Or maybe John Malkovich with a hair piece.
Seriously Love Rhombus, I totally agree. There has been yet any serious attempt at Lovecraft. These guys had some of the most psychically astounding, profound, and disturbing archetype caressing horror and they couldn’t translate it visually nor artistically. Lovecraft shouldn’t be relegated to the B movies, his work reflects a prime obelisk.
Somebody posted a link to a film version of one of Lovecrafts works that was rather well recieved, IIRC. It was done as if it had been made during the era in which Lovecraft lived, as I recall.
Yea, I’ve seen it. It is dated visually. They didn’t capture the ethereal.
But, it was the best to date, I admit.
Yeah, not getting the creep factor on Lovecraft. He looks like a Harvard society boy. Straight-laced and conservative, even. The mouth-swelling is weird, but not creepy… it just looks like it must hurt (raging gingivitis, maybe?).
I always thought Stephen King looks like a chipmunk. It makes me laugh since “cute perky fuzzy rodent” is such a contrast to “dark tales of the macabre.”
The best and most effective Lovecraft Media, wasn’t even written by HPL…
Stephen King’s “N”
I’d say it was conceived by Mr. Lovecraft, or even channelled. It is without credit, yet with obvious credit.
I think this media got it right, artistically and visually in sparseness, mood, and impact. It is even true to HPL in it’s cyberpulp format.
HH
That was probably me referring to this film.
I don’t have a link, but Lord Dunsany once wrote an interesting essay about how you had to take a completely different approach when writing fantasy drama vs. fantasy stories (Dunsany is now known primarily for his short stories, but was also a playwright). Lovecraft et al. were concentrating on writing the latter, of course, and people who try to do direct adaptations of his material generally don’t do a good job of it. The more successful Lovecraftian productions I’ve seen have been either (a) productions that essentially amounted to illustrated readings of the work, or (b) loosely based on the mythos, but with an original story.
That’s what I was thinking. Well put.
Yeah. His plaid sportscoat is the scariest thing about him.
Guillermo del Toro has the rights to my favorite HPL story, At the Mountains of Madness. He talks a little bit about it here.
It’s “The Innsmouth Look.”
Sheesh, I’d have thought that to be obvious.
You don’t know the half of it. It would be trite and not wholly accurate to say that no human pen could describe him, but one may properly say that he could not be vividly visualized by anyone whose ideas of aspect and contour are too closely bound up with the common life-forms of this planet and of the three known dimensions. He was partly human, beyond a doubt, with very manlike hands and head, and the enlongated, highbrowed face had the stamp of the Lovecrafts upon it. But the torso and lower parts of the body were teratologically fabulous, so that only generous clothing could ever have enabled him to walk on earth unchallenged or uneradicated. Above the waist he was semi-anthropomorphic; though his chest had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply. Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth’s giant saurians, and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws. When he breathed, his tail and tentacles rhythmically changed colour, as if from some circulatory cause normal to the non-human greenish tinge, whilst in the tail it was manifest as a yellowish appearance which alternated with a sickly grayish-white in the spaces between the purple rings.
Hmmm. looks closer
I can see what you’re saying, but to me it looks more like he’s uncomfortable being photographed–he has that fixed, frozen look that people who don’t like their photo being taken get, and most photographs at that time tend to be very stiff and formal anyways.
I mean, he’s not going to make it into People’s 50 Sexiest or anything, but he’s no uglier than, say, Poe (he of the ginormous forehead) or Dean Koontz and his eyebrows.
I don’t know, he looks normal to me for the time. People in photos from that era always have that constipated look…
I’ll tell you one thing: he was a helluva writer. He deserves to be much more widely read.
Has anyone here ever seen the TV series “Under The Mountain”? Remember the Wilberforces?
Oooh, sexy.
There are lots of pix of HPL smiling, including one where he’s visiting Robert Barlow & family in Florida (he’s not wearing a bathing suit, thank god – just a buttoned-up white shirt and dress pants belted at mid-chest level) which appears in Collected Letters, Vol. 5.
He wasn’t the recluse a lot of people imagine; he lived in Brooklyn for a few years, got out of Providence a bit, traveled up and down the east coast when he could afford it. Liked ice cream a lot, too, god love 'im.
His favorite flavor remains a mystery, though. He was often seen eating a cone piled high with scoops of a strange color almost impossible to describe…
BTW, everybody google on “M.M. Moamrath,” who has been described as “SF’s answer to P.D.Q. Bach.” 