Suitable Flesh

Flesh, M’Lady

Suitable Flesh
Directed by Joe Lynch
USA 2023 Eyevox Entertainment
Screened 24 August 2023 at FrightFest, London
 

I’ve only seen one other film directed by Joe Lynch (Everly, reviewed here) but I would have expected a film based on H. P. Lovecraft’s The Thing On The Doorstep to be something right up my street. Alas, although Suitable Flesh can claim that it’s a, loose at best, adaptation of that tale... the other main target of the film does actually preclude me a little, in terms of being the target audience. I went to see this one because it was opening FrightFest, has Heather Graham in it and also I was kinda hoping Barbara Crampton would turn up (alas, she was originally expected but had to send her apologies due to the writers/actors strike in the US at the moment... and good for her, that’s a pretty good reason for not coming, I think).

Okay, so the main target was for this to be a Lovecraft adaptation in the style of one of Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft adaptations of the mid to late 80s. Now, I have only, as far as I know (and not including TV episodes... I’m assuming he directed one of the excellent Masters Of Horror episodes a while back), ever seen one Stuart Gordon movie. I rented it from the off licence over the road on VHS in the late 1980s, when I was in my late teens. The movie was Reanimator and, I’m sorry, I was incensed throughout the whole film because the composer was ripping off the opening titles to Bernard Herrmann’s score to Psycho. I stayed enraged throughout the whole movie and... yeah... still to this day so, I never watched another Gordon movie (I’ve never revisited the original Total Recall again either, since being greatly angered in the cinema on its first release that Goldsmith had presumably been asked to copy Basil Poledouris’ iconic title music for Conan The Barbarian and, looking around me in the cinema, my heart sank when other people weren't standing up in their seats to voice their displeasure at this temp track plagiarism).

Anyway, I say all this by way of demonstrating that I’m not the most sympathetic target audience for this movie and I also don’t have the preferred point of reference to fully appreciate this film on its own terms.

However, I do have a couple of positives I can give you about the experience... and then I guess I’ll do some of the negative stuff because, yeah, I have to be truthful I suppose.

Okay, so the film was nicely shot, switching seamlessly between smooth camera moves, hand held camera, a few iris shots to focus on specific details the director wants you to catch and even a couple of swirly camera shots embracing chaos which were, it has to be said, a little reminiscent of something Brian De Palma might do (at least that’s the way I felt, I don’t know if the director was influenced by his stuff or not).

Another good thing about the movie was the actors. They’re all pretty great and do a terrific job of nailing what is quite a hard mix of comedy juxtaposed with horror in tone. Barbara Crampton had a smaller but significant role and Heather Graham is always good... although, at 53 years old already, I still can’t figure out how she always looks like she’s in her early twenties. Is she a clone? Also a big shout out to the obnoxious brat of a sometimes villain, sometimes damsel in distress (it’s a mind swap plot so that damsel thing is literal), played by Judah Lewis. I hated him in this but... yeah, I think that was the idea. So job well done.

Okay, I’ll leave one last positive for the end of this review but I will say that, I really didn’t enjoy this movie. There were no real surprises in it at all (and, again, there maybe weren’t supposed to be). It kind of hangs together but I did feel it was kinda dull. The gory scenes of violence weren’t particularly shocking or anything you’ve not seen before... which is fine but it didn’t keep me interested either. 

What should have kept me interested were the many sex scenes in the film but... wow! Is there something in everyone’s contracts now that states you can’t have any real nudity in sex scenes. I mean, there’s just a dash but, honestly, there’s nothing gratuitous in here at all, which, doesn’t make it a good advert for the 1980s Stuart Gordon thing, I’m guessing. I mean, an 80s sex scene would have had naked people performing a ‘Hollywood perfect’ version of people getting passionate. This had people getting passionate for no apparent reason half the time (it seemed to me). I was honestly surprised at Heather Graham only exposing a breast or two for maybe a second and a half because, after all, one of her many great roles was as Rollergirl in Boogie Nights. But in terms of sex scenes, this film is ‘Boogie Light’.

So, yeah, the film is a little prudish, the violence didn’t have a real lot of shock value either and, the stuff which I suspect will keep a lot of people happy would be the Stuart Gordon vibes they might be getting from it... I just don’t have the right reference point to pick up on that stuff, I’m afraid to say. Although I will say that, for the most part, the FrightFest audience were behind this and it seemed to get a good reaction from them.

So, one last thing... Steve Moore’s score was great. At least, I thought it was Steve Moore. I thought that’s who was listed on the credits but I can’t find his or any composer’s name listed on the IMDB for this film (at time of writing). It was admittedly owing a debt to certain sections of John Carpenter’s score for The Fog (reviewed here) at times but, yeah, I’d buy this on a proper CD release if it ever came out (but not on a dodgy download or scratchy vinyl).

Other than that, not much more for me to say about Suitable Flesh. It wasn’t a big hit with me and I almost regret buying a ticket but, it wasn’t a terrible movie and it went down well with the audience, I thought. I have some other FrightFest films lined up this week so I’ll hopefully be able to let you know how those went over the course of next six days.