———— THE STORY ————

H.P. Lovecraft’s short tale ( runs eight pages) is told from a first person perspective by someone who’s an author (later on we’ll learn his name is Carter; presumably this is Randolph Carter, a fictional character from Lovecraft’s other tales), and he and his friend, Joel Manton (a high school principal), are in an ancient cemetery in Arkham, with an abandoned seventeenth century house looming behind them, having a discussion about the supernatural one late afternoon day in Fall.

Manton is a non-believer, Carter is not, and they’re debating about if something so horrible can exist that it could be classified as “unnamable.” Discussion eventually leads to a story Carter penned once called, The Attic Window, and the “facts” he researched behind his fiction. This in turn leads Carter to tell Joel about an ancestor of his, Cotton Mather, who centuries before between 1706 and 1723 kept a journal chronicling an old clergyman who kept an “unnamable” offspring locked in the attic and it’s occasional breaking-outs and menacings of the countryside.

This thing is never fully described, but we get this paragraph which is enough to at least form a partial picture of what it looked like:

Something had caught my ancestor on a dark valley road, leaving him with marks of horns on his chest and of apelike claws on his back; and when they looked for prints in the trampled dust they found the mixed marks of split hooves and vaguely anthropoid paws.

And then in 1793 a kid went up to this now abandoned house one day understanding the glass of windows can hold the impression of those that have looked through them, eager to see this thing, and sees something so horrible he flees in mortal terror. Carter explains, at some point he himself went up to that attic and ending up finding evidence proving this “unnamable” was indeed a biological creature:

Don’t think I was a fool—you ought to have seen that skull. It had four inch horns, but a face and jaw something like yours and mine.

They also debate how these “unnamable” things after death can end up being horrifying presence as well to encounter.

It would seem this outing of theirs may have been pre-mediated by Carter, when Joel finally mentions he’d like to see this house and that attic, Carter tells him: “You did see it—until it got dark.” They conversed from later afternoon into dusk apparently. You see it was the house behind them that whole time, but here’s where the “kick” of the tale comes in. Once Joel realizes that house was in their presence the entire time, this happens:

I heard a creaky sound through the pitchy blackness, and knew that a lattice window was opening in that accursed old house beside us. And because all the other frames were long since fallen, I knew that it was the grisly glassless frame of that demoniac attic window.

This is when both men are attacked in a trademark paragraph of Lovecraft’s where he describes the indescribable; both eventually wake in St, Mary’s hospital. They are told a farmer found them “in a lonely field beyond Meadow Hill.” Carter describes their wounds:

Manton had two malignant wounds in the chest, and some less severe cuts and gougings in the back. I was not so seriously hurt, but was covered with welts and contusions of the most bewildering character, including the print of a split hoof.

But in the final paragraph of the short story we, and Carter, learn Joel retained more memory of the attack:

No—it wasn’t that way at all. It was everywhere—a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory. There were eyes—and a blemish. It was the pit—the maelstrom—the ultimate abomination. Carter, it was the unnamable!

———— THE MOVIE ————

The film version starts off with a 17th century prologue following an old man contending with something unseen that howls and screeches and is kept locked in the attic. The father of the “unnamable” is never named in the short story, but later on we’ll learn the movie version is and it’s Joshua Winthrop (Delbert Spain). The creature in Lovecraft’s tale is never named either, nor given a gender. If it was it would most likely be male. Lovecraft hardly if ever used female characters; the only tale I can think of where a woman played a role was “The Thing On The Doorstep.” The “unnamable” in the film is named Alyda (Katrin Alexandre). Eventually she kills Joshua and the last we see of him is three men burying him in the front yard while Alyda secretly watches from the attic.

Cut to modern day circa 1988. Now, for the most part a good chunk of the tale is adapted. Once we get to modern times we’re introduced to three characters: Randolph Carter (Mark Kinsey Stephenson), Joel Manton (Mark Parra) and Howard Damon (Charles Klausmeyer billed as Charles King in the credits). The differences here are quite obvious, first off there are three characters and not two, and the impression one gets from the tale is that Carter and Manton are middle aged men, here they’re college students. Carter’s movie version, however, does retain the fact he’s an author of short stories. All three are in a graveyard debating supernatural versus science, and the conversation hits on most of the points Lovecraft’s tale does: Cotton Mathers, his diary of what happened, and the kid who visited the house decades later. And the debate ends as it does with Carter pointing out the house near them, except in the film version it doesn’t get dark, and the attack of the creature right after never comes. This is where all similarities to the short story end, from here on out it’s all original material from director Jean-Paul Ouellette.

