Is a good Lovecraft movie possible?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve seen three movies based on H.P. Lovecraft stories: *The Dunwich Horror, Re-Animator, * based on Herbert West, Re-Animator, and The Resurrected, based on *The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. *All of 'em stank.

The Dunwich Horror is just plain bad by any standard–bad acting, bad script, bad direction, you name it, it was bad. Re-Animator wasn’t any better even if it was intended to be camp humor (which seems to be the case), and anyway it was based on what were arguably HPL’s worst stories. I thought The Resurrected had a good script and some decent acting but was fatally marred by bad direction. I’ve seen Carpenter’s At the Mouth of Madness and liked it, but I don’t consider it a Lovecraft film.

I haven’t watched any other–e.g. *Die Monster Die, Cthulhu Mansion, * etc.–because they all have uniformly bad reviews.

Can there even be such a thing as a good Lovecraft movie? Lovecraft’s stories (the horror stories, anyway, if not his fantasies) depend so much on slow build up and atmosphere, and the overall effect derives so much from his use of language, that it’s hard to see how any of ‘em could be brought to the screen with much success. There’s just not enough action in them to hold an audience’s attention, and anyway I’m one of those folks who thinks a good horror movie doesn’t just splash a lot of gore around (though explicit blood n’ guts doesn’t necessarily make it a bad film either).

So can there be a good HPL film? Stanley Kubrick could possibly have done something truly unique with *The Shadow Out of Time * or *At the Mountains of Madness, * because (a) he was brilliant enough to pull it off, and (b) he would probably have given enough attention to build up and atmosphere. But, hey, the man’s dead.

So how about it? Is a good Lovecraft film even possible? If so, what director might actually be able to pull it off? Carpenter, maybe? Kinda doubt it, though I can’t really say why …

2

Excellent question, and one that defies easy answers. But I’ll give it a shot.

Lovecraft prose is definitely out of step with modern movie technique; it is slow, deliberate, atmospheric, and not action-oriented in the least. As you pointed out, camp is one approach that can be used to resolve the differences.

However, for a movie to be both GOOD and TRUE to the source, well, that is a tall order. Maybe David Lynch could pull it off, but I can’t imagine anyone else having the, um, sideways approach to filmmaking that would be required to keep the Lovecraftian feel intact in a film.

The next question is, would anyone actually go and SEE a good, true, authentic Lovecraft movie? Outside of the True Believers, that is, which isn’t enough to pay back the catering bill, let alone the rest of the production costs. That may be the biggest obstacle.

Looking forward to more responses to this interesting question…Timmy

3

The problem is, most of Lovecraft’s horror is psychological. I mean, he’s got creepy spirits and long dead gods, and all that, but at the root of most of his works, what makes it horrible is the insanity of the characters. His is the horror of obsession, of mania, of paranoia, and the stories are horrible because we recognize the characters as ordinary people who are swept up into madness.

Unfortunately, that’s really hard to do on screen. Hitchcock might have been able to pull it off.

4

How about M. Night Shyamalan? His pacing is good, and he has the proper respect for the abnormal.

Not all of his movies star Bruce Willis…

5

I’m glad to see you avoided the Necronomicon. That was the worst one made yet. The brain-eating bats were just disgusting. As for the Re-animator, I really didn’t think Lovecraft’s work is improved any by adding a soft-core scene with a decapitated head. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to block out that memory.

There are two problems with all the adaptations – they’re turned into splatterflicks, and an unnecessary romance is added in.

I think a good adaptation could probably be done by some artsy indy director on a low budget. Anything big-budget would be a risk – maybe one of the more intelligent, more established horror directors could pull it off.

I don’t expect either any time soon.

6

Ugh. You aren’t kidding about Necronomicon. It wasn’t just a bad movie, it was three excruciating mini-movies. And that third one…

Well, let’s just say any honest commentary on that part would have to go in The Pit.

