O: "Ah, he has the strength of one enchafed by a fiend!"
B: "Say, what gives with this 'enchafed' malarky?"
In kicks a voice-over from, we flashback, and the story begins proper.
John March (John Terry) is a private investigator whose hair-cut comes uncomfortably close to Mullet-esque. His office has a spunky receptionist, a chain-smoking associate (Lonnie!), and now a pretty blonde prospective client (Jane Sibbett, a far ways off from her future role as Ross's lesbian ex-wife on Friends). She is Clare Ward, her husband has "not been himself lately," and she is concerned. Our hero (and a less engaging hero is seldom found, though I don't entirely hold Terry responsible for this) is placed on retainer to find her wayward husband. Seems Mr. & Mrs. Ward had a snafu regarding his "research" (carried out in the carriage house) so he packed his petri dishe and split, aided in the move by a mysterious "Dr. Ashe" whom Clare only saw bespectled, bearded, and under a broad-brimmed had (the appropriate overcoat also in place). So off March goes, to check out some old property in the furthest, least travelled corner of Rhoade Island.
Stopping at a filling station March steps in a pool of fresh blood which, he is informed by the cantakerous attentendent, was caused by one of "them damned wild dogs, we got recently, wrapped itself around a truck axel". After asking directions to the Ward house, the old feller spits and points in a general direction.
"Can you be more specific?" asks March incredulously.
"You'll know when you get close. The smell. It's the smell of death."
At which point I giggled a bit, and Bettie crossed from computer to couch. Past the appropriately over-grown cemetary is the old Ward house, which is actually one of the nicer moments in the film. The ramshackle farmhouse, which was probably built on location, but looks perfectly old and musty, hits the right note. It isn't an improbable mansion, and it isn't made up of non-euclidean angles. It looks like the kind of farmhouse you might drive by in upstate New York for several weeks in the sunshine and never notice. But when you drive by it on a cold and drizzly day, you suddenly find yourself saying something like: "Man, if there was a horde of zombies coming after me, I'd still think twice before holing up in that place.
March has a myriad collection of IDs in his glove compartment (I flashed back to Jake Gittes' collection of cheap watches in his) one of which he uses to bully his way past a particularly sub-human looking Asian gentlemen, and into Ward's farmhouse. On an interesting note, while it is definately not cool to portray anyone who isn't white as being less than someone who is... it was a major theme in a great many of Lovecraft's stories. Lovecraft had a serious case of xenophobia, and viewed interracial offspring as being particularly bestial and sinister. So I'm not going to hold it against O'Bannon.
Ward makes an appearence, March is denied further access, and he scurries back to meet with his client. In other words, other than introducing creepy farmhouse and thug, we've just spent about twenty minutes of film time doing little other than build atmosphere. Now I am a firm believer in building atmosphere. But that's what the first twenty minutes of a movie are for, not the second.
At the Ward domicile (house proper, not the creepy farmhouse) on a dark and stormy night, March enters what was once Charles Dexter's lab/carriage house, and finds some cow blood in the freezer (Angel? Is that you?) and then finds an ancient diary stitched into the lining of an old trunk. At this point most horror buffs are groaning, but if you found a creepy old diary stitched into the lining of an antique trunk in a potentialy mad scientists abandoned and blood-stocked laboratory, wouldn't you read it? If not, my friend, then you are far less excited about potential zombie infestations than I am. I even have a hatchet.
Back at March's office, Clare, March, spunky receptionist and chain-smoking associate (Lonnie!) read the diary, and we get... er, flashbacks? I guess they are flashbacks, we see the events put down by Ward's great-great-great grand-daddy, who was being cuckolded by this wacky suspected warlock named Joseph Curwen. A great many slaves, and even more beef stock, keep disappearing at Curwen's farm. After a particularly bad rain, a living corpse is washed up and spends some animatronic time roaring while being burned by good Christians. The howling beast-thing put me in mind of the brief Inquisition segment from Clive Barker's well-intentioned but heavily-flawed Nightbreed and raised my hackles slightly, but Bettie quickly put said hackles to rest after flatly stating: "Wow, I think The Haunted Palace had better special effects." I was then prompted to point out that this one has bigger mobs. Which it does. As opposed to the fifteen stalwarts angrily mumbling incoherently, The Resurrected has about seventy men with flintlock rifles storming the Curwen house.
Curwen is burned at the stake, curse is laid, and now March and Co. are feeling a little big of "blech!" in their day. But most importantly, we found out that Curwen's lover (the original Mrs. Ward) is pregnant with Curwen's baby. Making Ward a Curwen, not a Ward. God that sentence looks awkward.