After Carter points out the house, Manton insisting most if not all of what Carter has told him is still bullshit wants to prove it by having all of them stay there over night. Carter knowing the kind of horror that may still be in the house says, no fuckin’ way, and heads back to Miskatonic University (another landmark staple of Lovecraft’s fiction), with Howard reluctantly in tow, but Joel is adamant he’s right and decides to go it alone. The movie takes place over a weekend, and the next day they learn Manton never came out, and they are the last ones to see him. We do get a prolonged scene of Manton breaking into the house, exploring it and bumping into Alyda who remarkably is still alive centuries later, and not so surprising still in a homicidal mood. Poor Manton is killed right then and there.

Howard has crush on this girl named Wendy Barnes (Laura Albert), but Wendy wants nothing to do with him. Wendy has a friend named Tanya Heller (Alexandra Durrell), who has a crush on Howard, but he doesn’t know it—yet. Wendy and Tanya are approached by two upperclassman, John Babcock (Blane Wheatley) and Bruce Weeks (Eben Ham), eager to get in their pants and attempt to do this by inviting them to check out this old house they plan to conduct an initiation ceremony in. The same old house Manton just died in, and the same old house we’ll eventually learn Winthrop placed a spell on to keep demonic Alyda trapped in for as long as it stands. This spell angle is also used to explain why none of the kids can get out when the bloody shit hits the fan.

That night Bruce, John, Tanya and Wendy break in, do a little exploring, with Wendy and John almost hooking up until Joel’s decapitated head rolls in and destroys the mood. Carter and Howard don’t show up again at the house until close to the final act to finally find out what in the hell is going on with Joel and that’s when they run into everyone else.

Another staple of Lovecraft’s fiction makes a cameo—the dreaded Necronomicon penned by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred! Winthrop just so happened to have it and Carter stumbles across it once he realizes his demonic daughter is still alive and kicking, and killing. He uses a spell in the book to activate tree spirits in this one particular tree growing out of a crypt to pull Alyda down into the ground. That tree is casually pointed out in the story by Carter, and in the same way by movie version Carter in the beginning.

Carter, Tanya and Howard survive the movie; Bruce, John and Wendy do not. You don’t see Alyda until the final moments, with only shots of her claws and hooves throughout the earlier parts of the film, with one split second glimpse of her whole body. Katrin who played the “unnamable” was a great choice, for she make a really great monster performer, cementing Alyda as a memorable movie monster when we finally get to see her. Monster aside The Unnamable is also a gory film with a heart extraction, throat rips, head bashings, the aforementioned decapitated head, and Joel’s body being discovered tied upside down with his severed neck bleeding into a bowel. Does Alyda eat human flesh? We never see, she just seems to want to kill any living thing that enters her house. FX artists R. Christopher Biggs and Camille Calvert did a great job creating this “demonic harpy” and the gore, and it all still holds up!

There is this one unintentionally funny scene of Howard identifying Manton’s body. As he shines the flashlight along the corpse, he gets to the severed neck and says “Oh, my God, it’s Joel!!” Damn, he’s good to be able to identify a body without a head. I’m assuming he probably recognized the clothing before he got to the bloody stump of a neck, but maybe he should have said the line as he was trailing the light along the body instead of when he shined it on the stump, just sayin’…

There’s also an illogical progression from day to night in one scene. I can understand if it was dusk, then the next scene was night, but it’s late afternoon, followed by a brief dialogue scene inside Miskatonic University, which is then followed by a scene leading outside where it’s suddenly pitch black night. And the female characters at two separate times suffer from fear induced faintings. You can’t get away with that shit nowadays, showing female characters fainting from fright.

Stephenson’s portrayal of Carter reminded me a little bit of Jeffrey Comb’s portrayal of Herbert West in the Re-Animator franchise. They could be brothers, though West never showed any signs of beliefs outside of his bloody, twisted science. Carter leans more to believing in the “weird,” and the “paranormal.” I wished someone had come up with the idea of pairing these two characters together in another Lovecraft-based movie, maybe a third mid-90s Re-Animator flick. We did, however, get Stephenson and Klausmeyer back in a sequel, The Unnamable II: The Statement Of Randolph Carter (1992). If that flick doesn’t show up on blu next year from someone, I’ll make it a point to review the DVD.

