H.P. Lovecraft on film.

Karl Hungus

Lovecraft is a name that everyone into horror should know.
He is to horror what J.R.R. Tolkien is to Fantasy.

So in a world where every bit of Stephen King's junk that he farts out gets made into a movie, or TV series... It begs the question, why not Lovecraft!? Doesn't his work deserve a decent big-screen adaption instead of the low-budget, straight to video crap that made a mockery of his work?

Ok, yes... I'm being too harsh.
But seriously, since The Re-Animator, has there really been anything that lived up to Lovecraft?
Maybe From Beyond?

Looking up on imdb.com there's actually been quite a hell of a lot of films credited to him: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0522454/

Everything from the god-****ing-awful Unnamable films, to the Re-animator sequals, to derived rubbish barely based on his work with only the name 'Lovecraft' tacked on for a selling point. His silver screen reputation isn't exactly as good as his written reputation is...

Which is honestly a pity, seeing as he created some absolutely fantastic other-worldly imaginations, utter darkness and despair, which has inspired RPGs and muchos cult following. All in all, his work SHOULD have inspired equally as fantastic and engrossing cinema, but was generally marred by low budgets and amatuer film-makers.


Although, I can still look back on re-animator and smile, as that at the very least was the film that at a young age introduced me to the excellent actor Jeffrey Combs, who I was later to see pop up in everything from Star Trek to Spiderman, and went "OMG! It's yer man!!!"

So, besides the Stuart Gordon/Brian Yuzna films, reanimator and from Beyond... What is there? When Yuzna went off and did the Bride Of Reanimator on his own, it stunk to high heaven!

There is of course, Dagon... The 2001 Stuart Gordon effort, which I hated at first, but have since warmed to, and I really want to see again at this stage. Despite the horrid acting from the lead actor, the monsters of the film were utterly horrid disfigured freaks! Really ****ing impressive make-up effects, and there's a certain scene in the film that is utterly gut-wrentchingly nasty... if you've seen Dagon, you'll know what I'm on about.

So in that respect, Dagon was quite alright.
And then there is of course one of the film's main saving graces, Macarena Gomez...



She was something!!!
But other than Dagon, she's only been in a handfull of Spanish films, and TV programmes. Which is a pity, because she played the Priestess Uxia quite fantastically!

Yeah, I'm a sucker for a pretty face... She's hot!

So...
Am I right in thinking that Lovecraft deserves better screen treatment? Perhaps a bigger budget? A more visionary director at the helm? Better actors? Better writers?

Ok, well Jeffrey Combs owns, but there's not many other actors in Lovecraft Adaptions that really stand out...


So, any thoughts?

Karl Hungus

..speak to ****ing soon why dont I??!?!!?

'Blade II' director eyes Lovecraft novel

"Blade II" director Guillermo Del Toro is negotiating to direct a movie adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "At The Mountain Of Madness," Variety reports.

Del Toro intends to write the script with Matthew Robbins ("Mimic"). The story concerns an expedition to the Arctic, where the explorers discover the ruins of an ancient civilization. They then realize they've roused dormant prehistoric creatures, the report said.

Del Toro has described the project as "my epic horror film", and views it as his equivalent of James Cameron's Oscar-winning dream project, "Titanic."

Now, I'm quite a fan of Del Toro.
His films Cronos, Mimic, The Devil's Backbone, and Blade 2 have all been good in my eyes, and his upcoming "Hellboy" film looks ultra-cool. So perhaps my moanings on this thread have suddenly been aswered by the cosmos?

With words like "Epic" being thrown around by the director, and considering his Calibre, and past films, not to mention the film itself will be none other than At The Mountains Of Madness... I think an honest, faithfull Lovecraft adaption that will live up as a great film isn't as unlikely!!! And who could ask for a better Lovecraft story to have been adapted than Mountains...!?

OH ****ING REJOICE!!!!

I'm one happy camper!


Edit:

I'M EVEN HAPPIER NOW!!!
And quite excited over the prospect at this moment...

Taken from this article at horror.com

Q: You mentioned previously that you're polishing off the final draft to your Mountains of Madness script. Am really intrigued to hear about exactly how you're tackling this one?

GDT: We actually are doing a FRAMING sequence where one of the survivors IS in an insane asylum, so go figure. The movie will follow the book beats but will also add a lot of time-space dsitortions to play with the "rational" frame of the characters and add a "black hole" feeling to the zone where the ruins are discovered.

Q: I've always found it weird how when Lovecraft's name gets mentioned people tend to say 'Oh yeah - tentacles'. Weird simply because most of his stories focused on that whole cold alien horror, which manifested in odd angles, inhuman colours and the like - big octopuses in R'yleth sort of seemed like a distraction from the whole true evil in his universe... So I was wondering how you planned to visualise the shuggoths, etc in the Mountains of Madness...

GDT: First and foremost Lovecraft is about the horror of putting human existance in PERSPECTIVE. How tiny we are. Ants in the Cosmic picnic. Then about the atrocious biology that our heroes face, a crynoid, pisciform, mollusk-like aberration that is augmented by their fear of its intelligence and hatred for our mortal form. I will take at least 3 months with a team of artists before we can lock on a look for the creatures.

My ****ing god! He REALLY knows his stuff, and I think he's finally going to capture the real essense of Lovecraft in a film. Finally.

This might indeed be the DEFINITVE Lovecraft film!!!
The film Lovecraft has deserved!

Christ, I'm shaking with excitement!

Makaveli

Would you like a tissue?

ObeyGiant

The Collected Work of H. P. Lovecraft
Ultra-Condensed by Thomas Deeny


Narrator

I will tell you about something horrific I witnessed.

