Ahead of the cinema and digital release of the body-switching H.P. Lovecraft adaptation Suitable Flesh, we caught up with director Joe Lynch to talk about tackling the superb and erotically charged horror movie…
STARBURST: How did you come to the film, and what was it like taking over the reins from Stuart Gordon when it comes to Lovecraft movies?
Joe Lynch: I had been a huge fan of Stuart’s, from Re-Animator to every single film that he’s made. He was definitely one of those filmmakers that I modelled myself after because he always took chances. He never did the same thing twice. Even when it came to Lovecraft. I had known that he was going to direct The Thing on the Doorstep, and as a fan, I was incredibly excited to see them get the band back together, but then he passed. So, colour me surprised when, six weeks into the pandemic, I got an email from Barbara Crampton saying, “Hey, we have this script. Would you be interested?” And immediately when I clicked on it, I saw The Thing on the Doorstep, written by Dennis Paoli, from a story by H.P. Lovecraft. I got both really excited but a little bit nervous because while it was exciting, and I knew the Lovecraft story, the way that it was written – and Dennis will be the first person to tell you – years ago. It just felt like it was a script that was of its time and not in a good way.
How so?
It felt like something that back in ’95, and you put Michael Douglas in one of the roles, you could have gotten away with that paradigm. With today’s point of view, I don’t think it would have flown or I think people would have rejected it. I went, “What if we changed the gender up and but not in a way that felt… again?” Do something that would really dig deep into the themes of what it would be like as an older professional woman in this situation, instead of it being an older, silver fox kind of guy, and then immediately everything became more exciting. Dennis and Barbara came back and said, “We dig this; let’s explore this a little bit more”. Three weeks later, we had a draft. And it wasn’t just them changing the names up, it was really getting under the skin of what this story would be like if we changed it up in a way that felt provocative and dangerous, sexy, and a little terrifying. That was where everything hit the ground running.
There’s also the gender flip with the relationship between Heather’s character and her on-screen husband (Johnathon Schaech) that’s interesting, as well as the fluidity of gender within the body-swapping of the characters.
Well, I’m glad that you brought up the word fluid because there are a lot of fluids in this movie! Not just fluids that are coming out of the body but sexual fluidity as well. That was something that I’ve been exploring a lot, even in my own personal life. I’ve been exploring those themes and what it means to be masculine. What it means to be heterosexual. What it means to be homosexual. What it means to be queer in film and life. There are so many different ways now that those kinds of points of view and those kinds of stories are being accepted more than ever. Once we were able to flip it, now instead of a femme fatale, I have Heather Graham. Now, instead of a doting wife, I have a shirtless Johnathon Schaech. Then, to be able to let Heather’s character play that Fred MacMurray character in a way was so much more exciting, not just from a story standpoint but from a sexual standpoint. That’s where we knew that sex was going to be a major component of the film. Thematically, it had to be there. It was our linchpin, and knowing that we’re now in a day and age in production – not that we weren’t before, or at least I wasn’t before – we have to make sure that there is a comfortability on set.
How did you handle the sex scenes?
I’ve done sex scenes before. I’d never done anything like this before, but I knew that it was such a huge component of the film. I wanted to make sure that every single department knew exactly what we were doing. I wanted to make sure that every cast member knew exactly where and how I was going to shoot it. Why I was shooting it that way. Thematically and stylistically, so that there were no surprises on set; the only surprise is that we’re going to be on set on those days with the chemistry between those two actors or three actors in certain cases! Our first day was the scene where we do Heather and Jonathan are having boring sex, and then Judah [Lewis] shows up in an active switch sort of situation. I had three actors in various degrees of undress. All laying there on the set, having a, you know, good time, but I made sure that they knew exactly what I was going to do using storyboards, using descriptions, so that none of them was uncomfortable. They were nervous in certain ways, but I took a lot of that out, and we closed the set. There was only me and the DP on set. It was just the actors and the playfulness that came out that made the scene so much sexier, especially when we do the little ‘flippity flop’ and then things become in her point of view or fantasy. There were things that they were doing that would have never come if I hadn’t explained so much about what we wanted to achieve. And once we did that, we allowed them to let the chemistry flow between them as naturally as possible.
There’s a very noir feel to the movie and visual tics that you don’t often see in films nowadays – big props to David Matthews, your DP – were there any particular films that you’ve looked at as reference?
Once I knew that we were going to be making the movie, I set my gears towards neo-noir and film noir mode. We watched a lot of movies, not just all the greats. You have Basic Instinct, and you have Body Heat, even stuff like Gilda and Double Indemnity, to try to get that film noir feel I wanted. I really wanted to recreate a subgenre and call it neo-erotica, like just the way that they in did the ‘90s. I wanted to bring some sex back into that because if you look at the way a lot of erotic thrillers in the ‘80s and ‘90s were filmed, they just cranked up the sexuality to 11. And that’s what I wanted to do here.
SUITABLE FLESH is in cinemas and VOD from October 27th. You can read our review here.
