The Best Of Berni!

Berni Wrightson was the ideal artist to work for Warren Publishing's like of black and white horror magazines Creepy and Eerie. He such a perfect choice that it is surprising how little work he did for the company. Some years ago Dark Horse put together the Wrightson stories and art from both Creepy and Eerie in a highly readable single tome from a decade ago. 

The book begins with the work for Creepy and what is arguably Wrightson's comic art masterpiece "The Black Cat". He is credited with both the story and art and his gothic style is ideal to bring Poe to the comic page. This is followed  by a trio of stories written by Bruce Jones. The first is "Jenifer", a story of love and revulsion which is the very essence of weird. "Clarice" is a poem of sorts though no less horrific. "Country Pie" is a story that Wrightson inked over Carmine Infantino and gives a glimpse of serial killers of a different stripe. Bill DuBay wrote "Dick Swift and his Electric Power Ring", a heart-warming story in the Twilight Zone mode. This story also features the combo of Wrightson inking Infantino. Nicola Cuti wrote "A Martian Saga" for Wrightson, giving the artist the chance to put his stamp on the "Red Planet". Bruce Jones is back for "The Laughing Man", a story of the remote jungle and one greedy man's strange and lurid encounter with a hidden race of man-apes. 

Slipping over into a section dedicated to Wrightson's work for Eerie, we find first up a nifty and exceedingly well-drawn and well-written story entitled "The Pepper Lake Monster".  Bill DuBay is back with a nightmarish take on Little Nemo in a story titled "Nightfall", but this young Nemo is assaulted by nightmares rendered lovingly by Berni. The classic "Cool Air" gives Wrightson the chance to write and drawn a classic adaptation of unquestionably Lovecraft's most chilling story of horror. On a strange note Budd Lewis wrote "Reuben Youngblood: Private Eye" with pencils by Howard Chaykin. Wrightson inks this yarn about a pre-WWII gumshoe who runs afoul of German blood smugglers aboard a zeppelin. The story section of the volume concludes with a rare color story titled "The Muck Monster" by Wrightson, one he both wrote and illustrated which offers a startlingly different take on the classic Frankenstein monster-creation yarn. 

The final section of the book features some of Bern Wrightson's most alluring and repulsive artwork for Warren, the delightfully sarcastic frontispieces featuring both Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie as they introduce that issue's goodies. Wrighton's wonderful ability to blend horror and comedy is perfect for this task. We're also treated to the few covers that Wrightson did for Warren as well as getting a glimpse of the youthful fanboy Berni's contribution to Creepy #9 from 1966, years before Wrightson's debut as a pro in Creepy #62 with "The Black Cat" in 1974.

All the stuff in this volume is above average and most of it, the stuff done by Wrightson on his own is simply magnificent. Tomorrow we see more of Berni's take on Frankenstein. 

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The Last Lovecraft!

Well at least it didn't lie on the box. It was "equal measure" of "laughs and scares" in that it had exactly zero of each. The Last Lovecraft - Relic of CThulhu is pretty much a bomb of a movie. I found this flick for tiny money at Half-Price Books and was sufficiently intrigued by the apparent attempt to bring a comedy angle to the Lovecraft Mythos that I actually thought this might work. It still might, but not here.

It's a pretty good premise. The evil acolytes of C'Thulhu are intent on bringing back the Great Old Ones to rule the Earth and need only the second half of an ancient icon after its mate was discovered hidden in the desert. To that end they attack the keepers of the icon who quickly dispatch it to the last heir of H.P. Lovecraft himself, the one man who demonstrated the apparent genetic ability to stave off the madness nearly always created by the presence of the agents of the Elder Gods. That last living Lovecraft turns out to be a tweny-something slacker who along with his best bud are given charge of the icon and seek to escape the Star-Spawn and Deep Ones who chase them. They round up an even nerdier Lovecraft afficianado from high school and the trio then seek out some old sailor who once upon a time battled the Deep Ones and lived.

