Here we go with the first ever piece of writing by good old Howard I'll be reviewing on this blog, yeah!
The writing in question is The Thing on the Doorstep, a shapeshifter short story told from the mouth of narrator Daniel Upton, who admits to have killed his best friend, Edward Derby, and starts his account of the events that lead to it.
Derby and Upton bonded as young boys over their shared interest in the occult, discussing dark mythology, so intimate were they that they even had a secret knock-on-the-door; three strokes, a pause, and
then two more strokes. When Derby meets the mysterious and slightly ominous Asenath Waite, he falls head over heels and they end up marrying. (I love this, as my middle name is Asena and I imagine myself here, haha.)
She's not good for Derby at all, though. The years following his marriage, Derby displays peculiar changes and fluctuations in attitude and personality, acting delirious and incoherent at times. He confides in his friend about the weird way his wife acts and hints that Asenath's late father, Ephraim Waite, is in fact, not dead at all and that his wife occasionally uses his body, but in reality it is her father who uses Asenath's body. Not confusing at all, this part. In the following, Derby finds a ritualistic way to protect himself from the interventions of Asenath and Ephraim, but ends up succumbing to them, being brought to an asylum.
He finally kills his wife and thus, leaves her/her father's soul detached from Asenath's body. He asks Upton to cremate her body, but it's actually a trick, it's Ephraim inside Derby's body and the actual Derby is inhabiting Asenath's rotting corpse and is, shockingly, the thing on the doorstep. Upton goes to kill Derby, but leaves on the note that he is afraid of losing his own soul as well.
In Suitable Flesh (wonderful title, by the way) the creative choice is to keep the skeleton of Lovecraft's short story, but modify the flesh (a suitable metaphor). The main difference being to cast the two main characters with actresses and not actors. I have to say this is pretty genius. I can't give a source because I saw it somewhere I don't even remember anymore, but Lynch was stating in an interview that it was important to him to cast middle aged women, who would have the life experience and long-lasting friendship the characters need to have. This needs to be underlined and can't be appreciated enough because it's not a choice many filmmakers make and suits the movie well.
Upton and Derby (who bear the same names in the movie as in the short story) are both doctors and we're being taken to a psychiatric ward right in the beginning of the movie. The mortician is about to dissect the body of an unseen figure, which Dr. Elizabeth
Derby, who is being kept in a locked room, begs her friend to destroy. Apart from the names the filmmakers decided to keep, they also found a modern/girly version of the knock on the door which is a secret best friend hand shake between the two women, which was cute, not gonna lie.
So far all smart choices. Until Elizabeth Derby falls for her patient, a young man named Asa Waite, and with the switching of bodies, the movie turns into a fuck fest consisting of actress Heather Graham jumping as many dicks as possible, because the soul which is occupying her really likes sex.... If you know you know, I am anything but prudish, especially in arts. Maybe if it wasn't based on the Lovecraft story I could have accepted Suitable Flesh much easier, but this way I felt like a really good concept was being cheapened and an actually really good actress being reduced to her ability to sexually excite men, once again. So I was disappointed, yeah. Lovecraft's writing is actually classy compared to the movie.
A second thing I disliked were the visuals of the movie. I'm not sure what this style is, but Suitable Flesh looked like one of those late night TV movies or even worse TV shows with mysterious or mildly eerie storylines - like "Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction" by Jonathan Frakes or something else from the end of nineties, beginning of aughts. I'm not sure why this choice was made, it wasn't really visually appealing.
Anyway, what was enjoyable was the scene of Ephraim's decapitation, which delivers the chills. The movie has no problems maintaining that level of bloody potency when it comes to scary scenes, since the level of repulsiveness of the "the thing", only hinted at in Lovecraft, was visualized very successfully. To be fair to big L, most of his horror comes from not showing and not telling, but hinting at, which usually works well with his readers. He doesn't give the details of what horrifies his characters, he describes their dread which triggers a similar feeling in his readers' heads. One's own imagination is a powerful tool.
The confusion of bodies and souls is also transferred successfully to the screen in the final scene, to the degree of funny, where you are barely able to follow who is bloody who.
Despite its nice moments, the film unfortunately failed to convince this film lover, so my final verdict, film or book (or short story in this case): Lovecraft wins this round! Considering I hate him so much sometimes, I can't believe I'm saying this but here we are, congrats, Howard!
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