The Scare Salon

Lovecraft adaptations tend to be all over the place, quality-wise, with the gold standard arguably being Stuart Gordon’s 1985 Re-Animator and its follow-up, 1986’s From Beyond. So when the writer of both those films, Dennis Paoli, contributed a screenplay for the 2023 film Suitable Flesh—a loose adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1937 short story, “The Thing on the Doorstep”—I knew I’d have to check it out the first chance I got.

Also adding to my excitement about the whole project was the stacked cast, featuring Heather Graham, Barbara Crampton, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, and Johnathon Schaech (plus new-school MST3K host Jonah Ray in a small role as a hospital orderly). The film was directed by Joe Lynch, who’s directed several movies (including Knights of Badassdom and Point Blank), though the only previous work I’d seen of his was the 2017 horror comedy Mayhem, which was pretty entertaining.

Right up front, I’m going to say that I really dug Suitable Flesh, but I noticed that horror fans’ opinions on it were very polarized. Some found it a refreshing, stylized homage to Stuart Gordon’s beloved Lovecraft films from the 80s, with all the delightful camp that implies, while others found it pointless, dumb, cheesy, and/or boring, with too many “awkward” sex scenes. Where you fall on this debate is obviously up to you, but keep in mind that this film was clearly not meant to be taken entirely seriously; it’s not as over the top and blackly comic as Re-Animator, but it’s in a similar spirit, I feel.

At the beginning of the film, we see a psychiatrist named Dr. Daniella Upton (Barbara Crampton) inspecting what is implied to be a set of extremely mutilated human remains in a morgue. She then proceeds to a padded cell, where she meets with the psychiatric hospital’s latest patient, Dr. Elizabeth Derby (Heather Graham), who is also a psychiatrist and may or may not have just done something very, very bad.

Daniella and Elizabeth are obviously well acquainted, and Daniella seems pained to see her dear friend and colleague in such a state. Elizabeth is insisting that she isn’t crazy and had a very good reason to do what she did, and even though she definitely sounds bonkers, Daniella agrees to listen to her story. The film then goes into an extended flashback as we detail the events that led up to this point.

Elizabeth had a very successful private psychiatric practice and was married to a dude named Eddie (Johnathon Schaech), who seems to lament how much time she spends on her work. One day, Elizabeth is surprised at her office by the arrival of a frantic young man named Asa Waite (Judah Lewis), who desperately asks her for help. Reluctant at first, Elizabeth eventually relents and lets Asa inside.

The young man is obviously very troubled, and tells the doctor that his father Ephraim (Bruce Davison) is using his body. Elizabeth seemingly takes this to mean that Asa is being sexually abused, but as the session goes on, something sort of weird happens. Asa gets a phone call from his father, after which he appears to have some kind of seizure. Following the seizure, he acts like a completely different person: smug, arrogant, and ostensibly unable to remember anything that went on before the phone call. After forcibly grabbing Elizabeth by the crotch, Asa sleazes out of the office.

Unsettled by the whole incident, Elizabeth is nonetheless intrigued; she believes that Asa might be suffering from the worst case of dissociative identity disorder she’s ever seen, and she even plans to take on his case for free with the hopes of maybe publishing a paper about him. There are some other, less wholesome emotions at work too, though, as Elizabeth later fantasizes that it’s Asa having sex with her instead of her husband.

Oh, and just a heads-up: there’s quite a lot of sex in this, which some viewers found akin to some cheeseball softcore Showtime series from the 90s, like Silk Stalkings or Red Shoe Diaries. I didn’t mind it, but I can kinda see where they’re coming from too. It did have a bit of a tawdry vibe in that regard, but as I said, I got the impression that the cheesiness was an absolutely deliberate attempt to suggest that exact 80s/90s feel, and I think this attempt was largely successful.

Anyway, going against professional ethics, Elizabeth decides to drop by Asa’s house (he gave her his address when he first showed up at her office) to see if she can get to the bottom of what’s going on. Once there, she meets Asa’s father, who is clearly in very bad health and is also a raging shithead who threatens to stab Elizabeth if she doesn’t GTFO. Elizabeth wisely retreats but notices that Ephraim has a creepy book on his desk with all kinds of weird symbols and drawings of terrifying monsters in it. Hmmm, wonder what book that could be?

Later that night, Asa calls Elizabeth and pleads with her to come back to his house. She finds Ephraim dying and attempts to help him, but Asa won’t allow it, screaming at her to let him die so that it will all finally end. The old man seems to expire, and Elizabeth insists they need to call the police, but just then, Ephraim suddenly sits back up and starts mumbling some magical-sounding incantation before dying again, this time for real (maybe). Just like before, Asa has a seizure and then starts acting like a douchebag, but Elizabeth—either overcome by her own lust or somehow being low-key mind-controlled—fucks Asa on the desk with Ephraim’s corpse a few feet away on the rug (kinky). While in flagrante, Asa mumbles the same incantation in Elizabeth’s ear, and she suddenly finds herself peering out of Asa’s eyes, while Asa is enjoying being inside her body (in more ways than one).

So yeah, just like in the original story, the incantation causes you to be able to switch bodies with someone, with the caveat being that the first two times you do it are temporary, but when you switch a third time, it’s permanent…sort of, as this rule seems to be broken a few times as the movie goes on, with Asa (who in reality is not Asa at all but some kind of wanderer/occultist who has been taking people over for centuries) switching bodies all over the place.

Though the premise of the movie is similar to that of the story, this is a fairly loose adaptation, so don’t go into it expecting it to follow the original plot beat for beat. That said, this was a really fun take on Lovecraft’s tale, overripe and wild-eyed and sort of exaggerated and hyper-real. It’s filled to the brim with smutty sex scenes and great gore (the backup camera kill is amazing, by the way), and though the acting is at times overblown, it’s all in service to the retro mood the film is trying to create. In my opinion, Suitable Flesh did a great job of somewhat replicating Stuart Gordon’s singular style without copying it exactly, but as I mentioned, opinions on this seemed very mixed in the horror community, so I’m not sure everyone is going to like it as much as I did. It’s on Shudder as of late February 2025, so check it out if it sounds like it would be on your wavelength.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.