I frankly surprised myself that it took that long to sketch out the plot, since I didn't detect that much happening at the time in this supremely boring movie. The heroes are singularly unfunny and powerfully unlikeable. The actors here are clearly trying to evoke the down-on-their-luck loser charm emitted by Simon Peg and Nick Frost in their buddy movies, but utterly fail at it. In point of fact the movie seems to kill of some dopplegangers of Peg and Frost at the very beginning of the movie; I couldn't tell if this was a valentine or a middle finger to the team, but it's almost the highlight of this movie and that's the first few minutes.

To be fair there are some decent special effects in the movie, but it's the live action stuff which hamstrings the proceedings. The cast, with a few exceptions, is simply not very good. Wooden acting is the most apt description. The final battle which takes place in a RV is a cluttered mess with no tension and barely sufficient blocking.

This movie had little budget, that's clear. I don't hold that against them, but when it comes to these endeavors the cheapest thing you have as a creator are the humans who are willing to showcase themselves and frankly it just doesn't work. This movie is the worst thing an entertainment can be - dull. See this one at your own peril.

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Big Book Of Monsters!

The Baen's Big Book of Monsters is an absolute hoot. I snatched it off the racks when I first clapped eyes on it. It's full of vintage stories of giant monsters with new material sandwiched between. The new stuff I can take or leave, but the old stories, many from Weird Tales are some I've long wanted to read.

Highest on that list was "Ooze" by Anthony Rud, which appeared in the very first issue of Weird Tales. This yarn which slowly reveals its menace is well crafted though any monster fan will see it coming a mile off.

Many of the stories in this collection seem to have been written to order because of an evocative cover. That's certainly the case with Curt Siodmak's "The Eggs from Lake Tanganyika".

That seems to be the case with Murray Leinster's "Planet of Doom" also.

Henry Kuttner's "Beauty and the Beast" works hard to create a story which will justify this cover of a dinosaur crashing into the Captiol. What I didn't realize is that this story almost certainly inspired Ray Harryhausen's 20 Million Miles to Earth, though there is no mention made of that here.

Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" is included and I'm always ready for another go at this seminal and potent monster story. Likewise "The Valley of the Worm" by Robert E. Howard which is on hand.

Also included are "The Shining Ones" by Arthur C. Clarke, "The Island of the Ud" by William Hope Hodgson, "The Monster God of Mammurth" by Edmond Hamilton (his first published tale), and "Greenface" by James Schmitz.

Highly recommended.

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Shadows Over Baker Street!

Shadows Over Baker Street is a volume I've had on my shelves for years. I've dabbled in it here and there over the years, but never read it through. That's now corrected.

The editors of this volume, Michael Reaves and John Pelan, arrange the tales chronologically along the timeline of the career of Sherlock Holmes. The editors supply stories themselves and we are presented with some stark tales full of mortal danger and immortal dread.

Here are the stories.

"A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman is the headliner in this collection, a Hugo award winner. This Gaiman at the top of his game with truly weird reinterpretation of the Sherlock Holmes mythos in a world where good and evil are somewhat confused. The detection in this one is on the reader. (1881)

"Tiger, Tiger" by Elizabeth Bear is a story of India starring the stalwart Irene Adler as she goes on safari looking for tigers and creatures even more dangerous and mysterious.(1882)

"The Case of the Wavy Black Dagger" by Steve Perry is less a story than a character piece about ancient practices which involved some very dangerous weapons and some very dangerous ancient gods.(1884)

"A Case of Royal Blood" by Steven-Elliot Altman features Sherlock, this time with a new narrator, one H.G.Wells, as the pair confront some very old evil in the Swedish royal court. There's some very handsome description in this one, especially of a dream Wells has.(1888)

"The Weeping Masks" by James Lowder focuses on Dr.Watson in his days in Afghanistan and his weird encounter with a cult that ravages the villages behind the enemy lines.(1890)

"Art in the Blood" by Brian Stableford feature Mycroft and Sherlock as they work together to help a forlorn sailor who has a grim dark secret concerning some downright evil faces.(1892)

"The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone" by Poppy Z. Brite and David Ferguson tells how Holmes and Watson help a lost traveler find its way back home, but that home is very far away indeed. (1894)

"The Adventure of the Antiquarian's Niece" by Barbara Hambly tells the exceedingly creepy tale of a young woman who is in danger from the immortal designs of her grandfather and uncle and Sherlock and Watson and guest-star Carnacki don't quite save the day. (1894)

