H.P. Lovecraft Week: Elder Sign

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: Mystery of the Nothingtodowithlovecrafticon

In the interest of full disclosure I should let you know that I am not one of those “Anime Guys”. It takes a whole hell of a lot to drag me to an anime. In about 1990 bootlegs of a Japanese animated series called THE WANDERING KID (1989, aka UROTSUKIDOJI) started making the rounds in Japanese with no subtitles. A jaw-dropping onslaught of gore, sex and monsters, and monsters having gory sex; things that should not be, doing things that should not be done. At the time it was total insanity. Hell, even these days after being exposed to hentai for the past 20 years, it’s still pretty freakin’ nuts. WANDERING KID pretty much started a huge fanbase for extreme anime in America and part of that is because of its extremely shocking content. What gave it legs was the fact that the animation was better than average and the storyline was actually an epic end-of-the-universe kind of thing with tons of subplots and allegoric overtones. Because of this, it’s always got a place in my movie collection.

Other anime that I’ve watched tends to be either a bad anime that was the basis of a great movie. RIKI-OH (1989) was a mediocre Japanese anime that was adapted into an amazingly violent Hong Kong film titled THE STORY OF RICKY (1991) which was strangely lifted out of the bootleg market when “The Daily Show with Craig Kilbourne” featured a clip of the head-smashing scene in damn near every episode. Conversely SUPERNATURAL BEAST CITY (1987) was a stunningly stylish, beautifully animated horror anime about a Men-in-Black-esque organization who maintain the integrity of the barriers between our world and what is tantamount to hell. Dark and gruesome with major Lovecraftian influence, it was a gorgeous, well produced masterpiece, adapted into a completely uninspired, low-budget Hong Kong Tsui Hark film, WICKED CITY (1992).

When I heard that the latest outing from WANDERING KID director Hideki Takayama was a Lovecraft-inspired tale and was getting a stateside release, I was pretty excited. Animation is a great forum for Eldrich Horrors, if it's done right. The operative words being "done right".

I guess if I was one of those guys that watches nothing but anime and sits through all kinds of badly animated OVA crap, the half-assed detective story in MYSTERY OF THE NECRONOMICON (1999) might be a breath of fresh air. The plot slowly rolls out as a swarthy, long-haired private detective goes on vacation with his 20 year-old, no-longer adopted, daughter of his dead girlfriend. Once there he finds the bodies are starting to pile up, all with their eyes and faces removed. One of the female suspects was being blackmailed over a video in which she is masturbating while looking at a photo of her young female student. More suspects die and after the cops give him a hard time about being found near the scene of a similar crime years ago, the detective finds himself at another hotel. Here the same thing happens, except more graphically. A late-night lesbian S&M session between two college girls leads to them being found brutally killed. This extended sex scene features one of a couple unintentionally funny bits where as her lover forms the fabled 69, she gazes into her spread-wide much box and in a hushed voice whispers "mysterious..." before diving in. Hey, in an entertainment desert, that's a cool glass of water, lemme tell ya. Anyway, as the cops investigate, the girls suddenly re-animate and are re-killed with a bullet in the head. Next!

The wandering around, talking to witnesses, finding someone dead sort of thing goes on over the span of 127 minutes and while it’s not entirely a bad premise, it could have been 45 minutes easy and would have been all the better for it. If only for the fact that there would be less of it to sit through. Even though we spend almost two hours with a relentlessly padded mystery, the whole thing is wrapped up in a few half-assed minutes that half-heartedly tries to answer all the questions it posed in the last 120 minutes as fast as it can and if some slip through the cracks, if it doesn't make any sense, well that's just too bad because you've already paid your money! Sucker! The ending is as lame as anything you’d see in an episode of HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE or SCOOBY-DOO... except maybe with out the nudity, urination and subsequent cunnilingus.

Compounding its errors is the fact that it’s got fuck-all to do with H.P. Lovecraft. For some reason I was thinking “Necronomicon = Eldritch horrors” and I thought animation would be a great medium to be able to show the things that should not be. Apparently I was wrong. The plot and characters have nothing to do with HP Lovecraft and his mythos other than the villain being named “Herbert West” and in his possession is the Necronomicon (modeled after the one in EVIL DEAD II, by way of Leatherface), which he explains is “the Devil Book. The book that contains the power of the Devil”. That’s it! Done! Peace out! Please go back to the kitchen and pack your knives. Seriously? Is that all you got? It makes me wonder if the script wasn't given a quick re-write to add those two elements so that they could slap "Necronomicon" on the cover and push a few more units.