7

At the Mountains of Madness probably has the best potential to be a good movie, although the cast would be rather limited.

8

I think really the only Lovecraft stories that could be made into films are his shorter ones which don’t directly involve the Cthulhu mythos- like The Color Out Of Space. With CGI, this story could look very good, and the direction needn’t be too difficult. As it is, the story has a slow, but not overly-slow build-up, and just enough weirdness to make a good horror movie without going completely over the top.

I think another big problem with Lovecraft on film, aside from those already mentioned, is that too much of the film would be needed just for exposition. All of his carefuly-crafted Elder God legends and lore would somehow have to be explained to the audience before the action of the story got going. Now, this worked with the film version of Lord of the Rings- many non-Tolkien fans enjoyed the film despite not having any previous background on the story. So it could work with H.P. But then, LotR was more of an action movie, whereas any Lovecraft film would have to be more psychological, thus needing more explanation. It’s a problem, definitely, and from what Hollywood has been shovelling out these days, I sorta doubt any script would be worth the paper it’s written on.

An indie director and writer maybe could do it, but most indie horror movies are in the camp variety, too ironic for Lovecraft. Any film version of one of his stories would have to take itself seriously, with no campiness. But would audiences appreciate this? Any big studio attempt to being Lovecraft to the screen would destroy the story- too much gore, not enough exposition, and some cheap happy ending.

The only director/writer who could attempt something like Lovecraft and make it a success would be the guy who did the Japanese horror movie Ring.

9

Strange that you should ask. Just this week, The Onion ran a review of Stuart Gordon’s Dagon

I haven’t seen it yet, but it sounds like what you’re looking for.

10

Actually, there are some decent Lovecraft films, but those tend to be more inspired by his stories then based off them them. For example, one could argue that both * Alien* and * Carpenter’s The Thing * are Lovecraft inspired (With The Thing having some interesting similarities to At the mountains of Madness).

THere are also some decent to good Indie films that few people see, but are better then most of the mainstream flicks. One of them, “Out of Mind” is a pretty good Lovecraft film, though a big part of that was an actor who played a very good Lovecraft (Well, he sure looked like him, though I don’t know if he sounded like him).

There’s also “The Terrible Old Man” which is pretty faithful to the source material despite being updated for the 90’s, but still good.

11

I have a vague feeling that Roger Corman did a film with an Edgar Allan Poe title that was, in fact, a fairly faithful and effective version of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Anybody else remember this, or am I hallucinating again?

I’ve always been ambivalent about Lovecraft. On the one hand, his writing doesn’t (for me) evoke any sort of horror - just moans of sympathy for the poor tortured syntax. On the other hand, I think his plots are nicely paced and very effective. If someone could translate that aspect to the screen… and of course the godawful writing wouldn’t show on film… hmmm. The idea does have possibilities.

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Yeah. It was The Haunted Palace, and it was scripted by Charles Beaumont (excellent short sf/fantasy writer, who wrote a lot of the original Twilight Zone scripts, not to mention the script for The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao. The film starred Vincent Price and had Lon Chaney Jr. in it. I expected great things – until I saw it. I thought it was awful.
I do think a good H.P. Lovecraft movie can be made – but people either get sidetracked into gore, or humor (a killer to Lovecraft’s version of horror), or low budgets, or lack of imagination, or the thought that their own idea is so much better. The H.P. Lovecraft films have generally been pretty awful. Recent ones just seem to adopt the name only. The ones done on Night Gallery ages ago are interesting, but unsatisfying.
I think The Colour Out of Space would make a terrible film. In fact, it’s already been made into two terrible films, if memory serves (one was Die, Monster, Die! with Boris Karloff and Nick Adams).

I could see The Shadow over Innsmouth being done well – Lovecraft was apparently trying to follow some editorialo direction to make this story more action-oriented, and its hero doesnm’t just faint away, as they so often do. In fact, based on what little I’ve seen of this new film Dagon, I suspect it resembles TSOI more than the short story “Dagon”.