(Narrator discusses MUNDANE experiences which supposedly lead up to something HORRIFIC.)

Narrator

We're almost at the horrific bit.

(Narrator talks about more stuff that might be SPOOKY if he'd only GET ON WITH IT.)

Narrator

We're very close now.

(Narrator draws it out MORE.)

Narrator

This time I swear we're just about at the horrific thing almost.

(Narrator FINALLY gets to the HORRIFIC thing which is HUGE and POWERFUL and EVIL and LAME.)

I guess this highlights exactly why Lovecraft doesn't get translated into good movies.. his stories are based on whipping up a load of psychological terror that just doesn't work well on the screen. Which is why the most successful of his films (Re-Animator, Dagon) have been 'based' on Lovecraft, rather than a direct interpretation. Ruari Robinson's CG short "The House on Dame Street" could also fall into the category of something good based on Lovecraft ("Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward"). I also enjoyed "From Beyond", but mainly because of my boner for Ken Foree.
At a stretch, one could argue that City of the Living Dead is based on the Dunwich Horror.. but it wouldn't be an incredible argument.

I remember a couple of years ago, there was a videogame of Call of Cthulu in development. They were going to make it a first-person shooter, with you stalking through victorian streets armed with a gun, while hoardes of monsters came at you. Some particularly zealous people I work with got really annoyed at the way that these developers were playing fast and loose with Lovecraft's original idea. But eventually had to accept the fact that, like films, Lovecraft's stories don't make good video games either (Although Lovecraft casts a massive shadow over Eternal Darkness).

The reason Stephen King's trash gets turned into movies at the drop of a hat is simple - they usually follow a very simple premise, and generally rely on cheap scares to convey a sense of "horror". It's much harder to convey something so terrifying that it can drive someone completely insane, as is the case with most of Lovecraft's stories. They tried this with the Blair Witch Project with mixed results.

I think there are probably some things that are best left un-filmed, because of the differences between the written and visual medium. And personally, I think Lovecraft is for the most part, best left as-is.

spooky donkey

Originally posted by AngelWhore
..

My ****ing god! He REALLY knows his stuff, and I think he's finally going to capture the real essense of Lovecraft in a film. Finally.

This might indeed be the DEFINITVE Lovecraft film!!!
The film Lovecraft has deserved!

Christ, I'm shaking with excitement!

All i will say is dont get youre hopes up thinking that this will be the best horror ever cause i dont wana hear you moaning when you see it after you go to with such hugh expectations, though im sure it will be great!

Crash

They'll fuck up the shoggoth. its inevitable.

Tbh i dont wanna see a direct to screen translation of a Lovecraft shortstory. i would MUCH prefer someone to take the mythos and do their own thing. i intend to do a short movie probably over the summer when i have time, for a bit of a laugh, based on the Cthulhu mythos. but yeah.....if they screw up the shoggoth i'll kill them.

lordsippa

Neil! I'VE BEEN COMING UP WITH A STORY PLOT FOR A MYTHOS BASED LOW BUDGET FILM... it never actually has a mythos entity in it though... (as far as I'm concerned the Mythos is best left as a distant fear... often alluded to... occasionally directly mentioned and maybe ONCE seen if it must be and even then obscured by darkness and such... hopefully this is what they'll do with the shoggoth).

What about In The Mouth Of Madness? It was very much Lovecraft inspired (although not directly based on a book). Great film.

Crash

actually my idea involved guy getting killed, friend going in search of cult responsible, village full of crazy deformed people, ****ed up night there, escaping running into the woods to escape coming across the cult running from the cult and running in fear until he trips, gets up turns around and *BAM* movie ends with shock on his face

Fysh

Crash_000 - your description reminds me of a B-movie called Alien Predator...certain aspects of it were terrible, but as is the way with B-movies, it had just enough cool bits to justify its existence...worth a watch, I reckon.

As for Lovecraft adaptations...urgh. Personally, I can't think of any of them that'd work as films. Heck, Re-animator was bad enough (yes, I know it was a B-movie, I'm not giving out about effects or anything, just the fact that the acting was pretty poor and the scripting worse...) and it was redeemed in part by the fact that it was a low-budget flick, but the Lovecraft association wouldn't make me change my opinion on the film. You can forgive all sorts of things for low-budget films, but not for big-budget (just look at Texas Chainsaw Massacre compared to the remake - both have weaknesses, but I'd gladly spend money to buy a copy of the original on DVD whereas ever since I came out of the cinema after subjecting myself to the remake, I've had a strange desire to do something disgusting in Tobe Hooper's mouth).

If we were going to have Lovecraft adaptations, I reckon they'd have to go for a style like The Thing in order to work. And I don't see the maker of Blade II and Mimic doing that too well (although from what he's quoted as saying so far in this thread, I might be wrong).

I guess my fundamental point is about the difference between written horror and cinema horror. I don't think the central aspect of Lovecraft's work would carry over well to cinema because it's psychological horror rather than visual, unlike Stephen King and his increasingly dire output. I'd rather see original horror stories developed for films, which can make better use of the medium, than butchered versions of written horror stories dragged kicking and screaming onto the screen.

That said, given the last year's track record of horror films at the cinema (let's see, Wrong Turn, The Ring (yank version), Jeepers Creepers 2, Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, Freddie Versus Jason...have I missed any?) I guess what's missing is the original horror stories part, or at least original *good* horror stories. But then again, this is Hollywood....

Crash

i've also decided to cross it with my other idea - making a really blatant student movie and doing all the things that go wrong on purpose. such as the guy in the bushes with the video camera etc.


Oh and the end monster will now be the monster from the ending credits of buffy - Grrr, arg.