Since this was directed by Hideki Takayama of UROTSUKIDOJI fame, I was expecting some sort of style or at least some crazy monster action. You’d think that there would probably be some elder gods popping up with the Necronomicon being bandied about, but no! The closest thing you get to a monster is a couple of brief appearances of a couple of zombies that are nothing but the same characters rendered with no pupils and grey-green skin (or, for some reason, just purple). It's pretty sad when an episode of "The Real Ghostbusters" sports more monsters and more authentic Lovecraft influence than an adult anime! The animation is rank, low-budget stuff. Stiff and jerky with no detail and a bland color palette. There isn't much gore past the few discovered murder victims and the sex scenes are perfunctory at best. Most are dull, lifeless scenes that are typical of R-rated movies, some are a bit more explicit with specific fetishes being catered to, but either way, you’d have to be really into cartoon sex to find any of this even marginally exciting.

I usually dismiss most of what the on-line Lovecraft fanbase has to say about adaptations because they’ll bitch, piss and moan about a movie not being an exact translation of the source material, and then ironically talk about how great RE-ANIMATOR is (which it is, but c'mon now, it’s hardly got anything to do with Lovecraft). Unfortunately this time they were right. I was particularly disappointed to see Hideki Takayama turn out such cheap, sloppy crap because of my fond memories of THE WANDERING KID, but then I remembered that he was also responsible for the awful, cheap-ass sequels too. The biggest mystery here is why they even bothered to try and associate this with Lovecraft at all. Something, I guess, man is not meant to know.

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: DAGON

Dagon - HP Lovecraft from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: The Unwatchable!

Nearly 75 years after H.P. Lovecraft’s death and the Cthulhu Mythos is going strong in books, comics, games, movies and music. Cinematically speaking there have been nearly 100 adaptations of his work. Naturally, this high level of output is going to bring out the hucksters looking for a quick buck. Today we will examine two of the worst offenders.

H.P. LOVECRAFT’S THE TOMB (2007) – Two quick history lessons before we begin. Lesson #1 – Lovecraft’s short story “The Tomb” was first published in 1922. The story centers on a young man who, from an asylum cell, tells the tale of how he became entranced with the titular location by a burned down estate and how it eventually drove him insane. Lesson #2 – German director Ulli Lommel’s biggest claim to fame is hanging out with Andy Warhol and Fassbinder. His cinematic notoriety comes from the vaunted THE BOOGEYMAN, a semi-effective HALLOWEEN knock off from 1980. He is also responsible for what I once considered to be one of the worst films I’d ever seen, REVENGE OF THE BOOGEYMAN (aka THE BOOGEYMAN 3; 1994). Until now…

As a VJ rule of law, you always know you are going to be in for a rough time when the opening credits feature grammar errors. No joke, the on-screen title here reads H.P. LOVECRAFT THE TOMB. Is Lovecraft starring in this and top billed? Yup, they forgot the oh-so-important apostrophe “S” on there (the box gets it right). Anyway, Tara (Victoria Ullmann) and Billy (Christian Behm, who also edited under the pseudonym Xgin…really!) wake up in what appears to be a warehouse filled with 9 candles, 2 doll heads (creeeeeepy) and 8 coffins. A disembodied voice informs them they will “play a game” in “the tomb” as they must find 6 other folks and guess their captor’s name in addition to their connection. “Eight nails. Who fails?” he constantly teases them over the PA system.

Hmmmmm, the plot sounds awfully familiar. Yup, good ol’ Lommel is getting his SAW on big time. One can’t even begin to convey how bad this film is. It is shot-on-video and looks terrible. The sound is so muffled that I had to turn on the subtitles to understand what characters were saying. The set design consists of handing some poor PA $50 and telling them to go wild at the dollar store during Halloween. And, of course, you have the fact that Lommel is ripping off SAW hard. But the killer’s motivation is laughable. Everyone has wronged him in some way and he writes down their offense in his little book. One guy’s offense? “He sold me a lemon!” Yup, our killer Morris (Gerard Griesbaum) is willing to kidnap someone and torture them because he wasn’t smart enough to kick the tires on the used car lot. I’d almost want to give Lommel credit and assume he is doing a spoof of the inane SAW revenge motif. But then he shows the killer watching his captives on a computer WITH THE MONITOR TURNED OFF and I just remember Lommel’s an idiot.