"The Mystery of the Worm" by John Pelan is about the quest of immortality and features the menace of  Dr.Nikola who invades 221B Baker Street for the first time. (1894)

"The Mystery of the Hanged Man's Puzzle" by Paul Finch presents a tale of Holmes and Watson battling a threat out of Lovecraft's depraved Innsmouth and the menace it poses to the very belly of London and the world. (1897)

"The Horror of the Many Faces" by Tim Lebbon tells the hair-raising events which point to Sherlock himself as a brutal and sadistic murderer, or at least that's what Watson believes he saw with is own eyes. (1898)

"The Adventure of the Arab's Manuscript" by Michael Reaves is a rousing tale about a secret from Watson's past as well as letting us know that as dangerous as The Necronomicon might be there is a an ancient tome which is even more dangerous. (1898)

"The Drowned Geologist" by Caitlin R. Kiernan is a very atmospheric piece from the point of view of a confused academic who runs up on a mystery off the coast of Whitby where he meets a rather familiar stranger. (1898)

"A Case of Insomnia" by John P. Vourlis sends Homes and Watson to a town which cannot sleep because of fear of what comes crouching out of the dark shadows. (1899)

"The Adventure of the Voorish Sign" by Richard A. Lupoff is weird tale of a desperate but doughty woman and her mysterious ancestral home called the "Anthracite Castle" and what a dangerous mystical sect had hidden within. There is a reference Arthur Machen in his lively adventure which literally traverses the world and beyond.  (1899)

"The Adventure of the Exham Priory" by F. Gwynplaine Macintyre tells of another ancient home which seems the perfect place for some exceedingly evil doings as a doomed man seeks to save his soul if not his life from the power of the Old Ones.  (1901)

"Death Did Not Become Him" by David Niall Wilson and Patricia Lee McComber in a vivid tale Holmes and Watson are on the track of the walking dead and of the evil man who cannot quite control them or himself.  (1902)

"Nightmare in Wax" by Simon Clark is a tale told in a new way as the recorded voice of Moriarty relates his most nefarious scheme to achieve the immortality he so longs for, but of course he cannot do without the use of the infamous Necronomicon.  (1915)

The stories are almost all engaging and make some creative use of Lovecraft's lore, though often combining elements of it in ways I found fascinating. Not all the stories are equally good, but the best of them are enthralling additions to the canons of Sherlock Holmes and to the C'Thulhu Mythos as well.

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Whisperer In The Darkness!

One of H.P. Lovecraft's most completely successful short stories is "Whisperer in Darkness". It's a an enthralling tale of Albert Wilmarth, a skeptical academic who discovers a real horror lurking in the wild of the Vermont hills.

And now Whisperer  in Darkness is a successful movie. The second big movie adaptation from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, this very compelling movie attempts to evoke the early black and white talkie style of movies from 1931, the year of the original stories first publication. So in some ways this movie is like finding an hitherto unknown horror classic in the vein of Lugosi's Dracula or Karloff's Frankenstein.

If you know the story you'll definitely enjoy seeing it adapted to the "big screen". And if you don't then you'll really get a charge out of reading the Lovecraft original. The movie is a faithful adaptation, but does choose to make some cinematic choices which alter the expectations without, to my mind, undermining Lovecraft's wonderful mood or atmosphere.

This is a fun movie made by folks who love Lovecraft and who seem to love the thrill of film making. It's fun to watch the behind-the-scenes features which reveal how the tricks were done, on a shoestring often, but mostly show how these people seem to have fun making a really convincing adaptation of a Lovecraft classic. Here is the trailer. 

This is the second movie from these folks, the first Call of Cthulhu, I looked at here some years ago.

Both are highly recommended. 

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Something Fishy This Way Comes!

Recently picked up Shadows Over Innsmouth and Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth, two handsome and highly readable volumes edited by Stephen Jones and reprinted by Titan Books featuring Lovecraft's infamous New England fishing village. They are full of some weird new spins on what happened in Innsmouth before and after the events related by Lovecraft's notorious narrator.

