Maybe I’m biased as a purveyor of the horny arts myself, but I really think erotic horror is an underrated side of the genre.
Probably because, like many erotic movies that aren’t horror, most of them suck, and are little more than an excuse to allow for a marginally higher amount of blood-spattered cleavage than the usual slasher flick. But, with that said, there are some brilliant ones out there, and it was on the hunt for another decent entry into the subgenre that I stumbled across Suitable Flesh.
Directed by Joe Lynch (probably best known for his debut, Wrong Turn 2, an enormously fun sequel that is – whisper it – better than the original), Suitable Flesh is a modern adaptation of a HP Lovecraft story, starring Heather Graham as psychiatrist Danielle, who finds herself obsessing over a strange encounter she has with a young patient (Judah Lewis), who claims he’s being possessed by a strange being. A strange being, it turns out, who’s down to get real, real horny with it.
And yes, you read that right, this is an erotic horror based in the Cthulu mythos – it’s even adapted from the Lovecraft story The Thing on the Doorstep by Dennis Paoli, the man behind Re-Animator, if you’re looking for more classic horror chops. And it’s exactly as batshit fucking insane as that premise makes it sound, if not more so. The tone is so bizarre, a sort of soap opera shot through with cosmic horror and laced with absurdly over-the-top sex scenes cribbed straight from a cheesy nineties erotic thriller, directed like a giallo movie, and also Barbara Crampton is there. There’s a line about a character transferring his feelings about his father to his therapist, to which the response “guess I really wanted to fuck my dad, then.” Are you still with me?
But honestly, it might be one of my favourite horror movies of the last few years, just on account of how unapologetically weird, witty, and wild it is. It dips into parodic territory sometimes, with the sexy saxophone swelling in the soundtrack as Heather Graham drops her silky nightie fresh out of the shower – Heather Graham feels like the perfect choice for the lead, given her history with the kind of dreadful erotic thrillers, in fact.
But, for all that it knows how silly it is and how daft the genre it’s part of can be, it never loses sight of the strange story of consumption, possession, and ownership at its heart. It’s really buoyed by a great performance from Judah Lewis, a real coming-of-age for the one-time Babysitter star, who swings between predator and prey with ease, and shares great chemistry with Graham. Lynch’s confident direction assures you that this tonal oddness is a choice rather than a mistake, and Paoli’s fun script gives it an echo of classic campy Lovecraft adaptations of decades past.
I really can’t recommend Suitable Flesh enough, if for nothing else than the fact it is utterly and completely unique. Have you see it? What the hell did you make of it if you did? Let me know in the comments below!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via tribute.ca)
No But Listen 