All of this deems it pretty much unwatchable so the H.P. Lovecraft in the title is just the icing on the cake. Lommel actually has nods to Lovecraft’s work in the story as the villain throws out some names from Lovecraft’s fiction that Billy recognizes. Also, one future corpse is a high school English teacher who inexplicably starts quoting “The Whisperer in Darkness.” Finally, when Tara “wins” the game she is given money, a Ferrari and a copy of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Tomb” for her trouble. What? Lommel went batshit around 2004 and started pumping out these SOV serial killer flicks like crazy. To date he has made 18 (!!!) of these flicks with his band of collaborators. The only thing worse than this flick is knowing that Lionsgate - who make a shitload of money off the SAW franchise - are cynical enough to pick this SAW-knock off up and release it to the masses, proving they have less respect for the horror audience than Lommel. A special screw you for the “Curiosity will lure you in” tagline.

CTHULHU MANSION (1990) – Compared to THE TOMB, this one gets off easy when it comes to the Lovesploitation. Magician Chandu (Frank Finlay) decides to use some spells from a book labeled Cthulhu (no Necronomicon, sheesh!) to spice up his husband 'n wife magic act. This results in him actually levitating his wife before a crowd (sweet) before she bursts into flames (d’oh!). Years later, Chandu is working a father ‘n daughter act at a carnival. After a drug deal gone bad (because all drug deals go down at the carnival), Hawk (Brad Fisher) and his gang kidnap Chandu and his team and head to his creepy Cthulhu (the only Lovecraft connection) Manor. Naturally, strange things start to happen after the criminals find the Cthulhu book.

This ain’t got hell all to do with Lovecraft stories outside of Lovecraft adaptations being all the rage in the late 80s. “From the imagination of H.P. Lovecraft” boasts the video box. Please point me in the direction of his stories about cocaine deals gone wrong at a carnival. The actual screen credit is a little more diplomatic, claiming the film was “Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft.” So if you pretty much throw the word Cthulhu onscreen you are good to go in the world of video marketing. 

Of course, this type of exploitation is understandable when you know who was behind it. Director Juan Piquer Simon is a favorite round these parts for his goofy slasher masterpiece PIECES (1982) and the world’s best killer slug movie ever SLUGS (1988). This film, sadly, lacks the charm and insanity of those two but it is not without its moments. At least Simon was honest when he said of the film in 1991 to Fangoria, “It would be pretentious on my part to say that CTHULHU MANSION truly ‘does justice’ to Lovecraft’s writings.” The aforementioned on stage tragedy is a riot, especially when the mute assistant bolts onto stage and tries to put the flame engulfed floating wife out with a fire extinguisher. I can’t think of a worse day at the office. The whole gang gets it in a variety of bizarre ways including death by monster in the fridge, a blood spewing shower, killer ivy and flying cutlery. And the end demon is dispelled by literally turning his upside down cross right side up. Genius!

Finlay graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and I bet the day he received his diploma he never foresaw himself acting in this. Of course, he is a pro and gives it his all (hard lessons learned from starring at Mathilda May’s breasts on LIFEFORCE, no doubt) in what is easily the worst entry on his filmography. The rest of the cast is not quite up to Finlay’s snuff. Fisher is a riot (in all the wrong ways) as the gang leader Hawk. He eventually ended up in several RED SHOE DIARIES episodes and that seems appropriate. Sweet gang member Melanie Shatner is, indeed, the daughter of Captain Kirk and she is pretty damn attractive. She thankfully hasn’t inherited her father’s flair for the overdramatic and went on to earn her stripes in SYNGENOR (1990) and the first two SUBSPECIES sequels. Sadly, she keeps her clothes on. In fact, nudity is lacking in the entire thing and I shame you Mr. PIECES.

This was released in some territories as BLACK MAGIC MANSION and I think that title is more apt. It would stifle the Lovecraft crowd hate and be seen as merely a goofy ass 80s house with monsters flick. As I mentioned in THE UNNAMABLE reviews, there is an inherent charm to be found films like this. After all it is at least shot on film, has decent actors, some monsters and enough unintentional laughs to make it worth while. It has its fans. In fact, I know my good friend Jon Kitley loooves it.