I first encountered this tale in middle school when I got my mitts on this handy volume of misbegotten lore. Lovecraft sank deep into my imagination and I've been a fan since, especially of the story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". If you haven't read it before, then by all means take some time to read one of Lovecraft's moodiest longer stories. It builds, like all his good stuff, with a steady beat of weird and weirder.

I discovered recently that this story might well have been inspired, at least in part, by the story "Fishhead" by Irvin S.Cobb, a Kentucky writer of some note from the early 20th century. This story also has some echoes of The Creature from the Black Lagoon too. Here's a link to read the whole odd thing.

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Acolytes Of Cthulhu!

Acolytes of Cthulhu edited by Robert Price is just the kind of Lovecraft anthology I like, with rich vivid stories from across a large span of time. There are stories here by authors contemporary with Lovecraft himself as well as sundry tales by those inspired by him, and even some which merely have a sympathetic tone. Titan Books has offered this impressive collection up for a very nice price, though I will have to say I rather prefer the original Gahan Wilson cover sported on the hardcover from earlier in this century.

And just for the sake of being thorough the writers in this tasty volume include Hugh B. Cave, Manley Wade Wellman, Edmond Hamilton, Jorge Luis Borges, Gustav Meyrink, S.T. Joshi, Neil Gaiman, and many more. 

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The Case Of The C'Thulhu Creator!

I stumbled across this peculiar piece of fan fiction as part of a slightly larger volume called The Lovecraft Papers which includes Pulptime, a novel featuring Sherlock Holmes teaming up with H.P.Lovecraft as told by Frank Belknap Long Jr. as well as some shorter tales of P.G.Wodehouse's Jeeves if the latter were involved in some of Lovecraft's more famous mysteries.

So far I've only read Pulptime and sadly I must report it was a bit of a trudge to finish. The central conceit is an attractive one as it seemingly involves the great Detective in the cosmic horror of Lovecraft in a most direct way, save that the author here, P.H. Cannon, doesn't decide to do any of that. We are instead presented with a very old Sherlock Holmes acting sometimes wildly out of character visiting New York City to pursue a case of smuggling and ends up down the hall from Lovecraft and his visiting friend Long. They get meshed up into a slight mystery which leads to encounters with Houdini and assorted other small celebrities of the time which seem of interest to Cannon.

All things considered it's a pretty slow boil as the mystery really doesn't come to much and most of the time  Long, who functions as something of a Watson narrator type for the tale, talks about the relationship between Lovecraft and Holmes and what everyone is wearing at that moment. For diehard fans immersed in the tiny details of Lovecraft's career, there are bon mots here and there, but rarely does the story really get up any steam.

One thing that hurts is that Sherlock Holmes is almost unrecognizable, rarely indulging in his classic deductions and spending most of his time commenting on his two young friends. And that's the heart of why I don't think this story works, and that's I cannot imagine Sherlock Holmes ever finding H.P.Lovecraft a bosom buddy, in fact the opposite would seem indicated to me. Cannon seems to think since they were both eccentric that proves sufficient, but Holmes to my mind would find Lovecraft's stuffy manner and high minded opinions nauseating, and likewise I suspect Lovecraft would find Holmes a tradesman type, beneath him despite his intellect. I don't see the two working together at all.

The core problem is Cannon allows himself to indulge his fanboy interests and becomes mired in insignificant details at the cost of his larger narrative, a fatal mistake which fails to serve any of the characters real and fictional at all well.

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Reanimation!

I'm not a particular fan of gory movies. They don't bother me especially, but lots of blood and gore do not necessarily add up to a solid horror flick, and actually often detract from a good scary movie. That said, one movie I avoided at the time it hit the theaters was Re-Animator. This 1985 horror is based on the H.P. Lovecraft stories about Herbert West, a student with a most peculiar passion to bring the dead back to life. If you want to read the original story check out this link.

Re-Animator proved to be a very successful movie and launched several sequels, at least one of which I have seen. So after getting a small taste of that, I found I was interested in seeing how this "classic" handled the original Lovecraft material.

