Claire Ward (Sibbett) is so distraught over the strange behavior of her husband Charles Dexter Ward (Sarandon) that she obtains the services of Providence RI private detective John March (Terry). It all began when an attorney settling the estate of a distant relative sent Ward a shipping trunk filled with old documents all concerning the history of the Ward family. The historic records repeatedly mentioned a man who was reputed to be the true father of Charles’ ancestor Jacob Ward. That man was the infamous sorcerer Joseph Curwen (also Chris Sarandon), direct ancestor of Charles Dexter Ward. Ward also found and broke into Curwen’s old house at Pawtuxet in the rural countryside of Rhode Island. Hidden inside the abandoned house was a portrait of Curwen uncanny in its identical resemblance to Charles. Obsessed not only with Curwen, but also with his work, Ward set up a laboratory in the carriage house behind his home to pursue the alchemical goals his sorcerer ancestor. The secretive Ward would only tell his wife that he had “found some more old papers [the Necronomicon?] that contained remarkable secrets of early scientific knowledge.”
Because his wife objected to the odious smells and frightful noises coming from the carriage house, Ward moved his laboratory to Curwen’s old Pawtuxet house which he had purchased. Neighbors noticed huge shipments of beef and slaughterhouse blood delivered to the house by meatpacking trucks at all hours. More alarming yet are the covert shipments of “oblong boxes” containing human remains. Ward’s increasingly clandestine affairs are now run by a Chinese thug and by a mysterious Doctor Ashe, who always wears sunglasses. Detective March is investigating the strange case when Ward’s complaining neighbors are all killed -- torn apart as if by wild beasts. Ward will only reluctantly see Claire and March, and speaks in a stilted, antiquated dialect. Police intervention ends in Ward being institutionalized in a mental hospital where the staff notice certain physiological peculiarities in their patient.
March and Claire reluctantly reach the conclusion that the man in the hospital is not Claire’s husband and that something uncanny is going on. After reading the frightening accounts of Curwen in the historical records -- and especially in Ezra Ward’s diary -- they decide to explore the old house at Pawtuxet where Ward and Curwen both conducted their experiments. There they discover a hidden passageway into a system of subterranean catacombs that run underneath the house and property.
In the underground stone tunnels, March finds Curwen’s old library -- alcoves properly stacked with dusty old tomes. There is no Necronomicon there, but only Curwen’s journal of alchemical experiments - Journal and Notes of Joseph Curwen, Gentleman of Pawtuxet Plantation, full of grisly illustrations and instructions for reconstituting the dead from their elemental salts and achieving immortality. There is a dedication which reads “To him who will come after and how he may get beyond Time and ye Spheres.” March has uncovered the method by which Curwen learned to “cheat death” and realizes how he has traded places with Ward. Further on, they discover urns filled with the dust of such alchemical greats as Nicholas Flammel and Robert Fludd. They also find the lab where Curwen restored the dead from their salts, as well as the holding pens where Curwen’s experimental “mistakes” are kept. After a harrowing escape from some of Curwen’s more hideous and hungry “mistakes”, Claire and March obliterate the house and catacombs with plastic explosives.
Later, March confronts Curwen at the mental asylum where Curwen admits to disposing of Ward after Ward reconstituted him from the salts of his body and disguised him as “Doctor Ashe”. March then produces Ward’s bones -- recovered from the catacombs at Pawtuxet - and douses them with Curwen’s “reflux”, the alchemical formula for restoring dead salts to life. Ward’s mangled remains then attack Curwen and the two fight it out man-to-skeleton until Curwen is horribly reabsorbed by his descendant\victim.
This is an almost letter-perfect adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - much closer to Lovecraft than The Haunted Palace (1963). Though updated to the 1990's, it is authentically set in Lovecraft’s Providence, Rhode Island. The story was actually filmed on location in British Columbia. Historical flashbacks - including the storming of Curwen’s Pawtuxet farm by a posse of privateers - were authentic-looking and atmospheric. Nevertheless, I am left with that sinking feeling of wasted potential; the Necronomicon is not involved in the plot, nor is the "N" word even mentioned in the screenplay. There is also no mention of HPL’s Cthulhu Mythos, the most Cthuloid thing found in the Pawtuxet catacombs are weird tentaculoid bas reliefs carved into the walls. The only hint of cosmic menace comes when Curwen raves that he has “drawn down demons from the stars”. Without those overtones of nameless alien dread, this detective\horror story comes off too much like Mike Hammer meets Reanimator.
1998 © John Wisdom Gonce III. All rights reserved.