Another Lovecraft movie to go with our Re-Animator duo (and with the same composer). A man named Ward has made a bloody impossible escape from some institution, detective March is closing the case via dictaphone in flash-forward, then there’s… a flashback from the flash-forward? March is the boring, lumpy John Terry (of a Timothy Dalton Bond movie), his client Mrs. Ward is the unnaturally terrible Jane Sibbett (of a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie). Too much voiceover, maybe to make up for the dialogue recording being pretty bad – overall competence here is low, though eventually there’s a doppelganger, a living skeleton, and some good monstrosities, so it’s not a total waste of time.

John Terry… and John Terry… in A Bronx Tale

Christoph Huber in Cinema Scope 83 called this movie “superior” and “neglected,” so maybe I was just tired and unappreciative. O’Bannon is of course the Alien creator who also made Return of the Living Dead. Corman’s The Haunted Palace, the first IMDB-credited Lovecraft-based feature, is an adaptation of the same story, featuring Vincent Price, Elisha Cook Jr., and surely far less blood.