I read “The Unnamable” back in the summer of 1988 through a collection of Lovecraft’s stories titled, The Lurking Fear And Other Tales (I still have the book, see the scanned cover in the opening of this review), and didn’t know they made a movie of it until I discovered a review of the VHS in Fangoria #78. When I first saw the film the first thing that struck me was how impressive atmosphere-wise the house was, how creepy they had made it look, and I didn’t see anything its equal until Night Of The Demons (1988) came along soon after on cable. And speaking of that movie there’s a shot in The Unnamable that reminded me heavily of a shot in Night Of The Demons. In Unnamable there’s a scene at the end where Howard and Tanya are in the attic. Howard is barring the main door, while Tanya is inside the room Alyda was locked in looking for an escape. In Night Of The Demons two of the characters left alive have barricaded themselves in the room with the crematorium and if I remember there’s a brief shot of the crematorium in the background, while one of the characters is at the door of the room. That shot is nearly duplicated in Unnamable, but with Alyda’s room in the background.

The Unnamble has never been available on DVD here in the U.S. before today, the sequel was, but never the original film. Unearthed Films was able to get the rights and release it on separate DVD and blu-ray editions that are available now on Amazon. The slipcase shown below (taken from the most impressive Thai movie poster) is now sold out.

VIDEO/AUDIO/SUBTITLES: 1080p 1.85:1 High Definition Widescreen—5.1 English DTS-HD Master Audio, 2.0 English LPCM—No subs

I was very impressed with Unearthed’s “brand new 4K HD scan with color correction and restoration from the original camera negative.” Keep in mind, though, the movie is dark when it gets into the house, but some of that darkness is juxtaposed with stylized whites and blues from the moonlit night seeping in, oranges and reds from flashlights and candles, there’s even a slice of green, though it’s source is never revealed. I’m thinking it was a colored pane of glass, but all of it gave me nice Creepshow vibe every once in a while.

EXTRAS INCLUDED . . . 

  • Audio Commentary With Charles Klausmeyer, Mark Stephenson, Laura Albert, Eben Hamm, Camille Calvert & R. Christopher Biggs
  • Interview With Actors Charles Klausmeyer, Mark Stephenson (1:18:33)
  • Interview With Actor Eben Hamm (30:55)
  • Interview With Actress Laura Albert (46:16)
  • Interview With Actor Mark Parra (33:36)
  • Interview With R. Christopher Biggs (Special Makeup Efftects Artist) & Makeup Artist Camille Calvert (1:00:03)
  • 2.0 Vintage Grindhouse Audio

(Note: Runtime of 76-minutes listed on the back is a typo. Actual runtime is 87-minutes. and the 5.1 audio track is flawed. As it nears the hour mark sound effects will acquire an echo. Dialogue, however, is unaffected. The 2.0 LPCM track is the clearest, choose that one).

The two best interviews are with actors Klausmeyer and Stephenson and FX artists Biggs and Calvert, with the FX interview being my favorite. The downside is all of them are done via Skype, with Horror Happens Radio’s Jay Kay on the left screen and the interviewees on the right screen. The audio on his screen is low, and the general audio is better in some interviews than in others.

I also enjoyed the audio commentary with the cast and FX artists. Take note though it’s out of sync with the movie; I’d say, roughly, 20-30 seconds ahead of the film. Hats off to Unearthed for being able to locate and gather together 95% of the cast for this fun reminiscing. Just for the record missing is director Jean-Paul Ouellette, Blaine Wheately, Marc Parra, Alexandra Durell and Katrina Alexandre. Parra, at least, was available for the interview, just not the commentary.

I’m aware short films based on Lovecraft’s tales are made, but until recently I’ve never had any interest in seeing them. The few I’ve heard tales of, or have read reviews on, lack the required production value I need to be interested in them and/or they’re extremely short. This short film here, The Shadow Of The Unnamable (2011) I ran into back when it was coming out. I can’t remember if it was one of the trailers I bumped into on YouTube, or if it was an article about the film, but I thought the teaser/trailer hinted at some higher than normal production value for a short film. I registered its existence, then went on with life eventually forgetting all about it. It wasn’t until I began covering Unearthed Films’ blu of the 1988 movie when I bumped into it again as I went looking for a trailer of the ’88 film to add to the review. There was, in fact, a fairly recent trailer I came across (dated May 2018) that had me suddenly wondering if a DVD, or something, was on the horizon. Several Google searches later I stumbled upon its official website, and the discovery, yes, there is a DVD in existence, and best of all it was affordable!