There's no doubt this movie is a relatively low-budget affair, but that said, the acting is by and large competent and the sets are professional if lacking much in the way of atmosphere. The sound is the greatest weakness in the flick, with little or no evidence of any dubbing. There is some requisite nudity, a necessary element of any decent exploitation movie, and this one is just that.

The story deals with Herbert West, an ambitious monomaniac who seeks a formula which will raise the dead. He has been run out of Switzerland and takes up as a student in the Miskatonic University Hospital. He finds a roommate named Dan Cain who just so happens to be another medical student and who conveniently is dating Megan Halsey the daughter of the University President. There is also a surgeon questionable of some reputation played to the hilt by David Gale, who has designs on the lovely co-ed himself.

I won't spoil the action here, but suffice it to say that at least one cat, and several dead bodies are reanimated thanks to the bright green liquid West concocts. The finale is a decently unpleasant scene filled with wandering corpses and more than a few surprises. The special effects are limited, but there's plenty of splatter for those that desire that kind of thing. There's actually very little of Lovecraft in this one, though the premise does stay true for the most part. This movie owes much more to Night of the Living Dead than to anything Lovecraft wrote.

I suspect I'm the last guy to this particular dance, so anyone who might want to see Re-Animator has likely already done so. It's a nicely dark comedy with more than a bit of gore, and I have to say the ending was better than I expected.

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Ride 'Em Cowboy!

It was a relatively light day at the local comics store yesterday. I went in to get the latest issue of the awesome Popeye Classics, and also found the very intriguing cover for the most recent issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland. I don't usually pick up this magazine, but this time they featured King Kong on the cover barebacking a dino. As it turns out the Popeye comic also features a similar scene as the Sailor Man is taking it on himself to saddle train the local swordfish. Eye-popping covers both.

Of interest the FM issue are several articles on classic King Kong celebrating the 80th anniversary of the awesome movie, including stuff on Japanese Kong as well an interview with Will Murray and Joe Devito on the recent Doc Savage novel Skull Island reviewed at this blog here.

Alternate Newsstand Cover by Bob Eggleston
Hidden behind the action-packed Kong cover though are some pretty strong articles, especially a very informative one by S.T Joshi on H.P.Lovecraft and his creation C'Thulhu. I realize I've been saying it wrong all these years. Even the stuff on the late Gerry Anderson's many creations was both interesting and informative. So while the price on Famous Monsters these days is pretty steep, for me this time it was worth it.

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The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril!

I realize I'm very late to this sumptuous novel by Paul Malmont, but better late than never. The evocative title of The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, overlays a story featuring some of the most successful writers of the Pulp Era. These writers, men who have history with one another in many instances or are just meeting, are drawn into an ever-increasingly complex story involving mysterious toxins, secret international intrigues, zombies, and ancient Oriental curses. The title will pay off, believe me.

The story involves the now famous scribe of the Doc Savage adventures Lester Dent and his wife Norma, a couple who are sadly discovering their wish for a child is  not a possibility. They are a couple clearly in love and devoted to one another, and both are drawn into a mystery in Chinatown which calls upon Dent to show some of the grand skills which made his famous character so successful. Despite Lester's shirt-ripping heroic, Norma too comes across as daring and brave, and nearly steals the story from the broad cast of famous and infamous writers.

Also on board this trek is Walter Gibson, the man behind The Shadow. Both Gibson and Dent rankle that while they are immensely successful writers their names are relatively unknown because they have been forced by Street and Smith to use the house names "Maxwell Grant" and "Kenneth Robeson". Additionally the two writers are in a feud of sorts as Gibson's efforts to suppress an early story by Dent for The Shadow prove a point of contention, despite the enormous financial success of both men.  Gibson here is seen as a man isolated, seeking romance which he finds in a torrid affair with a sexy mentalist. He even begins to see "Shadows" in the darndest places.

Also on board is "Red", a young man who would one day found his own religion. L.Ron Hubbard is an upstart in this tale, a confident youngster who idolizes the two great pulp masters Gibson and Dent, but at the same time envies their success, while always certain of his own impending road to riches. Hubbard is the least sympathetic character in the story, a callow man who seems less sure than he appears. (On a different note, the Church of Scientology just opened up in a major way in the local community. They've really made an impression.)

