The Unnamable II (1992)

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

See, that's exactly what happens when you're being mild and give favorable reviews to insignificant 80's horror movies like the original "The Unnamable". They make another one! The first one really wasn't too bad, and even occasionally entertaining, but seriously nobody needed a sequel. And this time, writer/director Jean-Paul Ouellette even had a slightly larger budget at his disposal, meaning the script is a lot more ambitious and there even was some money left to pay famous B-movie stars like John Rhys-Davies and the minuscule cameo appearance of David Warner. Even though part two came out five years after the original, we're supposed to not notice that the actors look a lot older and wear their hair in completely different styles. "The Unnamable Returns" carries on where the first film stopped, with Howard and Randolph escaping from the cursed Winthrop house. Notwithstanding the fact they quietly walked away unharmed at the end of the first film, they're now being taken away in ambulances and under massive police supervision. Randolph Carter, the self-proclaimed expert in demonology, returns to the catacombs underneath the house to investigate the origin of the half-woman-half-demonic-creature along with his university professor John Rhys-Davies. When they find it, they do what every rational scientist would do and inject the creature with insulin to separate the woman from the demon. Apparently it works, as the demon assumes something's wrong with the body and exits, leaving only the beautiful host Alyda. Randolph takes the 200-year-old naked beauty back to the dormitory, but the hideous winged demon creature follows their path. The original "The Unnamable" was perhaps a dumb and unmemorable film, at least it was entertaining. Part two is quite boring, pretentious and outstays its welcome with a running time of nearly 105 minutes. The script is full of incomprehensible gibberish about quantum physics and I sincerely doubt that any of the actors understood the lines they were speaking. The gore is minimal but it nevertheless is an unpleasant movie to look at because far too many innocent people die. Innocent bystanders, supportive characters that have done absolutely nothing to deserve to die and people that only wanted to help are being demolished by the creature's claws, whilst the dim-witted main characters get away with everything. That's just not right, not even if you exclusively watch horror films to see gore.

~Spoiler~ I don't remember much about the original Unnamable, but I certainly don't remember it being this bad. Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter has some great actors (John Rhys-Davies, Peter Breck, and David Warner), some B-movie scream queens (Maria Ford and Julie Strain), and Mark Kinsey Stephenson who is neither, but unfortunately he is the star. There's also the usual Lovecraft staples such as Miskatonic University, the Necronomicon, Cthulu, and so on. The story picks up where Unnamable I left off and immediately plummets into the absurd. It turns out the Unnamable has a name after all: it's Alyda. Somehow John Rhys-Davies and Mark Kinsey Stephenson separate the real Alyda from the demon. The real Alyda is played by Maria Ford (who spends most of the movie naked) while the demon is played by Julie Strain (who we never see out of the ugly make-up). Maimings and killings result as the demon chases Alyda all over Miskatonic campus. Stuart Gordon this is not. Hell, Brian Yuzna this is not. Unnamable II clocks in at 104 minutes which is just ridiculous considering that so much should have been trimmed. Not could have been, SHOULD have been. There are completely unnecessary characters, David Warner has a three second cameo that goes nowhere, boring exposition galore, and so much more. Watch Re-animator again instead.

This movie was pretty good (Maria Ford being nude for over half an hour certainly helped!). It involved the Lovecraft Cthulu mythos, and they did a good job with them. I wish they identified what monster they were actually dealing with, but I guess the name wouldn't have worked then LOL. Peace.

This film was much more original than the first movie, which was just a typical "teens get killed in an old house" movie. This one took a new approach, with a bit more humor, a fresher plot, and a more entertaining atmosphere. I enjoyed this a lot more than the original, but unfortunately, this film had a few problems. If you have not seen the movie yet and want to be surprised, DON'T CONTINUE READING, there are SPOILERS ahead. SO, still with me I see? Okay. The idea is that the creature has been trapped by tree roots to the wall of an underground "cave" or something and Randolph, now being helped by the dude who played the Professor in "Sliders," apparently tried to figure out what the most stupid approach to the problem would be. they finally decided that they should use a spell from the spellbook Randolph found(the Necronomicon), in fact, a spell which will seperate spirit from flesh. It wasn't until after the spell was cast that one of the characters said aloud, "Is this a very good idea?" I laughed at that one. I don't have a problem with this bit of nonsense though; many people would be just that dumb. The main problem I had was: the creature is now seperated, one half is a beautiful girl and the other half is a monster, which is now MANY TIMES MORE POWERFUL than when it was in the body of the girl. Yet, the creature was chasing them around the whole time trying to get back into the girl. WHY?! It had MORE STRENGTH, FLIGHT, etc. Now, what would have made sense was if they said the demon had to be in a human body by sunrise or it would be banished back to its dimension. This would have made a "beat the clock" scenario and also explained why it actually wanted to rejoin the girl and become weaker! The only other problem I had was the ending. It just seemed very phony and cheap. On the other hand, if they had done the "beat the clock" version, then the monster could have been beaten by eluding it until sunrise, thereby eliminating the really dumb ending they used. Still, I enjoyed the film and give it *** out of *****.