This adaptation was conceived and directed in Germany by Sascha Renninger, it runs roughly 16-minutes, and it’s the closest piece of celluloid I have come across that faithfully represents anything H.P. Lovecraft has penned, and that’s probably because it’s been condensed down to short film format. Now, it’s not 100% accurate, but in my opinion Renninger adapted 99% of what was in the short story, and of all the movies I’ve seen throughout my life based on the author’s tales I’ve never come across a percentage that close to the source material. Ever. That means this short film pushes The Whisperer In Darkness (2011), the excellent movie adaptation Sean Brannery of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society filmed, into second place.

As we get to the very end I was wondering if Renninger was going to show that final paragraph of Manton’s recollection and by God he did! The tale doesn’t deviate from the source material heavily until the scene where the “unnamable” comes out of the house and attacks Carter (Robert Kyons) and Manton (Jeff Motherhead). The attack still happens, of course, but what’s altered is neither men hear that infamous lattice window creak open, it’s a shutter that slams repeatedly in the wind that attracts their attention. And the creature comes not from the house, but from an open tomb where Carter tossed the bones he discovered.

Other changes, both men are not mentioned to be found in a field and neither is shown in the hospital the next morning with the trademark wounds caused by the beast. In this version, after the attack, Carter is seen visiting Manton in what will be revealed in the final shot as Arkham Asylum, but as I mentioned his reveal to Carter of what he saw during the attack is straight from the story. The other changes are from the flashbacks spoken of in the original story, Renninger chose different flashbacks. All of these changes were okay with me since the meat of the tale was faithfully translated.

Several random behind-the-scenes photos that came with the DVD.

In keeping with how Lovecraft describes the indescribable the “unnamable” is never shown for too long. When we do finally see it in of the “Puritan flashbacks” it’s glimpsed only briefly as it enters the church and only seen through shadows on the wall thereafter. In Manton’s recollection the tentacles are also glimpsed and the rest of it’s shape-shifting form is perceived quickly in the reflection of his eye.

Renninger used just about every cinema trick in the book to bring this tale to celluloid— green screen, miniatures, CGI, stop motion and in-camera effects, all put together in a stylistic way I think Lovecraft may have been proud of had he been a fan of cinema. In the commentary Renninger breaks down the whole filming process and reveals where the CGI was and some of those shots don’t even look computer generated. I would have never recognized that moth as computer generated. The only computer effect that looked bad to me was a shot of the creature putting his claw on a man’s shoulder during the church flashback rampage.

Renninger is in the process of creating a Lovecraft anthology film consisting of four segments which this short is part of. His second adaptation, Fragment 1890, is an adaptation of “The Thing In The Moonlight” and he has not yet revealed which tales will be the third and fourth parts. If you’re looking to purchase this DVD email Renninger (count-alex@gmx.de) and he’ll give you a link to donate $14 U.S. bucks, the price of the disc! The disc, however, is region locked, so you’ll need a region free player to see it.

VIDEO/AUDIO/SUBTITLES: 1.78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen—2.0 English Dolby Digital, 5.1 English Dolby Digital, 2.0 German Dolby Digital, 5.1 German Dolby Digital—No subs

EXTRAS INCLUDED . . . 

  • Audio Commentary With Director/Writer/Producer Sascha Renninger (German & English options included)
  • Deleted Scenes (3:21)
  • Slideshow Cemetery (1:13)
  • Visual Effects Featurette (7:09)
  • Making Of Featurettes:
  1. Old House & Church Flashback (2:42)
  2. The Cemetery (2:28)
  3. Hospital Exterior (2:11)
  4. Puritan Flashback (2:51)
  5. Return To The Cemetery (4:14)
  6. Hospital Interior (3:06)
  • Festival Reel (:30)
  • Trailer 1
  • Trailer 2
  • Trailer 3

This short film comes with an excellent batch of extras that covers all aspects of filming! Highly recommended!