Perhaps my favorite character in the story is Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the failed pulpster who holds the key to the mystery the others explore. And like in his stories, despite his demise the grave proves to be less of a stumbling block than might at first seem likely. Lovecraft is set up as a somewhat bitter man who never saw success he wanted in his lifetime, and frankly while regarded reasonably well in this story by his peers, few can see the broad and deep influence his work will have. Lovecraft gets many of the most memorable scenes in  this outlandish tale.

Other writers crop up, but it's best for the reader that they remain undisclosed as their identities are kept under wraps in many instances. The story by Malmont has depth and an uneven but often fantastic pace. Sometimes the sly cultural references get a bit out of hand, as more and more creators are wedged into a scene, but by and large this gimmick works most of the time. There is a raucous energy to the action. Once in the reading is brisk. I myself did get stopped by other matters about half way through, but two strong sessions did sufficed to absorb this  wonderfully vivid portrayal of a time which is gone and never existed at the same time.

In many respects this story is a bogus secret origin for The Avenger. Want to know why he looks like he does. Check out this tale.

If you've never chanced across this tale, then I heartily recommend it to one and all. Pulp fans will likely love it, but everyone can certainly enjoy it.

Currently I just started the sequel to this tale of pulp adventures, The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown.  I'm looking forward to it.

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Horton Hears A C'Thulhu!

I stumbled across this delightful interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft's iconic short story "The Call of C'Thulhu" by way of Theodor Geisel, the beloved Dr.Seuss. Surely this toddler's tome can be found in the children's section of Miskatonic University's Orne Library right next to R'lyehld Drohl's Wilbur and the Giant Fungi and Shellfish Silverstone's Where the Shoggoths End, as well Dr.Henry Armitage's own Necronomicon for Really Creepy Kids (with illustrations by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Coolaire).

Here is the link. Beware!

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At The Mountains Of Madness At Last!

This short novel by H.P. Lovecraft has been on my must-read-eventually table for years, but for whatever combination of reasons (distractions and forgetfulness) I never got around to actually reading it. I've dabbled in Lovecraft my whole life, reading and re-reading "The Call of C'Thulhu", "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Colour Out of Space" many times as well as other classic Lovecraft short stories. But I've never read some of his longer works. I'm rectifying that oversight this summer.


Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness was serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in three parts in 1936. Lovecraft (according S.T.Joshi) regarded it as his favorite work. It begins in wonderful Lovecraft fashion as a report in vivid detail of an expedition to Antarctica which after some reality-establishing labor, finds a vast range of mountains which are taller and more vast than then discovered on Earth. And inside a cave at the foot of these mountains they uncover strange seemingly preserved new life forms. What evolves from there is vintage Lovecraft. I won't spoil any of the twists, but Lovecraft's ability to describe the weird and make the reader feel that weirdness in the depths of their being is well on display in this tour of this outpost of "The Old Ones".

Then I dug out "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" by Clark Ashton Smith, a story which likely was inspired by Lovecraft's original, just as Lovecraft's story was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.


The soul-chilling Antarctic setting of this story is assumed to have also inspired John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" the inspiration for RKO's The Thing from Another World which itself inspired John Carpenter's bleaker version many years later. I'll have to dig out that classic and give it another reading, and perhaps bring home that "Thing" movie they made last year and finally watch it. Lovecraft's influence on fantasy is difficult to overstate.

On yet another note, my recent Wold Newton reading suggests that McReady from Campbell's original story is highly suggestive of Kenneth Robeson's Doc Savage. That's a curious connection I'd like to examine first hand.

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Cthulhu Calls!

The fiction of H.P. Lovecraft really hits me in my sweet spot. Its blend of weird mysticism and quasi-science along with the very mundane nature of the characters involved really is a heady tonic. Lovecraft's protagonists are always very flawed types, overly intellectual often and limited in their understanding of an existential threat by their reliance on reason. Lovecraft's world makes sense of a sort, but it's never sensible. I first ran across Lovecraft thanks to those great books you could order at school. I drank of Lovecraft early and since then, very often.


