They did one in the 70’s with Dean Stockwell. It’s decent at best.
We should bring back cheesy theater gimmicks. For this film, what we need is a second projector (or series of projectors) that will play up on the ceiling when Cthulu rips the roof off the building.
What’s the problem with that ending? 
Sounds perfectly fine to me.
1:Good…
2:So? They can do the sequel “CTHULHU GOES TO MARS!”. And if they can make a sequel, it WILL BE MADE…
Posted by King Lupid:
I saw it and hated it. The ending, that is – I saw that ending coming from a mile away! (I’ll say no more as I don’t know how to do spoiler boxes.) It was effing LAME! And I can’t buy a magical universe that contains both the Great Old Ones AND unicorns! Furthermore, the nature of Harry Lovecraft’s aversion to magic is never adequately explained. In this world, magic, or magick, doesn’t really have any spiritual aspect; it’s simply another form of technology. So what about it is corrupting?
I’m sorry, but I’m a purist. Any Cthulhu Mythos movie should be a close as possible to the spirit of Lovecraft’s fiction, even if the plot is not based on any particular Lovecraft story. That means:
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The movie should be set in the 1930s, not in the present day or the near future.
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The scenery and settings and costumes should be something like the eerie art of Clark Ashton Smith – or maybe Edward Gorey! With creature designs by H.R. Giger. I once saw a collection of Lovecraft’s poetry in which “Fungi from Yuggoth” was embellised with some really creepy illustrations (don’t know by whom). That’s the effect to shoot for.
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The monster(s) SHOULD be seen, near the end, but only briefly and indistinctly.
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(This is the real toughie for Hollywood to swallow.) None of the characters should be in any way sexy, glamorous, exciting, or humorous. All of them should be true Lovecraftian characters: Dusty old professors, mad artists, shabby-genteel aristocrats, and decadent, inbred New England rednecks!
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(Harder still for Hollywood.) The film should be OPENLY RACIST! There should be scenes of communities of furtive, swarthy immigrants, secretly practicing obscene and blasphemous rites, like in “The Horror at Red Hook.” The camera should play up the marginally-Caucasian or non-Caucasian features of the “base foreign boors” and make them look as ugly and creepy as possible, and contrast them with the clean, aristocratic physiognomies of the main characters – all forthright Anglo-Saxons, however decadent they might be! As in Lovecraft’s stories, there should even be hints that the non-Anglos are products of crossbreeding with nonhuman species.
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There should be no sex or love interest of any kind, not even implied. For Yuggoth’s sake, can you imagine Lovecraft writing a love scene? It would be easier to imagine Michael Crichton writing a love scene!
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The ending should leave the world fundamentally unchanged. The monstrous events never make the papers, or at least the whole story doesn’t – no journalist ever pieces it all together. But the audience knows any victory over the Old Ones is but temporary – they’re still there, ever lurking at the threshold!
Now that’s a movie that would truly honor HPL’s legacy!
I still think In the Mouth of Madness is the best Cthulhu movie . . . even though it’s not one! 
It has that Lovecraftian air of extreme paranoia and impending doom (and Sam Neill’s performance is a hoot). Too bad John Carpenter didn’t bother to give HPL some credit for the inspiration . . .
I think Hollywood would prefer actually showing the monster, since that could lead to merchandising and more buckage. There’s already people willing to buy mugs and dolls and whatnot, but how much more could they make off Halloween costumes, toys, bubble gum, etc?
They could go with the never-seen version of Cthulhu, but it’d take a really influential director to convince them it could be done, or else it’d be a low-budget project.
Personally, I think it’d be interesting to make the film Lovecraft-centric. He’s languishing in his spinster aunts’ home, having to endure their banalities, while suffering from genetic herpes, or whatever life threatening illness he had. The film portrays him in the process of writing his stories, and showing what’s going on in his head as he’s writing.
For instance, Dreams in the Witch House could be HPL staring balefully into the corner of his room as the meds he’s taking make him hallucinate. That’s when he comes up with the idea of Non-Euclidean geometry, seeing the corners warp and pulsate, then he fills in the rest.