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: THE BOOK

H.P. Lovecraft's The Book (2008) from StellularFilm/UntamedAggression on Vimeo.

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: Dark Adventure Radio Theatre - The Shadow Over Innsmouth

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: THE UNNAMABLE films

Thanks to the successful Empire productions (RE-ANIMATOR; FROM BEYOND) and a little thing called public domain, the stories of H.P. Lovecraft became hot film properties in the mid-to-late 1980s. Quick to jump on the trend was director Jean-Paul Ouellette (pronounced Well-lett), a Boston born filmmaker who had been toiling around in Hollywood's low budget world. Ouellette's biggest claim to fame is that he directed second unit on THE TERMINATOR (1984) starring some musclebound nerd and directed by some geek (both men went on to do nothing). When given the chance to leap into the director's chair, Ouellette settled on childhood reading fave H.P. Lovecraft to make a pair of low budget shockers.

THE UNNAMABLE (1988) - Wow, talk about lazy filmmakers - they couldn't even be bothered to come up with a title. Oh, that is the title! Published in 1925, Lovecraft's short story "The Unnamable" has Randolph Carter terrorizing friend Joel Morton with a graveyard spook legend about an unnamable monster that haunts a nearby house in the town of Arkham, Massachusetts. The duo are subsequently attacked by this beast but survive with enough wounds that tell their tale. It is a quick 7-page story that will leave you wondering, "How the hell did someone turn this into a movie?" Surprisingly, director-writer Ouellette does faithfully adapt this short story as everything that happens it happens in the movie. It is just that he needed to add another 80 minutes to bring it up to feature length.

THE UNNAMABLE focuses on Miskatonic University students Randolph Carter (Mark Kinsey Stephenson) and Howard Damon (Charles Klausmeyer, billed as Charles King). Carter indeed tells one Joel Morton the story of the haunted house with its unnamable monster and, when Morton ends up missing, the detective duo head to the house to check things out. What they don't know is that two jocks and their respective prey, er, the ladies they would like to get to know are already there to make sure the house is safe for some pledge initiations (smooth line). Once there, everyone encounters The Unnamable (Katrin Alexandre), a monster created in the 17th century by Joshua Winthorp as he was fooling around with the Necronomicon.

I can remember seeing this when it first hit video and being disappointed. Of course, I was a Freddy and Jason obsessed teen so maybe the lack of showing the monster until the last half did me in? The film is incredibly cheap (you can see the set walls shake when folks kick doors) and is basically a dead teen (they are supposed to be college freshman although everyone looks mid-20s) flick sprinkled with some Lovecraft lore. Yet THE UNNAMABLE does have a few things going for it though and there is something charming about it when I revisit it some 20 years later. Released on video in R-rated and unrated versions by Vidmark Entertainment, the film does at least have the gore factor going for it. The throat slashing and head bashing are quite graphic in the un-truncated form. A decapitated body leads to the best line of dialog as Howard sees the HEADLESS body and exclaims, "Oh my God! It's Joel!" Female lead Laura Albert also supplies the required nudity, which leads to another funny exchange:

Tanya: "Why do boys like Wendy so much? Is it her big boobs?"
Howard: "Uh, yeah, I guess so."
Tanya: "Damn."

Perhaps the single best thing about this film (and the subsequent sequel) is lead the performance of Mark Kinsey Stephenson as Randolph Carter. A recurring character that appeared in 7 Lovecraft stories, Carter is pretty much a surrogate for the author himself. Stephenson, who somewhat resembles Lovecraft, plays Carter as kind of a nerdier version of Jeffrey Combs' Herbert West. He has the same strain of dogged intensity, but without the arrogance or desire to kill. His steadfast geekiness also reminds me a bit of Don Knotts in THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN (1966). So Jeffrey Combs mixed with Don Knotts - wrap your head around that. The slightly odd performance just really seems to fit in Lovecraft's world. And the film seemed to do well enough that Ouellette was able to get a sequel financed a few years later. So we then turn our attention to...

