A "WEIRD TALE" OF LOVECRAFT

While H.P. Lovecraft's total ouput cannot be called voluminous, he left enough to make a substantial impact on the fields of horror and science-fiction. Still, we all wonder what he would have done next had he lived longer.

A number of Lovecraft's stories and poems were published in the greatest of the weird fiction pulps. Written in 1918, Polaris appeared in the December 1937 issue of WEIRD TALES, just a few months after his death.

JOURNAL OF LOVECRAFTIANA NO. 1 NOW AVAILABLE

Now available for download is a new publication by THE ORIGINAL ARKHAM PRESS in an electronic magazne format. Fans of H.P. Lovecraft might be interested in learning more about Lovecraft's comic adaptations and how the forced demise of horror comics, such as those by EC, were a contributing factor to their (sometimes over-the-top) re-emergence in the 1960's. Plus, it's written by yours truly!

Here's the 411 from THE ORIGINAL ARKHAM PRESS site:

"The first publication of the eZine, Journal of Lovecraftiana is now available for purchase. With the theme, "The Underground Lovecraft", it contains a lengthy essay by long-time Lovecraft admirer and historian, John Navroth entitled "Lovecraft's Last Gasp". It is "remastered" from its first appearance as a submission to the Lovecraft Amateur Press Association's Esoteric Order of Dagon in 2009 with color images replacing the original black and white reproductions.

It discusses the avenues and forms taken to bring Lovecraft adaptations and Lovecraft-inspired stories to comic books and other sequential art media. It begins with the death of the horror comic book in the 1950's and their resurrection years later with Jim Warren's Creepy magazine, where the first full-length Lovecraft adaptation in a comic story appeared. There is a lengthy discussion of Skull Comics, the infamous underground title that included several Lovecraft adaptations, as well as other extreme illustrated horror stories meant to be a subversive reaction to the forced ceasing of horror and crime comic books from 10 years before. Included is the complete text of the original Comics Code Authority which spelled out the guidelines for the approved content of comic books."

Go HERE to buy.

EXTRA!
To see an example of an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation in an underground comic, click on the MONSTER COMICS tab under this blog's title header and read the classic HPL story, "Cool Air" from SKULL COMICS #4!

LOVECRAFT'S FIRST LADY . . . AND THAT CRAZY GUY, TOO

"I like playing extreme characters"

-- Barbara Crampton

Women do not play a large role in the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. In the modern filmic retelling of his tales, it is quite the opposite. The sex factor is cranked up considerably, and, in the case of Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon's RE-ANIMATOR, to the extreme.

In the most popular of these films, actress Barbara Crampton is the object of desire. She caught the eye (and disembodied head) of Dr. Hill in RE-ANIMATOR, and was the focus of the obsessed (and slimy) Dr. Pretorius in FROM BEYOND.

Miss Cramptom plays these roles with a coolness and sophistication that might otherwise appear unseemly or gratuitous in the hands of another, less talented actress. Even when she's stripped naked and screaming, she does it in a more glamorous than cheesy manner. For that reason alone (and the infamous lab table scene in RE-ANIMATOR), she has garnered her own cult following right alongside the old gentleman's screen adaptations that she appears in.

More details are discussed about her career in Lovecraftian horror in issue #56 of RUE MORGUE (May 2006).

BONUS!

In this same issue of RUE MORGUE is coverage of the actor whose histrionics in Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft adaptations have become legendary. Jeffrey Coombs is the modernized version of the mad doctor played in the golden age of horror by such greats as Bela Lugosi, Peter Lorre, and Lionel Atwill. Notwithstanding Barbara Crampton's obvious allure, without the huge talents of Mr. Coombs, these films would be considerably less memorable.

THE GREAT CTHULHU CONSPIRACY

Since H.P. Lovecraft's popularity was rekindled in the late 1960's, a cult following has grown up around his stories of "cosmic horror". Tales like At the Mountains of Madness, The Whisperer in Darkness, and The Shadow Out of Time, all had horror elements, but many could be more properly called science fiction.