My favorite Lovecraft story is "The Colour Out of Space", but a close second is "The Call of Cthulhu", the seminal story around which scores of later writers have fashioned a broader mythology ripe with demons and threats of all sorts. The success of this story, like many of Lovecraft's is the way it's told, through limited perspectives and a faux documentary approach that grounds the hyper-weird happenings making them seem all the more fantastical.

A weakness of broad universes filled with magic and such is that eventually it all gets too commonplace. Lovecraft's work still has that neat flavor of the real world with just a tiny dash of bizarre. It's there, but if you choose not to look in its direction you can spend your life completely at ease and die a reasonably happy soul. But if you should ever chance to catch sight of the danger lurking just behind the shadows, you are destined for a less happy end. Once seen, it can never be unseen, and it transforms the life and the soul perhaps of the unfortunate to fall into its clutches. That's horror!

The Call of CThulhu is a wonderful adaptation of the Lovecraft classic, by people who clearly get the Lovecraft thing. The H.P.Lovecraft Historical Society made a silent movie, a throwback as if someone in Lovecraft's own time had made a movie of the events that H.P. writes about. There is a compelling nature to the story as it unfolds from bits and pieces of information and the threat builds and builds and builds. But alas like any attempt to capture the macabre essence of Lovecraft on film or even in any graphic image, the thing rendered is almost always somewhat less than the thing imagined. Lovecraft was the absolute master of almost describing a thing in such a way as you almost saw it. He actually was able in a way to describe the "indescribable", and that's a master trick few if any other writers have been able to tumble to.

The movie falls victim to this when inevitably Cthulhu must be seen. It's a pretty good rendering of the ancient demon, but still falls short (as it must) of what I imagine the ultimate terror to be. That's not really the fault of the film, just a flaw in the nature of the medium. That said, the movie is very successful at establishing the mood and mileau of a Lovecraftian world.

Here's a trailer for the movie.

I highly recommend this movie if you can snag a copy. It's good fun and the extras talking about how this shoestring project got made are pretty interesting too, though it will dispel even more of the magic of the storytelling.


Do answer Cthulhu's call.

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Lovecraft At The Movies!

H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" is supposedly his favorite short story and it's mine too. The blend of classic Lovecraftian atmosphere and the sprinkle of science fiction background gives this one a luster the more purely supernatural stories miss by a fraction. The development of the tale is relentless and the utter destruction of the poor Gardner family is difficult to abide, but like a horrific scene of any kind you cannot take your eyes away.



Needless to say, I was eager to at long last see the film adaptation starring Boris Karloff. The title was changed to the frenetic but meaningless Die Monster Die!. The story echoes the original, especially early on with an outsider played by All-American hero Nick Adams who finds a village terrified of the Whitleys, a family he's come to see because he has romantic interest in the young daughter. He finds a family falling apart, living beside a heath on which the plants are dead.

Boris is a scientist who seems to have found a way to make plants flourish using a mysterious meteor he keeps in the cellar, but that same stone is giving off rays that are killing everything around it eventually. There's madness and violence but rarely pacing. The story drags along with Nick Adams doing a better job in the lead than I expected. Boris is always good, but this character is limited. The ending is pretty lame really and has nothing to do with the Lovecraft original. The story deprives itself of the notion that the meteor was sentient, something that gives the original story a quality of the peculiar this movie ignores but making it all about boring old radiation.



"The Dunwich Horror" by Lovecraft made a big impression on me as a youngster. Reading it again, it has less power, but the sheer weirdness of the Whately clan is still among Lovecraft's best creations.

The movie version has very little to do with the original story. The Whately brothers are present, but beyond that it's a pretty standard devil-cult movie popular in the 60's. Wilbur Whately played by Dean Stockwell is an oddball, but alas has no chance to really become to truly bizarre Wilbur of the short story. He's just a cultist. His even more hideous brother is pretty effective when he's off screen, but when the monsterous sibling finally shows up there's no horror at all. It all falls pretty flat.



Ed Begley is okay as Armitage, and I'll give the movie credit for developing a mood early on. It just doesn't do much with all that momentum but squander it with scenes that maunder on. If it wasn't for getting a gander at Sandra Dee's gams, the movie's latter section would have little to offer.

When it comes to Lovecraft, the original is always best alas.

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