HP Lovecraft

[Chou4555]

Read any short story by the master of chill, HP Lovecraft. Sadly there’s been few decent films made of his work.

[Scubaqueen]

‘cool air’ is still my numero uno tale of favorite creep-out.

i think it ended up on rod serling’s night gallery story list at some point or other. i’d imagine a full length treatment of it would have me hiding underneath the theater seat.

[Darth_Panda]

So, whose dressing up as an old one this year?

[MN_Maenad]

I spend all of October re-reading my favorite Lovecraft stories. Gives me some weird dreams. I’m a big fan of The Temple, The Doom That Came to Sarnath, The Cats of Ulthar, The Outsider, and The Rats in the Walls. And of course, The Call of Cthulhu.

In fact, I’m going to go read some right now…

[Prelude_to_Fascination]

I like Pickman’s Model for nostalgic reasons–there was a Night Gallery type show that used it back in the early 70s, which was my introduction to Lovecraft.

[CalMeacham]

I’m re-reading Lovecraft (and August Derleth) now. I love his stuff. He didn’t want to publish The Cadse of Charles Dexter Ward because he was convinced it was garbage. Derleth got it into print after his death. I love it, and it’s nominaly been the basis of three films (although what I’ve seen hasn’t been good). For my money the Call of Cthulhu is the best Lovecraft adaptation yet made, and I wish they had more money.

[Tixenfleaz]

My favorite tale is the The Dunwich Horror. It’s like the written equivalent of a Val Lewton film crossed with a 1950’s giant monster movie.

Plus it’s one of the very few Lovecraft stories where the Eldritch Horror gets it’s ass handed to it.

[Scubaqueen]

@Prelude_to_Fascination

I like Pickman’s Model for nostalgic reasons–there was a Night Gallery type show that used it back in the early 70s, which was my introduction to Lovecraft.

OMG. i’d forgotten about pickman’s model.
another of my favorite creep-out tales.

[Gesturing_Mildly]

The Color out of Space does it for me every time. shudder

[BrainGlutton]

@Chou4555

Sadly there’s been few decent films made of his work.

Dagon is pretty good. (Misleading title, BTW, the film is actually based – loosely – on a different HPL story, “Shadow Over Innsmouth.” With no romantic subplots of any kind, those are rare in Lovecraft.)

[BrainGlutton]

@Darth_Panda

So, whose dressing up as an old one this year?

I’ve always wanted to scrape up some money and go to a hobby-costumer and go as Summer Fun Cthulhu! With a big arrow-through-the-head and comic-schnozz, and dinner-plate-sized buttons on the vest that say, “KISS ME, I’M ELDRITCH!” and "ONCE YOU’VE HAD A SHOGGOTH, YOU NEVER GO SANE!" Oh no! :eek: It’s . . .

THE FUN GUY FROM YUGGOTH!

[Capitaine_Zombie]

I have a special fondness for “The Music of Eric Zann” (spell?). Especially the French translation.

[YogSothoth]

I still firmly believe that a huge blockbuster CGI Cthulhu film would be absolutely spectacular. They spent tons on that shitty monster Cloverfield. Cthulhu would be 10 times better with a built in fanbase.

For the record, I’ve never seen any of the Lovecraft based movies, except for Dagon and the abominable (in a bad way) 3 Cthulhu shorts collected into 1 movie. I know there’s a black and white Cthulhu film and a Cthulhu film with Tori Spelling in it. Are those any good? I got the impression from the Tori Spelling one that it didn’t have anything to do with the original story.

[BrainGlutton]

@YogSosoth

I still firmly believe that a huge blockbuster CGI Cthulhu film would be absolutely spectacular. They spent tons on that shitty monster Cloverfield. Cthulhu would be 10 times better with a built in fanbase.

It’s not the visuals that would make that work. It’s the soundtrack. Like, if they could work in something really subsonic and disturbing . . . I don’t mean subliminals, I mean subsonic tones that, I understand, can be very, very disturbing to the hearer on a primal level . . . Only to be used, of course, in certain scenes.