There are other HPL films I could see given a decent treatment. I would love to see The Case of Charles Dexter Ward done properly.

HPL– I think you could make a better argument against The Thing and Alien being Lovecraft inspired. The roots of both films are well known, and have been reported on this board (by myself and others), and the psychology and philosophical basis seem very different to me than in Lovecraft’s work.

13

Yes it is possible to make a good Lovecraft film. The Haunting directed by Robert Wise in 1963 didn’t rely on fancy special effects to invoke fear. In fact it is unclear whether there are really any ghost or if it is all in the characters head. You’ll never be more frightened of a close up shot of wallpaper I promise you.

Marc

PS: No, The Haunting wasn’t based on a Lovecraft story. However it has a great amount of suspense, very little action, and the majority of the terror is seen through the characters reactions to things half seen or not seen at all by the audience.

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It should be noted, for those who haven’t seen it, that the recent remake of this film is, contrariwise, so chock-full of CGI special effects that they might as well not have had actual actors at all, since the only purpose they served was to give the computer animation something to menace.

What a waste of Lili Taylor, Liam Neeson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones!

jayjay

15

Some stories not mentioned would probably work quite a bit better. I could see Dreams in the Witchhouse being made into an interesting movie. It has a fair amount of action, opportunity for horrific special effects and a feverish, brooding atmosphere that would translate well, I’d think.

Others, well…Mountains of Madness relied far too heavily on exposition to be worthwhile. Would an audience sit through twenty minutes of archaeologists reading wall glyphs? I don’t really think so. I can’t really picture even Call of Cthulhu making it–too many similarities to Godzilla. :slight_smile:

16

I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. Although it is not an adaptation of any of HPL’s work, it is a loving tribute to HPL and the Elder God mythos. The notion of a work of fiction having the power to alter reality is very much in line with the tone of HPL’s stories.

The major problem with filming HPL is that the man actually was a lousy writer. He relied far too muc on telling the reader how he should feel, and far less on making the reader feel. I have found that stories that rocked my world as an adolescent of chockfull of similar literary flaws. Moreover, HPL’s focus on the interor psycological states of his characters and his use of adjectives like “rugose,” “unspeakable” and the old warhorse “eldritch” just don’t translate to action on film.

For my money, Re-animator may not be very Lovecraftian in its execution, but it is a wonderfully funny combination of Grand Guignol gross-out horror and slapstick comedy.

17

You know, the first time I read The Dunwich Horror I thought to myself it could be a seriously good movie. I haven’t seen the one attempt to transfer it to celluloid (which apparently stank), but I could see it being excellent and quite true to the story, if the special effects were handled properly.

You open the film with the shot of the two (or three? memory isn’t serving right now) men hustling up the hill with their sprayer device. You hear the bellows of the monster, and see the results of its trek across the countryside. You could even show some trees being stomped flat by something invisible. From there, you tell the story in flashbacks, ending each flashback at the appropriate place – the birth of the boy, the stealing of the book, the death of the father, etc.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think it could be terrific. You could hook the audience with the initial scene and then tell the backstory in such a way as to gradually increase the level of horror. The climactic battle on the hilltop would bring you full circle. And, of course, you’d have to leave it set in the – what, 1910s, 1920s? Again, memory is failing.

So, anybody wanna bankroll me?

18

I actually liked Re-Animator, In the Mouth Of Madness, and The Resurrected(some spooky locations in that one; Chris Sarandon does a good job). You’re all right about the difficulty of transferring Lovecraft’s atmosphere to the screen though.

19

I was about to post that when I saw you already said it. He might just be able to pull it off.

20

I would rather argue that Lovecraft is characterized by his lack of use of language. What does a Lovecraftian monster look like? It’s undescribeable. What does it do? The narrator cannot say. The fact is, you can picture all the creatures as being pink fluffy teddy bears, and it’s not contradicted by anything he actually wrote.