H.P. Lovecraft's The Unnamable II

Rating:
Summary: Good Cheez
Review: H.P. Lovecraft is probably one of the most misunderstood writers by the general public. Most of the movies supposedly based on his stories have been so far off the mark as to be unrecognizable. The Unnamable is one of these. The general story line, character names, and local are such that the script writer probably did indeed read some of Lovecraft's work in order to write the script, but any similarities beyond that are purely coincedental.
The Unnamable is a fairly generic horror story about college kids running around in a haunted house with a murderous monster. Heavy on the gore, light on the plot. Heck, one of the main characters even says, "Ah, you see, the plot does get thinner." The monster costume rates a good 4 stars though, with no computer animation needed! The one good thing this movie does do is set up the sequel.

The Unnamable II: The Testemony of Randolf Carter picks up moments after the original ends, though it does rewrite the last minute or so. One of the survivors is carted of to a mental institute, where she is never heard from again. Considering what she'd been through, this is entirely resonable. Where the original movie is generic horror, The Unnamable II slips between Horror and Science Fiction. The profits from the first movie clearly went into the second, which has a better script, John Rhys Davies and David Warner as Faculty at Miscetonic University, and some respectable special effects. Only the Creature's costume suffers in the sequel.
To be fair, there are a few streches of credulity: 1-2:30 AM in the dorms on a Saturday and there aren't people all over the place? Well, hey, if you can accept a demonic creature running around, slaughtering students, faculty, and the local law enforcement, why not.

Now that Part2 has been released on DVD, how about part 1?

Rating:
Summary: Actually zero stars
Review: John Rys Davies fans be advised: Mr. Davies puts in his initial appearance at Minute 16 (of 104) and departs the scene permanently at Minute 47, his brief 31-minute interlude hardly representing his most scintillating performance, being embedded in a swamp of idiot dialog, idiot acting, and idiot special effects. This flick is a sequel to another of the same name not seen by this reviewer. Its events start right where the previous flick chopped off. Missing that original is of no consequence.

That any film such as this one could claim to be a specific representation of Lovecraft's work is preposterous: Aside from the absurdity of the "plot," to make such claim, such a film would have to be structured like a travelogue WITH NO DIALOG. All "science" would have to be at least 100 years out-of-date. A narrator would be constantly voicing-over every scene in a script typically dealing with the so-called "Cthulhu Mythos," a Lovecraft construct featuring various inimical "elder god" supernatural entities, really nasty beings from ancient times predating modern civilization (and even geologic time), totally inimical and always plotting all manner of nasty and icky stuff for us humans from nothing more than sheer cussedness, and (of course) always on the brink of a comeback to world domination.

This reviewer tried (again) to read Lovecraft's 40,000-word novella "At the Mountains of Madness" (hereafter ATMOM) as a refresher for this review, and had to abandon it halfway through, confirming yet again that Lovecraft is fundamentally unreadable today, or (this reviewer contends) at any time in the past. Imagine page after interminable page of ponderously and turgidly boring, dialog-less narrative (the guy seemed incapable of writing even the crudest dialog), describing in copious detail and with all seriousness matters which would be so scientifically implausible today that it would be laughable to propose such be taken seriously: like ascribing credibility to modern air travel with airplanes that fly by flapping their wings; or with Venus being a jungle planet filled with earth-like swamps and nasty critters; or with the moon harboring a major civilization; or with atoms being miniature solar systems whose orbiting electrons are worlds visit-able by "shrink-science"; or a counter-earth planet unknown to science because it is always exactly on the opposite side of the sun. Could you seriously enjoy such a narrative today WHEREIN EVERYTHING HINGES ON THE VIABILITY OF SUCH A CLAIM? In ATMOM, Lovecraft's "geology," presented in all seriousness (though with deliberate fake additives), is about 100 or more years out of date, even for a work of speculative fiction. There is no way a mountain range of the type he surmises could be even speculated to exist. (Perhaps a hundred or more years ago before the advent of orbital photography such, while improbable, could have been speculatively imagined (rather like Doyle's "Lost World.")

For anyone to claim that Lovecraft had a major and meaningful influence on the work of other writers in this genre could only mean that his writings demonstrated every possible writing flaw known to man. Skip this turkey and avoid anything that claims to be based on Lovecraft.

Rating:
Summary: The Unnamable II
Review: This is another one of those movies I like to see once a year or so. I enjoy Carter, played by Mark Kinsey Stephenson. He adds an interesting air to the movie. He plays the part of an intelligent student at Miskatonic University who uncovers the presence of a demon.
This movie is done well. The photography, dialogue, and acting make this a fun flick. It doesn't hurt the movie to have Maria Ford in it also.
The DVD is in a full frame format. The DVD quality is good, both audio and video. Now if they would only put "The Unnamable" on DVD too, to complete the package.

This quick review comes from someone who likes "Night of the Demons", "Killer Party", "Prom Night 2" etc... Just so you know what type of taste I have in horror movies.