(Stuart Gordon, US 1985, 84 min., DCP)
H.P. Lovecraft’s novelette is adapted by first-time writer-director Stuart Gordon into a lovingly blood-soaked ode to the impermanence of death. Daniel Cain (Bruce Abbott) is a medical student at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts where he hopes to do well while dating Megan (Barbara Crampton), the dean’s daughter. He rents a room to fellow new student Herbert West (a delightfully over-the-top Jeffrey Combs) only to discover that West has turned their basement into a laboratory to test his “re-animating agent” that brings dead things back to life. Starting with animals, the pair soon move to the morgue to test their theories, turning their lives, and the town, into a madhouse of walking corpses. Wonderful practical effects and a go-for-broke attitude propel this cult classic into one of the most memorable horror films of the last fifty years.
DCP from American Genre Film Archive.
Upcoming Events in this Series
Film Screenings | The Haunted Palace (35mm)
Lovecraftian A delightful descent into the macabre, this film that borrows the title of an Edgar Allan Poe poem, but is actually based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, is one of George Eastman Award recipient Roger Corman’s best-remembered films.
Film Screenings | In the Mouth of Madness (35mm)
Lovecraftian Not adapted directly from Lovecraft’s work, but heavily inspired by it, the final film in director John Carpenter’s loose “Apocalypse Trilogy” finds Sam Neill as John Trent, an insurance agent on the trail of missing author Sutter Cane.