Stupid Movie Review: The Resurrected

Director: Dan O'Bannon



Actors: Chris Sarandon. You know Prince Humperdinck from The Princess Bride. Also known as the best actor to be a villain ever.



Plot: If you have ever read the short story "The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward" by HP Lovecraft, than you know the story. But I'm going to go ahead and assume that no one who may read this even knows who the fuck Lovecraft is, nor has opened a book since college (or high school. See I don't discriminate). Anyway, the movie opens with what looks like a horrific murder in a mental hospital. Like body parts missing horrific. And then we see a detective guy who introduces himself as our narrator. The story then kind of unfolds like a film noir flashback from there. The detective is just sitting in his office one day when this distraught, yet semi attractive in that early 90's kind of way, lady walks in. She wants him to investigate her husband, Charles, who left under weird circumstances with a doctor friend of his. Charles is a scientist who she believes was working on something big when the noise and the smell kind of got to her, so she told him to find a new place to work on shit. Right now you're thinking, "then why hire the private detective if you know where the fuck he is?" Don't worry, I had the same thought. Anyway, she's worried that he's doing something fucked up wherever he is and she wants to know what's up. Problem is, Chuck won't let her near the place, which is some old farmhouse outside of the city. No I don't know what city. So our detective goes to the farmhouse to check shit out. The story gets weirder and weirder from there. Basically the detective, the damsel in distress, and the detective's assistant eventually find out that Charles is conducting experiments that may involve the use of human remains. Also, he may be repeating the same experiments done by a distant relative of his from the 1770's. There are some gross flashbacks here as well. Our team of good guys then figures out that Charles is basically making hideous monsters out of dead humans. Awesome.


Gore: This is mostly atmospheric, but when shit gets gooey it's really really gooey. We have severed limbs, decapitations, and disgusting creature violence. Yum.


Boobs: Nope. They are safely hidden away in the shirts of the two females in the movie.


Hats off to: The creature effect/ makeup guys. Every monster was amazingly gross and believable, and they used stop-motion effects for some of their movements. You would NEVER see this kind of creativity nowadays. Now it would be all CGI and look like a video game. Lame.


Best Monster: The thing in the cellar towards the end of the movie. It was all fat with entrails hanging, and it had its mouth on its forehead and looked awesome as it tried to bite people. I can't describe it better than that.


Why the hell:  Have I never heard of this movie before I randomly saw it on Netflix? After watching it I immediately looked it up on the normal websites and I learned that it was a direct to video movie from 1992. THIS was direct to video? It was way too polished and well done for the normal direct to video nonsense. Leprechaun in the Hood? Yeah that's direct to video. Demonic Toys vs. Puppet Master? Yeah totally. This movie should have gotten more love. Way more.


Why: aren't there more good movies based on Lovecraft stories? The guy basically invented the disgusting monster story and there are a very small handful of movies that do his work justice. Although I hear Guillermo Del Toro is making one. Make it happen. Also for you illiterate fucks out there, go to Barnes and Noble and grab a cheap Lovecraft collection. You'll thank me.


In conclusion: I was really really surprised by this movie. Super pleasantly surprised. Like way to go me for just watching something on Netflix on a whim expecting it to suck. You can't find it on DVD but Netflix has it so search it and watch. I liked it so much that this whole thing was written within a half hour of watching it. For more info check out Fangoria's website. They do a much better job than I did describing it. Living proof the 90's didn't totally suck for horror movies. See it fuckers.

Don't lie. You woke up next to that last weekend.