Welcome to Video Junkie's second theme week. And by week we mean seven days and some change. We seem to slowly be working our way down the cinematic alphabet as we go from B for Blind to C for Cthulhu. Yep, our second week focuses on the cinematic adaptations of the literary works of one H.P. Lovecraft. One of the most descriptive, influential and respected writers in the horror genre, Lovecraft created a contained and detailed world that offered filmmakers plenty of fertile ground to work with. Like all heavily adapted authors, the quality varies. We won’t be talking about the stuff examined to death (the original THE DUNWICH HORROR, RE-ANIMATOR, FROM BEYOND), but instead will focus on the lesser known adaptations that run the gamut from good to bad to amphibian.
What better way to start off than to combine two of my favorite passions - horror and unmade films. Sure, there have been plenty of aborted Lovecraft projects over the years, but none so chronicled as Stuart Gordon's unsuccessful attempts to get an adaptation of Lovecraft's novella THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH off the ground. The first major exposure for the ill-fated project came in Fangoria #91 where they boldly deemed it “the greatest horror movie never made!” Hyperbole aside, writer Chas Balun does give a detailed chronology of the film’s history in his “The Unmaking of THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH” article.
“We set it up with Vestron,” Gordon recounts. “I had originally told them it would cost around $5 million. Vestron came back and said if we could do it for $4 million, we had a deal.”
Gordon quickly got to work on the project as he scouted locations and worked with renowned comic book artist Bernie Wrightson to create some storyboards. Wrightson delivered roughly 70 drawings and paintings to help flesh out the fishy folk inhabiting the town of
Also joining the production was FX legend Dick Smith (THE EXORCIST), who provided several head sculptures of the amphibious creatures to populate the piece. Below are two examples of his work for the project. Kind of creepy how his fish-women looks like every other actress in Hollywood nowadays, eh?
“The further we got into it, we realized it couldn’t be made for that. For less than $7 million, you would lose what made SHADOW so special in the first place.”“It was a mutual realization,” Gordon sighs. “We all knew we just couldn’t do it right for $4 million.”
“We were unable to get [SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH] made because the budget on it was too high. It didn’t fit into your horror movie niche, it was a bigger project and it was so strange. What people kept saying to us was that if it was about vampires or werewovles, you would have no problem here, but since this is about people turning into fish, this is a little bit too weird for us to be able to put this kind of money into the project. Well, to me, that’s what makes this interesting. You haven’t seen this before.”
All was not lost though as Gordon would eventually get his INNSMOUTH adaptation made…sorta. In the new millennium, producer Yuzna secured financing for co-productions for
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