I just watched it on Movies On Demand. There was some good and some bad, but I gotta say, I think their hearts were in the right place. Just don’t go in expecting to see the Authoritative HP Lovecraft On Film. OK, yeah, it’s just another mediocre Lovecraft attempt, but they were TRYING, damn it. They were trying to stick to the spirit of Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones, and I appreciate that. Somebody with a clue and a budget needs to have a go at this stuff.
The good:
-
Griff Furst as Professor Rice was the highlight of the film for me. He was sarcastic, cynical, and funny as the “disbelieving scientist”. His flat, amused disbelief through most of the film was actually well done.
-
Lots of nods to the Lovecraft mythos: Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Alhazred, Olaus Wormius, etc.
-
The guy who played Wormius was quite good. You got the feeling that Rice’s impression of Wormius as a complete huckster was (almost) exactly right.
-
Dean Stockwell’s Armitage was not bad. He was wooden, but in sort of a smart, detached way.
-
Stockwell got a rather amusing Ash-esque “I have the gun” moment in which he got a chance to satisfyingly shut up the film’s most annoying character (and actress).
The bad:
-
B-movie all the way. The production was 100% SciFi Channel cheese. So were a good number of the performances.
-
Lavinia Whately. The actress who played her was the worst kind of mix between amateur Drama Club and Carol Kane’s insane Ghost of Christmas Present, and as such, had me wincing at times and laughing hysterically at others.
-
The ending was a mess. It made no sense, was entirely too abrupt, and for God’s sake, they tried to SHOW Yog-Sothoth, the Render of the Veils, the Lurker at the Threshold, the Key and the Fucking GATE, with a shoestring B-movie budget. It was a pathetic rubbery mask looking critter that reminded me of Basket Case. Bad, bad, bad.
