A group of college students decide to check out a reportedly haunted house that turns out to have a hideous and ferocious female beast (an impressively expressive portrayal by Katrin Alexandre) locked up in a vault in the attic.

Writer/director Jean-Paul Oullette relates the enjoyable and engrossing story at a steady pace, takes time to develop the characters, crafts a fun ooga booga atmosphere, and delivers several nice moments of graphic gore. The acceptable acting by the competent cast helps a lot: Mark Kinsey Stephenson makes for an engagingly laidback and eccentric hero as nerdy bookworm Randolph Carter, Charles Klausmeyer likewise registers well as earnest freshman Howard Damon, Alexandra Durrell contributes an appealing turn as sweet foreign exchange student Tanya Heller, and Laura Albert brings a winning blend of sass and spark to her role as the brash Wendy Barnes. The monster manages to be both grotesque and pitiable. As a yummy plus, the delicious Mrs. Albert bares her beautifully bountiful breasts. David Bergeaud's spirited shivery score hits the shuddery spot. Tom Fraser's slick cinematography provides a pleasing polished look. An entertaining little fright flick.

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.

Back in the 1800s a lady gives birth to a monster. They decide that the baby is too ugly to name, therefore the monster is known as the "Unnamable"...

While this film may only be casually connected to the Lovecraft story whose name it has, that really should not be held against it. Heck, many Lovecraft adaptations are quite loose and the 1930s film "The Black Cat" claims to be based on Poe, when it has no connection whatsoever.

On its merits alone, this is a pretty entertaining and fun film, with a strange narration from one character who talks like a fictional pilgrim, a woman who claims to have an accent but is obviously just deaf, and a monster that is something between a goat and a woman, with demon characteristics mixed in.

All in all, not a bad one... they might have shown the "unnamable" just a bit too much, giving it less mystery than it probably required. I have not yet seen the sequel, but now I am curious to see where it goes...