Hoff’s Horrorfest Presents: THE RESURRECTED!

Hoff’s Horrorfest is a monthly show at Brit Pack (2nd floor, 34 Pell St., Manhattan) featuring stand-up comedy from Hoff Matthews and a guest performer, followed by a horror movie screening. This month’s installment will be at 9:15pm, Monday, November 30th. $5 suggested donation, BYOB. There will be snacks!

This month’s guest performer: Lizzie Martinez

This month’s movie: The Resurrected (1991)

Ah, November. The month of Thanksgiving! The month when we look back on our colonial forefathers, on the struggles they overcame during the founding of this great nation, and on their unspeakable experiments in the reanimation of dead matter.

That’s what Hoff’s Horrorfest will be focusing on, anyway. As I’ve said before, I never met an H. P. Lovecraft film adaptation I didn’t like, and 1991’s The Resurrected is a particularly enjoyable example of the subgenre. Directed by Dan O’Bannon (screenwriter of Alien and director of Return of the Living Dead), this month’s selection updates Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” into a noir-ish tale of a PI tasked with investigating the erratic behavior of a local scientist who may have inherited a distant ancestor’s gift for the dark arts. It’s as spookily atmospheric as you could hope for, with plenty of rundown New England farmhouses and subterranean tunnels filled with old-school, practical-effects-rendered eldritch horrors.

John Terry and Jane Sibbett on their way to encounter some eldritch horrors

The Resurrected has never been available in widescreen on US home video formats, but I’ve gotten ahold of a German Blu-ray release from this past summer, so if you want to see it projected in glorious HD (without shelling out $$$ for an import like I did), this is your chance!

This month’s guest performer is comedian Lizzie Martinez, with whom I’ve collaborated on countless shows and projects and whom I’m very happy to have on a Horrorfest bill. This’ll be a good time! See you there!

–Hoff