In between vignettes, the film portrays him living everyday life, such as enduring the prattle of his aunts at the dinner table, going outside and deciding he can’t deal with the outside world, and his correspondence with other authors. The last vignette is his mental image of his cancer spreading, like a tentacled monster, uncaring of human life or consequence, so he slowly dies…
Not how should it get done, but how would it get done? Okay, I’ll have a go at this.
CTHULHU
a Jerry Bruckheimer production
directed by Roger Christian
written by H.P. LOVECRAFT
and Edward Neumeier
and Akiva Goldsman
and George Goldsmith
based on a story by Jerry Bruckheimer
I.i. CAMERA UP on native village on South Pacific island, CREDITS over. Islanders on-shore jabber at each other and point and a distant ocean wave. The wave arrives at shore and deposits a load of fish skeletons on the beach. The natives appear quite agitated. As the credits finish we see there is a whale skeleton washing up on shore next to a shark skeleton and the remains of Amelia Earhart’s plane. The natives look in horror at what is off shore and we…
CUT to a dusty library office, voices over. CAMERA pans throughout the library and across several occult-looking shelves of things with writing in them (these are called “books,” apparently – ed.), drippy candles, mysterious pentacles, and so on.
PROF KEEN (Jeff Goldblum): Welcome to Miskatonic University, young man. We’re glad to have you on board. We believe with your background as an archaeologist and explorer, your experience as an Air Force Test Pilot, and your teeth, you will be a valuable asset to our team of crusty but loveable researchers, despite your conspicuous good looks.
CUT to office interior with PROF KEEN, PROF STOUT, and HALL MANLY. Voices continue on screen.
HALL MANLY (Edward Norton): Thank you, Professor. I hope you do not mind if I demonstrate my free-thinking individuality by propping my boots on your desk while you make a face of distaste.
KEEN: Let me introduce you to Professor Stout, our senior professor of Strange Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.
STOUT (John Vernon): Why, you young whippersnapper, half-pint, junior cadet, puppy, sonny, cadet, stripling, et al! I believe despite my crotchety appearance we may get along, provided you keep your place and do not question my authority in an area of my professional expertise during a time of unforeseen crisis. But that will never happen, ha ha!
KEEN: Ha, ha.
MANLY: Ha, ha.
ROSE HIPS (Jennifer Garner), peeking into the office: Professor Keen, I believe you and Professor Stout should read this latest telegram from our South Seas station while your fantastically attractive young recruit and I exchange smoldering glances despite my continued insistence that we are working professionals and I am a modern girl of the 1930s.
INTERIOR LIBRARY. KEEN examines a telegram.
KEEN: Amazing! This series of coincidences baffles me, even though I am a trained professional with twenty years in the research business! And I am suddenly compelled to submit the evidence to the inspection of our newest recruit!
MANLY: Why, it’s obvious, Professor. Rose and I must fly to the South Seas immediately to an appropriately cinematic backdrop to further investigate. This could be the chance of a lifetime!
HIPS: I will accompany you on a professional pretext but I will be certain to pack my most revealing outfits, more revealing than is standard for this day and age.
STOUT: You’re making a big mistake which I will not divulge at this time because it would tip my hand to my real function in the film!
EXTERIOR, Pacific Island, sunset.
MANLY: Well, we are here, and if my calculations are correct, our plane has crashed, leaving us stranded on this island with nothing more than our own native wits and flesh and only two days to stop the dread Cthulhu from rising from the sea.
HIPS: We have even discovered the wreck of Amelia Earhart, which ties more or less into the time period we purport to show.
MANLY: (whispers) She hasn’t crashed yet, this is 1920.
HIPS: (whispers) I thought it was 1940.
MANLY: Shh, here come the natives.
HIPS: And sharks don’t have skeletons.
MANLY: Be quiet, woman! I will now demonstrate my box-office appeal by removing my shirt and handing you a bouquet of flowers flown in from Holland and made to look appealingly quaint with some blades of nylon grass and refrigerated until right before the shot.
HIPS: Let’s fuck.
MANLY: Right-o.
EXTERIOR, ocean. MANLY flies his two-prop airplane directly at Cthulhu and kills him with machine-gun fire.
MANLY: Take that, you tentacled monstrosity.
CTHULHU dies.
HIPS: Hurray! My hero!
STOUT: You haven’t won yet! You may have defeated my Elder God with your inhuman mechanical contraption, but can you defeat… THIS?
