symbols all over the walls. "Satin Lives!!!"

The movie also suffers from what I call "The House Hunt Paradox." This is what happens in horror movies when there are two conditions that logically contradict each other: there's a haunted (or stalked) house that has to be searched, and a cast of characters so large that most of them die in entertaining ways but still leave a couple to defeat the evil. I'm sure that everyone is familiar with this. The problem is that most houses are simply not that big. I've been in a lot of houses, some of them very large, and I've never, ever, ever been in danger of losing track of anyone else inside them. In 99% of non-mansions, everyone is within shouting distance at all times, if not speaking distance. Even in most really big houses, the geography is certainly not maze-like; there's usually a central area and then branching rooms, and the higher floors tend to have even less space. At best, I'd imagine if the house was really big, and there were only two characters, they might lose each other. A cast of six screaming people in this house would NOT lose each other. It would need to be labyrinthine. The house in this movie is large, but the only reasonable way for these kids to get lost is through major head trauma.

And that's all I've got to say about the negative aspects. They're enough to make me assure you that you probably won't enjoy watching this movie, so you can take that as the final line of the review if you like.

On the other hand, for the sake of all drive-in movies everywhere, I'll also talk about the parts of the movie that I enjoyed -- because I didn't walk away completely empty-handed.

The thing that struck me during the final half-hour of the movie is that The Unnamable is really a live-action Scooby Doo episode, with a little bit of gore and some boobs. The monster is ludicrous and laughable, there's tons of running around in a small house searching for clues, and the character of Howard is like a slightly smarter Shaggy. Honestly, if there's one single bit of outright praise I have for this film, it's the relationship between Howard and the rest of the cast (especially Carter). Charles Klausmeyer (or Charles King) plays Howard with such a wide-eyed naivete that he's incredibly likeable, and his interaction with the demanding and terse Carter is actually really funny -- you can tell how much Howard wants to save everyone, but he's completely clueless as to how to do it. Klausmeyer's line readings and facial expressions made me chuckle out loud several times during the movie, and I mean that in the sense that they were all obviously intentional. In most movies of this caliber I couldn't care less what characters survived, but I was actually rooting for Howard to defeat the unnamable and make out with Tanya.

That's about all the praise I've got the movie, but it's really just something to keep in mind if you're somehow forced to suffer through the rest of it. Every movie's got to have some sort of life raft, right?

(MYSTERY UPDATE: The actor who played Carter has both actor AND actress credits on the IMDB, most recently as a woman in Domino. Weeeeeeird.)