Director Joe Lynch‘s (Wrong Turn 2, Mayhem, “Creepshow”) new movie Suitable Flesh, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Thing On The Doorstep, unleashed body-hopping madness last week at the Tribeca Film Festival, ahead of its theatrical release later this year from RLJE Films.
Barbara Crampton stars in Suitable Flesh, executive produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). Dennis Paoli, the writer of Re-Animator and From Beyond, wrote the script.
Joe Lynch and the late Stuart Gordon’s frequent collaborators seamlessly insert Suitable Flesh into Gordon’s Lovecraftian universe (our review). Bloody Disgusting spoke with the filmmaker at Tribeca, where he teased the Lovecraft connections for Gordon’s fans and the advice Brian Yuzna gave him when making the film.
Joe Lynch behind the scenes
Suitable Flesh exists within the same world of Re-Animator and From Beyond. Lynch breaks down horror’s original cinematic universe and how he kept his film accessible for those unfamiliar with Gordon’s films.
Lynch explains, “Lovecraft was one of the originators of an expanded universe. Being able to have different stories in the same hospital, so to speak. Like in Miskatonic or Arkham, and have all these tropes and all this different iconography that would jump from story to story, that made you feel like this was part of a bigger world. I always loved that idea. As a fan of Stuart’s work early on in Re-Animator, when From Beyond came out and characters are talking about Miskatonic, I’m like, ‘Wait a second, does that mean that Katherine from From Beyond was also in the same hospital as Herbert West? Were they crossing paths, in a way?’ I always thought that was really cool, and that was something that I always wanted to do in my own films, but in this one especially.”
“When I got the script for this when Barbara [Crampton] reached out and said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in something like this?’… When it said Dennis Paoli, I immediately said, ‘Wait a second, holy crap,’ and it was Lovecraft. All right, there is an opportunity here,” Lynch continues. “On the first page, when you open the page, it says Miskatonic University; I got really excited over the possibilities of being able to make those connections. You don’t have to be a fan of Re-Animator or From Beyond, or even of all the different little Lovecraftian things we would put in, like five knocks, three and two, or all the little tiny hints to his work. You don’t need to be in the know, but those who are in the know would appreciate that we were trying to connect things together.
“I’ve always been fascinated with the world that Dennis and Brian Yuzna and Barbara and Mac Ahlberg, the DP of the original films, what they had created in Re-Animator. I always thought, ‘Well, what happened to Miskatonic years later?'”
Producer Brian Yuzna is no stranger to the goopy, gory world of Gordon’s Lovecraft horror. When asked if Yuzna offered any advice on making a Lovecraft horror feature, Lynch revealed a core mantra that he carried with him throughout production.
Lynch tells us, “To be honest, the only advice that he gave me was, ‘Just keep asking yourself ‘What would Stuart do?’ I wish I had a shirt, WWSD, and I used that every day on set if there was something where I felt like I was holding back too much or if there was a moment that felt like, ‘Could we find levity in this beat,’ or on the flip side, ‘Where do we make it hurt? Where do we feel like we’re going to piss some people off?’ That was an edict that I had every day, and that was something that came from Brian when we were sharing nachos that day.
“He just kept saying, ‘Just keep asking yourself, what would Stuart do,’ because he knew this project was near and dear to Stuart before he passed. That’s how it was presented to me, and I wanted to do right by him. I felt a little bit like that position that Spielberg was in when he was doing AI when Kubrick passed that project on to him. Even if I get one person to feel like this might have been something that Stuart’s spirit was infused in us, then I feel like we did our jobs right.“
Expect to hear a lot more on Suitable Flesh as it gears up for release later this year.
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