STOUT begins to fight with his cane and is eaten, in a scene containing great irony, by a Thing from Beyond Space.
CUT to library.
KEEN: I don’t know how you did it, son. Congratulations on killing Cthulthu!
MANLY: Never fear, Professor. If ever an Elder God raises its ugly proto-head again, I shall stand ready to defend the world. Until then I’ll be a mild-mannered library researcher with a pilot’s license and a hot dame.
HIPS: But with Professor Stout gone, there is no-one mad enough to try to summon the Ancient Ones such as Nyarlathotep or Azathoth for our sequel!
MANLY: I wouldn’t bet on that, Rose doll. There are plenty of wacky madmen in the country, and as long as there are, I’ll be ready to stop them.
End Credits.
THE END…
?
FISH
Sadly, Fish, I fear you’re right.
Maybe it’s just because of From Beyond, but I think that the protagonist should be played by Jeffrey Combs. His understated style would be great for the misguided researcher role.
Brad Dourif would be perfect as someone touched by Cthulhu madness.
IIRC, FB was a Clive Barker movie based on Lovecraft’s work. Am I remembering correctly? If Hollywood did it in that style it would work.
Oh, to answer the question in the thread title in another way:
So how would a Cthulhu movie be made today?
With a lot of screaming and gnashing of teeth.
BTW, BrainGlutton: Hastur!
Sub-decent, really. But Gidget ( aka Sandra Dee ) did show a bit of skin in it.
- Tamerlane
Fish, that was brilliant! You MST3Ked it before it was even made!
/applause
Clive Barker, to my knowledge, had nothing to do with “From Beyond.” It was directed by Stuart Gordon, who also did “Re-Animator” and “Dagon,” which were also based on Lovecraft stories.
I, too, liked Fish’s take. The only thing missing was the SFX extravaganza occurring RIGHT before Cthulhu gets machine-gunned. I mean, this IS a Bruckheimer production we’re talking about…
…and I don’t know if I’d call Jeffrey Combs’ style “understated,” particularly after seeing “Necronomicon” and “Re-Animator 3”. He did quite well in “Re-Animator” and “From Beyond,” though.
More than 20 years ago there was a project to produce a Cthulhu Mythos movie, The Cry of Cthulhu, to be released by Paramount in 1981. I started a CS thread about it (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=182200&highlight=CTHULHU). FX wizard Tom Sullivan, of Evil Dead fame, said, “I was a production designer for the unmade The Cry Of Cthulhu which was going to be a Lovecraft meets Harryhausen epic.” (http://www.jackasscritics.com/interview.php?int_key=9) At some point the project failed – “budget restrictions and studio executive conflicts” were blamed. Edward P. Berglund, author of The Reader’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos, said in an interview, “I have been entertaining ideas of possibly doing a novel adaptation of the screenplay for the unproduced The Cry of Cthulhu (a copy of which resides in my files).” (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4162/berglund.html) But that was in 1999 – perhaps he lost interest in the idea.
And there was once a Mythos musical – A Shoggoth on the Roof! Honestly! See http://www.cthulhulives.org/Musical/cdinfo.html; CS discussion thread at http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=170291.
I rented “Dagon”- I thought it totally sucked.
For a more sympathetic (but still incisive) review of Dagon, see http://www.necfiles.org/dagon.htm. The (spoiler-filled) review is by John Wisdom Gonce III, co-author with Daniel Harms of The Necronomicon Files (Weiser Books, 2003) (http://www.necfiles.org/).
Why, thank you. For my next number, I will write the screenplay for Star Wars: Episode III and you will see my great steaming epic in theaters in May of 2005.
FISH
Mine would be better than Lucas’s…
Kudoes to Fish on that great MST3K job. You would have a brilliant career ahead of you if the show had not been cancelled. As it is …
If it’s a Bruckheimer rpoduction, it would also have to have some sort of patriotic American theme. I think we could manage that, and pull in the racism by having Japanese militarism in the Pacific as a background theme. The Japs could be investigating Cthulhu as a possible weapon of war, failing to understand that he isn’t just a cheap New England knockoff of Godzilla. The Americans have to find/destroy him before the Japs could use their inscrutable Oriental powers to establish a rapport with the big guy. We could also give the hero a good American name like Illinois Smith.