Review: The Resurrected (1991)

Directed by: Dan O’Bannon
Starring: John Terry, Jane Sibbett, Chris Sarandon
Written by: Brent V. Friedman
Music by: Richard Band
Country: United States
Available on: Blu-ray (Scream Factory)
IMDb

It’s a tragedy that Dan O’Bannon only helmed two movies during his filmmaking career. His first is kind of a well-known horror classic; you might have heard of it … The Return of the Living Dead? His second and final was The Resurrected, a low-budget, straight-to-video project based on H.P. Lovecraft’s novella, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. This flick doesn’t get nearly the recognition of his zombie horror-comedy, but it’s just as wild and imaginative (though with significantly less naked Linnea Quigley). Both films are thoroughly engaging romps that go bananas with joyfully gruesome practical special effects.

Charles Dexter Ward (Chris Sarandon, having a lot of fun) is a renowned engineer, who suddenly leaves his wife and disappears into isolation after learning of a distant relative who looks a hell of lot like him and who dabbled in the usual wicked, arcane arts that Lovecraftian scientists really love. Ward’s estranged wife (Jane Sibbett, Ross’s lesbian ex-wife) hires a private investigator (John Terry) to see what shenanigans he’s up to. Of course he ain’t up to anything good.

Unlike The Return of the Living Dead, O’Bannon, who didn’t write this, plays everything very straight here. It’s gratifyingly campy, but there are no jokes of any kind, since Lovecraft wasn’t exactly known for his sense of humor. According to O’Bannon’s wife, there were some funnies at some point, but they were unceremoniously removed by producers, who are notorious for their unceremonious removal of good things for bad reasons. Anyway, the first two-thirds are focused on Terry’s investigation through the spooky, mist-swirled rural pockets of Rhode Island, as he shoots the shit with Providence’s less savory residents with tangential knowledge of Ward’s whereabouts. Screenwriter Brent Friedman adopts a lot of Lovecraft’s opaque storytelling techniques, including a fetishistic amount of extraneous voice-over, the discovery and (voiced-over) readings of ancient texts written in eldritch languages, the indescribably horrific aftermaths of things we don’t actually get to witness (and would have gone mad if we had), etc. This portion of the film isn’t always super interesting — partially because Terry is a dull choice for a hard-boiled detective — but it’s punctuated with enough weird goopiness and eerie locations that it mostly works to set up the diabolical final act.

Once the P.I. uncovers the true nature of Ward’s extracurricular activities, things get really good. The final 30 minutes of The Resurrected feature some of the very best, most fascinating, most disgusting practical creature effects the horror genre has to offer outside of John Carpenter’s The Thing and Chuck Russell’s The Blob. And most of these grotesque distortions of the human form slither out of the darkness during a foray in a creepy network of catacombs. The whole sequence works so well, and even though some of the stop motion animation here is choppy, it’s beautiful that the film even used stop motion. It’s the type of thing that makes a horror fan real horny. The final confrontation with Ward is also very effective, and there’s a nonchalant head tear-and-toss that tickles me. Sarandon gets the opportunity to gorge on scenery and he makes it count in somewhat limited screen time. The Resurrected perhaps isn’t an enduring work of art, but it’s a ghastly, creative, and atmospheric flick that won’t do you wrong.

Overall rating: 8 out of 10