Heather Graham and Johnathan Schaech in Suitable Flesh (RLJE Films/Shudder)

Stuart Gordon was the modern master of H. P. Lovecraft adaptations. Taking Hammer horror, splatter films, and punk rock as his inspirations, he amped up the sexuality and doubled down on gore and created a fun, unique time at the movies, while respecting the source material and putting his stamp on the genre. When he sadly passed in 2020, the project he was working on was Suitable Flesh, another Lovecraft adaptation scribed by Dennis Paoli, who also wrote Gordon’s Re-Animator and From Beyond. Erstwhile Gordon producer Brian Yuzna and actress Barbara Crampton now have produced the movie and handed the directing reigns to Everly director Joe Lynch, who offers his own humorous and twisted take.

Dr. Daniella Upton (Crampton), a therapist at Miskatonic University, oversees the unusual case of a teenage boy, the patient of Daniella’s normally reserved colleague, Elizabeth Derby (Heather Graham), who has been acting quite differently lately. The boy, Asa (Judah Lewis),  seems to be suffering from dissociative identity disorder—multiple personalities—but it turns out that that a being exists inside him that has the ability to switch bodies. It does so at will, and it hops from one body to another with abandon, as it has for centuries. This ancient being, also called the Entity, now resides in Elizabeth. One would figure, perhaps, that the being is looking for power beyond all imagining, but what it really wants is sex, and occasionally killing. Though it clearly enjoys the latter, the first thing it generally looks to do is the nasty.

Directory Lynch is clearly honoring Gordon, but he also places Suitable Flesh in the nexus of 1990s straight-to-video erotic thrillers. It looks like its budget was maybe $1.99, and there are camera and lighting setups that seem cribbed from some late-night Skinemax offering starring Carre Otis, while the sets look like sets, particularly Elizabeth’s office. Lynch cribs swirling camera movements from Paul Verhoeven and employs cheeky fade-outs, and, to his credit, his film is distinctively female gazey. Johnathon Schaech plays Graham’s clueless husband, and I would say his shirt is off about 80 percent of his screentime. Nobody his age has the right to be as ripped as he is. He looks like he just flew in from Bridgerton.

None of this would work if the cast wasn’t game, but everyone is on the same page. The level of overacting (necessary for the genre) is pitch perfect. Graham is the picture of composure until matters go haywire, and then she gleefully switches gears. Lewis, as Asa, is all twitchy teen until the Entity takes over and he preens like a sardonic, sexy Iggy Pop. Bruce Davidson even has a deliciously hammy cameo, and ruling above it all is Crampton, the original heroine of Re-Animator, who lords over everyone as the voice of reason while she tries to figure out what the heck is going on.

While this is a dead-on spoof of ’90s erotic thrillers, it is also a horror film. There’s one solid bit of goofy gore at the beginning, and then things lay low for a while, but once the climax hits, Lynch takes his foot of the brakes, guns the motor, and peels out. The last half hour is a whirlwind of blood, switchbacks, and crawling corpses. The genie is most definitely out of the bottle.

Suitable Flesh runs on a very particular wavelength, and if you ride that wave, you are bound to have a grand old time.