Stuart Gordon breathed nightmares into cinema, expanding our definitions ofhorrorand sexuality with hislegendary H.P. Lovecraft adaptations. Whether it’sRe-Animator, From Beyond, Dagon, orCastle Freak, Gordon trampled over expectations and common notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ art with his utterly bonkers, gleefully wild, endlessly memorable films. He was our most eminent interpreter of Lovecraft, an author who desperately needed interpretation.
That torch has been passed toJoe Lynch, the filmmaker behindMayhem(with Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving) andPoint Blank(with Frank Grillo and Anthony Mackie). When Gordon passed on before finishing his adaptation of Lovecraft’sThe Thing on the Doorstep, his frequent star and horror icon Barbara Crampton came to the rescue, producing a picture that honored Gordon and yet continued his legacy in new directions —Suitable Flesh. It’s bananas.
A wicked, weird wonderstarring Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Johnathon Schaech, Bruca Davison, and Crampton herself,Suitable Fleshfollows a psychologist and her patient, a young man with schizophrenia who believes he’s being possessed by an ancient entity that can jump from body to body. It had its premiere at the recent Tribeca Film Festival, and ahead of tis theatrical release, Lynch and the cast spoke with MovieWeb about the film. In this preview of our conversation, Lynch recounts how receiving the script forSuitable Fleshquite literally saved his life.
Barbara Crampton: Lifesaver
“I never in a million years would have thought that I would have the opportunity to take that Lovecraftian baton and have the torch passed on to me, until I got that email that day from Barbara,” began Lynch. “And this was at a time when everybody was going, ‘What the hell are we doing?’ It was literally weeks after the pandemic. And I was at a crossroads in my own life, I was going through a really hard time. And sometimes you need those things that we all go through, real trials and tribulations, whether it’s on a global scale, or right on your doorstep, so to speak.”
Related:Suitable Flesh Review: A Sexy, Trippy Homage to Filmmaker Stuart Gordon
“So this is where Barbara is going to get me now, because before we were making Barbara cry, and now you’re gonna get me,” laughed Lynch with tears in his eyes. He explained:
Barbara Crampton’s email saved my life, bar none. Having this project come to me at this very particular moment in my life meant the world. Even if you want to put it on a surface level and say that this was like just a good distraction — “Here, Joe, work on the script, come up with some ideas, we’ll figure it out and we’ll go from there. Maybe it’ll get made, maybe it won’t, who knows?” But it was the right sort of project, it was the right sort of creative, artistic endeavor that I needed in my life at that very moment. And I’ll never stop thanking her for that.
“You know, everyone says that, right, around this time when you’re in PR mode — “Well, it’s my most personal film,” or, “This was a real passion project.” I can honestly say that this may be one of the most personal things that I’ve ever done,” continued Lynch. “And it wouldn’t be without having Judah and Johnathon and Barbara and Heather and Dennis and Brian, and all these people supporting me and supporting this idea. Plus, we got to make a really cool psychotropic, transgressive, hard psychological thriller at the same time. But that comes from Barbara having the faith in me.”
You’ll see why whenSuitable Fleshgets its theatrical release later in the year from RLJE Films and Shudder. Watch this space.
