October Horror 2012: The Resurrected

The Resurrected (aka Shatterbrain) is a 1992 direct to video horror movie directed by Dan O'Bannon, who's only previous directing credit was 1984's Return of The Living Dead.  He'd also written the screenplay for Screamers and Total Recall and created characters for Alien.  The movie starred Chris Sarandon, John Terry, and Jane Sibbett.  It was based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which Lovecraft actually wrote immediately prior to The Colour of Outer Space.


I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this one.  I wasn't sure what to expect since it was early 90's VHS release, but the movie was really good.  It was tense, had a pretty compelling story, was decently acted, and had better effects than some movies I've seen that came out last year.  The movie also seems to fit the pace of the original story the best, and may have actually extend the story.  They've borrowed the framing device that Lovecraft is fond of and the story is told to the audience by someone else after-the-fact, often resulting in multiple levels of flashback.

Oddly, for as much as they seemed to respect the source material they changed the name of the narrator from Marinus Bicknell Willett to John March and changed his occupation from family doctor to private detective hired by Ward's estranged wife.  I don't actually fault the movie here because it was a convincing angle and enabled them to add a few fun support characters.

The movie has token nods to Lovecraft's Cosmic mythology, but the horror elements here are the result of a person accessing an unnatural power.  There aren't really far-reaching ramifications, there's no manipulation by unseen forces, just a power-mad alchemist discovering a secret to prolonging his life and even returning from the dead with a hunger for blood and super-human strength that almost makes him vampiric.

The mystery is tense and twists naturally, but the effects are stand-out.  They really had some nasty looking blood and gore effects and a lot of a super-gross creature effects.  It lent a lot of good creepiness and tension, especially to a certain underground scene involving a matchbook.

This was pretty much great.  I think this is the strongest movie of the season so far and so far the only one that was actually scary in the traditional sense.  The age on the first two movies this year made them a bit campy.

Tomorrow we watch the 2005 silent Call of Cthulhu from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.