31 Days of Horror: Scream & Shout! Day 31
The Resurrected (1991)
What's It About?
A private detective is hired to investigate a woman's husband, Charles Dexter Ward, a scientist who has begun acting strange and doing horrible experiments in a remote cabin that has been in his family's name for centuries.
Is It Any Good?
Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead is hands down one of the greatest horror movies ever made. O'Bannon left an indelible mark on horror as a writer but he's only directed two movies and only one of them is a movie that anybody's ever heard of. This is O'Bannon's other movie, but is it deserving of its place in obscurity or a misunderstood gem? Well let's just rip the first bandaid off and say this movie isn't as good as The Return of the Living Dead, nor the underrated Dead & Buried (written by O'Bannon), nor the disgusting and deeply flawed but enjoyable Hemoglobin (also written by O'Bannon.) But The Resurrected is not without its charms.
Chris Sarandon is wonderful here, he's swinging for the fences and clearly having a lot of fun in the process. Lovecraft needs a certain level of melodrama to work perfectly and Sarandon's performance here fits what the movie needs. I unfortunately can't speak as highly of the film's lead, John Terry. Terry is a pretty wooden actor, not bad but certainly the furthest thing from natural and charismatic so the film's cardinal mistake is in putting him in a role that requires a lot of voice-over and Terry's narration rivals Harrison Ford in the theatrical cut of Blade Runner.
The story is slow and you can really tell there was a challenge in adapting H.P. Lovecraft's story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward into a feature-length film. With that said, once it gets where it's going it's wonderfully menacing and features some amazing practical effects monsters that outdo even Re-Animator on the twisted undead monstrosity scale.
The film is deeply flawed and certainly a lesser work of Dan O'Bannon and for all its padding it's actually a rather slight film, but it's a technical marvel and still a pretty good horror movie in its own right. If nothing else it's all worth it for the climax. Keep your expectations grounded and you'll enjoy this well enough.
Watch, Toss, or Buy?
Watch it.