[DocCathode]

I love Lovecraft.

I second the recommendation of the film Dagon.

As I’ve mentioned before, I once donned a costume and did street preaching for Cthulhu. No one got the joke. People thought I was a regular lunatic preaching an actual religion.

I am currently reading Reign Of Cthulhu. It’s stories set after the stars are right and the Old Ones return to rule the earth.

[BrainGlutton]

@BrainGlutton

It’s not the visuals that would make that work. It’s the soundtrack. Like, if they could work in something really subsonic and disturbing . . . I don’t mean subliminals, I mean subsonic tones that, I understand, can be very, very disturbing to the hearer on a primal level . . . Only to be used, of course, in certain scenes.

That just occurred to me when I posted it – but it then occurred to me that if it’s possible, some horror director must have tried it already. Anybody know?

I was just trying to think of some way to convey the “non-Euclidean geometry” thing on an emotional level. I mean, even with CGI, how are you supposed to show non-Euclidean geometry? The curvy-surface architecture in the Call of Cthulhu movie is probably as close as you’re gonna get.

[BrainGlutton]

@Chou4555

Sadly there’s been few decent films made of his work.

Oh, yes, The Call of Cthulhu, silent, B&W, done as if HPL had sold the fresh story to a Hollywood studio and then bargained with eldritch powers to make them do it right.

[Chronos]

Not to be That Guy, but I’ve never been impressed with Lovecraft. Yeah, yeah, he leaves it to his readers’ imaginations… But why do I need a book for that at all? An author telling me “But really, take my word for it, it was really scary, but no I won’t tell you at all what was scary about it” just doesn’t do it for me.

[lisacurl]

@BrainGlutton

That just occurred to me when I posted it – but it then occurred to me that if it’s possible, some horror director must have tried it already. Anybody know?.

Not a traditional horror movie… but Gaspar Noe used subsonic tones in the first 20 minutes of his film Irreversible.

[BrainGlutton]

@Chronos

Not to be That Guy, but I’ve never been impressed with Lovecraft. Yeah, yeah, he leaves it to his readers’ imaginations… But why do I need a book for that at all? An author telling me “But really, take my word for it, it was really scary, but no I won’t tell you at all what was scary about it” just doesn’t do it for me.

Hey, that’s not the whole of him, sometimes it’s like this:

The thing that lay half-bent on its side in a foetid pool of greenish-yellow ichor and tarry stickiness was almost nine feet tall, and the dog had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin. It was not quite dead, but twitched silently and spasmodically while its chest heaved in monstrous unison with the mad piping of the expectant whippoorwills outside. Bits of shoe-leather and fragments of apparel were scattered about the room, and just inside the window an empty canvas sack lay where it had evidently been thrown. Near the central desk a revolver had fallen, a dented but undischarged cartridge later explaining why it had not been fired. The thing itself, however, crowded out all other images at the time. It would be trite and not wholly accurate to say that no human pen could describe it, but one may properly say that it could not be vividly visualised 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. It was partly human, beyond a doubt, with very man-like hands and head, and the goatish, chinless face had the stamp of the Whateleys upon it. But the torso and lower parts of the body were teratologically fabulous, so that only generous clothing could ever have enabled it to walk on earth unchallenged or uneradicated.

  Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest, where the dog’s rending paws still rested watchfully, 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 the thing breathed, its tail and tentacles rhythmically changed colour, as if from some circulatory cause normal to the non-human side of its ancestry. In the tentacles this was observable as a deepening of the greenish tinge, whilst in the tail it was manifest as a yellowish appearance which alternated with a sickly greyish-white in the spaces between the purple rings. Of genuine blood there was none; only the foetid greenish-yellow ichor which trickled along the painted floor beyond the radius of the stickiness, and left a curious discolouration behind it.

I think that leaves just enough to the imagination.