Along with Donald Wandrei, August Derleth championed Lovecraft's work, especially after his death in 1937. The publishing company known as Arkham House was formed, and readers were allowed the luxury of seeing all of Lovecraft's works collected in book form for the first time since they had been published in the pulps.

Derleth himself contributed many stories to what he dubbed The Cthulhu Mythos, a term meant to associate a number of Lovecraft's stories into a loose group of interrelated stories tied together with the concept of a pantheon of god-like beings who were the real overlords of the earth. In truth, there was nothing "god-like" -- in a religious sense, anyway -- about Cthulhu, Azathoth, and Nyarlothotep, who were always waiting at the portal of our world to cause all sorts of chaos and mass destruction on the most elemental and secular of scales.

With a theme like this, its hard not to imagine a cult following developing around the concept of The Great Old Ones and company. Assertions from the interesting to the ridiculous cropped up as a result of speculation behind the "real" meaning behind Lovecraft's stories. Some have even gone so far as to say Lovecraft was a sort of Nostradamus of UFOlogy, predicting our bleak future albeit without the hope that H.G. Wells gave us.

In the 1980's, the "All Evil" issue of CRITIQUE A Journal Questioning Consensus Reality, author Ben G. Price explores the concept of evil in Lovecraft's so-called Cthulhu Mythos.

BACK TO "THE BEYOND"

"Actually, I think Lovecraft's all about sex. All of his stories, he writes about these couplings between non-human lifeforms and giving birth to all these monstrosities." -- Stuart Gordon

Even there ever was a champion to bring the tales of  H.P. Lovecraft to the silver screen, Director Stuart Gordon is the one. A huge fan of Lovecraft (I saw him speak at the Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon some years ago), Gordon is tireless in his efforts to bring the Godfather of Cosmic Horror into the spotlight of films.

In issue #56 (May 2006) of the Canadian monster 'zine, RUE MORGUE, Gordon talks about his work with interviewer Joseph O'Brien. A bona fide Lovecraft fan, Mr. Gordon has done much to translate the weird fiction writer's tales to the screen . . . which is not an easy job.

[NOTE: To purchase the full issue of the magazine in which this sample article appears, visit the RUE MORGUE back issues department by clicking HERE.]

H.P. AND ME

My interest in the life and works of weird fiction writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft goes back a long way. I was a young teenager not yet in high school. It was the middle of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius (at least to some), and everything that was archaic, or in Lovecraftian terminology -- eldritch -- was new again.

The classice horror authors were one by one being reintroduced to a new generation of dazed and confused hippies and pop culture freaks. While a couple of years too young to be declared an official "hippie", I was definitely a card-carrying member of pop culture fandom.

I had heard word and seen these crazy paperback book covers with stories by an author that had the same name as a psychedelic rock group at the time. My curiosity got the best of me and I tried one.

While reading the Ballantine Books edition of THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH, I found out that the fellow that wrote these far-out tales of strange fantasy and fright had actually been alive and writing 30 or 40 years before.

Well, it didn't take but to devour but a handful of stories and I was hooked like a gillman off Devil Reef. My eye noticed a few Arkham House hardcover books at the local library, so the next tome that I burned my retinas on was DAGON AND OTHER MACABRE TALES.

After that, the next Ballantine paperback that I shelled out my hard-earned allowance on was FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH AND OTHER POEMS. Yes, I know, it was poetry, but it was weird poetry! And when I landed Lin Carter's bio of Lovecraft, A LOOK BEHIND THE CTHULHU MYTHOS, I finally found out a lot about who this guy Lovecraft really was. Granted, some Lovecraftian scholars don't give Carter (or even de Camp) high marks as a Lovecraft biographer, but I always thought besides making his living writing and editing, Mr. Carter was also equal parts fan.

And, that folks, is my story of how I met Howard Phillips Lovecraft, a finer crafter of weird and science fiction from the golden age as one could ever hope to be!