I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Yet another in the long line of "teenagers get killed in a deserted house" type films, this low budget entry benefits from having some nasty gore scenes which help to stop it from becoming totally worthless. The film begins in the past, with a man getting his heart ripped out by the demon that his daughter has become. A load of people dressed in old-fashioned clothes proceed to bury him. At this point I was actually happy when the film jumps to the present, as the low budget nature of the production just isn't enough to bring a historical scene like that to life...in fact, it just looked silly. By now we see that a tree has grown from the tomb (nice touch) and that the house is STILL abandoned. Pretty soon the usual group of sex-mad teenagers invade the place one night and proceed to get picked off one by one.Fans of H.P. Lovecraft will no doubt be disappointed by yet another relatively lacklustre adaptation of one of his shorts, as aside from a few character and place names, the film totally fails in dredging up the kind of oppressive atmosphere that his stories so brilliantly conveyed. With the film's title and all, you might expect the monster in this film to be some hideously frightening monstrosity, but instead it turns out to be a woman in a rubber demon suit, which is another disappointment and far from the spirit of Lovecraft's work.The film's two central characters are an odd and strangely likable pairing. One is Randolph Carter (played by Mark Kinsey Stephenson who reprised the role in the sequel), a quirky and sometimes irritating bookworm who eventually manages to dispel the evil. The other is Howard Damon, played by Charles King, who brings a touch of warmth and laughter to the role of the nervous hero. Sadly a gang of teenagers fill up the bulk of the film and it has to be said that their acting is awfully wooden. A quick browse of the IMDb reveals that three out of four of them have no acting careers and the other is a stuntwoman, whose lack of inhibition was probably the sole reason she got the acting job as it was.The impressive gore effects (for a low budget, anyway) are probably the best reasons to watch this film, and things do get very bloody. One jock has his neck torn open (the puddling blood from the wound is worthy of Fulci), another unfortunate victim has her neck snapped, a man's face is torn off along with his head and a final victim loses his brain all over the floor. Effective, yes, at being downright disgusting! Anyhow, the film has quite a fast pace and, although predictable, it kept me watching throughout. I would even go so far as to say that it is fairly enjoyable on a basic level, although not particularly frightening or atmospheric. A sequel followed five years later employing the skills of genre stalwarts David Warner and John Rhys-Davies, which for that fact alone I will be watching.

Oh jolly, another H.P. Lovecraft horror adaptation! In the vein of the successful "Re-Animator", these adaptations were extremely popular during the late 80's and early 90's but most of them were only very loosely inspired by Lovecraft and furthermore just an excuse to bring to the screen hideous demons and cheesy gore. "The Unnamable" is the best example of this, actually, as the opening fifteen minutes still attempt to create an atmosphere of mystery and morbidity reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft's finest works, but afterwards the film quickly degenerates into a typically 80's teenybopper flick with fraternity initiation rites and really dumb dialogs. 200 years ago, Joshua Winthrop's wife gave birth to a female demon and he kept it locked away in the attic for a long time until the creature eventually killed him. The film opens with this storytelling, as the concerned house still exists and is now located nearby the Miskatonic University and three male students challenge each other to spend the night. Two of them refuse and the third one is never heard from again. The next day, the two others go back to search for their missing friend, but they're unaware than another group of brainless students already broke into the house. "The Unnamable" is far from a great horror film but, in all fairness, you could do a lot worse in case you're just looking to kill an hour and a half of time. The titular demon, which as it turns out in the end had a name all along, isn't seen until 50 minutes in the film even though there's an illustration of it on the DVD-cover. Before that, we just hear a lot of screeching, growling and thumping on doors. There are quite a few weird characters in the film, like the alleged Lovecraft alter ego Randolph Carter who talks funnily and pretends to be an expert in demonology even though he spends most of the film in a library looking things up. The gore effects are delightfully cheesy and grotesque, with a couple of torn open throats, decapitations and the repeated smashing off a person's head against a hard wooden floor. "The Unnamable" is insignificant, forgettable and quite dumb, but nevertheless okay entertainment for fans of rancid 80's horror.

I have heard some people say that H.P. Lovecraft's works are unfilmable. I guess that I would say that they did a worthy job with "The Unnamable", but aside from the fact that another movie with a grotesque monster's property getting invaded by horny teens seems a little silly, the people here can't really act (well duh; these movies don't star Katharine Hepburn). Particularly laughable is the line "You're very brave." And if you remember the rules laid out in "Scream", you can guess which people survive here.So, this is pretty much a way to pass time. For better efforts at filming Lovecraft stories, there's "Die Monster Die!" and "The Dunwich Horror".

This low-budget horror picture inspired by a Lovecraft short story benefits from the sincere effort that went into making it. Also nobody seems to be taking things too seriously until the University student fun and games have gone past the point of no return. Corny and non-sensical elements can be overlooked in the name of entertainment here. The lovely monster (if you've read the story you have an idea of what it is like) is only the tip of the iceburg, for the story has one foot in Bluto Blutarski's universe and one in H. P. Lovecraft's. The effect, taken together, is charming if neither laugh-out-loud funny or terrifying.