The Unnamable

It's a difficult feat to translate an H.P. Lovecraft story to film. I still think Stuart Gordon is the best we've seen thus far with Re-Animator and the far less acclaimed From Beyond. Although, The Unnamable (1988) was quite enjoyable despite the previous statement.

This movie follows two groups of delinquent Miskatonic University students following up on a local legend of a monster who was born and hidden away in the attic of an old house in the woods. It has you're typical teen slasher set up with two groups of guys, the nerds and the jocks, trying to impress the unlikely female companions and getting picked off one by one.

The performances were all kind of campy except for Katrin Alexandre, who played the abandoned monster Alyda. Her movements in costume looked incredibly inhuman and extremely creepy. You have to give her credit for how they pulled the monster off, considering the description given in the short story was "a thousand shapes of horror." That's Lovecraft for you. Mark Kinsey Stephonson also put forth a valiant effort playing the knowledgeable Randolph Carter but ended up looking like he was unsuccessfully channeling Jeffrey Combs.

The Unnamable is a lost classic of the 1980's in it's own right. You may remember seeing this title gracing the shelves of your grimiest video store. If you happened to get your greasy hands on a copy of the VHS or the recent and short lived Anchor Bay release consider yourself lucky... sort of.

P.S. Read Lovecraft.