H.P. LOVECRAFT'S THE UNNAMABLE II: THE STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER (1993) (aka THE UNNAMABLE RETURNS) - Try saying that five times fast. Yes, that is how the full title for this sequel reads on screen. And, believe it or not, I actually enjoyed this more than the first one. Director Ouellette brings back his two leads and rightly begins his sequel mere hours after the first one ended (a trick I tend to love).

Following the slaughter at the house, Randolph Carter (Mark Kinsey Stephenson) and Howard (Charles Klausmeyer) notify the police of their horrible night. Surprisingly, the cops aren't shocked by this carnage ("Remember what happened in Dunwich," says the corner) and try to keep a lid on the happenings. But while Howard (whose is inexplicably renamed from Howard Damon to Eliot Damon Howard!?!) is in the hospital recovering from his wounds he has a visitation from Winthorp's ghost that warns that the unnanamble beast is still still alive and in the tunnels under the house. So Carter, Howard and mythology expert Professor Warren (John Rhys-Davies) head back to the graveyard to try and kill the beast once and for all. Of course, they screw up and release the monster's human half Alyda Winthorp (Maria Ford) and this leads to the monster half (former Penthouse Pet Julie Strain, completely hidden under the monster costume) hunting Carter, Howard and Alyda all over the campus of Miskatonic University.

This might be the only Lovecraft movie sequel to actually adapt a Lovecraft story ("The Statement of Randolph Carter," which actually preceded "The Unnamable") and is a superior follow-up. As with the original, Ouellette does completely adapt the short story on which it is based. "The Statement of Randolph Carter" first appeared in 1920 and has Carter recounting the tale of how he and a companion took the Necronomicon (never mentioned by name) to a graveyard to open a portal to the underworld. The duo keep in touch via a crude telephone device as Carter heads into an underground tomb. Like I said, Ouellette puts everything from that story in here. And, like the previous film, he has to fill out the rest of the running time. Which is how we end up with scenes like Carter and Warren separating the demon from the girl using some insulin and candy (both of which Warren had readily available...really! Fat bastard!).

Ouellette has a noticeably larger budget this time around and definitely makes use of it. There are lots of locations and the monster suit by R. Christopher Biggs gets an revamping. As with the first film, it is suitably gory with the original severed head from the original even making a cameo appearance (I'm easy to please apparently). Stephenson is again the unusual lead. He is great and even more nerdly focused on the task at hand to the point that he is oblivious to the advances of his 17th century charge. Klausmeyer, who has decided to accept his real name, is also good and reminds me of William Ragsdale from the FRIGHT NIGHT films. In fact, this reminds me a bit of the college-set FRIGHT NIGHT PART II (1988). In the "Completely Underutilized" department we have David Warner, who has one scene as the college chancellor, and Rhys-Davies, who manages to make the most absurd lines sound plausible. The real star, however, is B-movie actress Maria Ford. This might be her strongest acting role as the displaced 17th century girl (and I'm not saying that because she spends 50% of her screen time nude). Sure, I bet Ouellette told her to "act like a cat" but you can't deny she is good, especially since she has to pretend to be in love with Carter.

This one hit VHS in 1993 via Prism Entertainment and I'm sure it was a success. By far the best thing to come out of it is this video promo featuring Stephenson doing the hard sell of the film for distributors. Now which one of you will confess as to having written him a fan letter?

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: RYLEH

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: The Chill of Cool Air, Part 1

To paraphrase Tony Anthony in BLINDMAN; being an H.P. Lovecraft fan ain’t easy. Being a Lovecraft fan and a movie fan? Well that’s a bitch!

Lovecraft adaptations have been around for a while, but tend to be pretty sparse. His work is essentially unfilmable, but if you are going to make the attempt the brevity of his stories are well suited to a short film medium. I think it’s safe to say that Hollywood doesn’t “get” Lovecraft. I bet the studio executives must have been driven as mad as Abdul Alhazred when he finished the last page of the Necronomicon, sitting in their meetings listening to someone pitch ideas that have vague words like “unseen” and “unknown” in it. Because of that it seems that Lovecraft has pretty much stayed in low-budget indy and student films. Not to sound cynical, but the thing of it is you don’t need much cash to have a movie about an unseen horror. The sticking point here is that you have to be able to tell a story and it has to wallow in atmosphere thicker than primordial ooze and it requires something in the way of decent acting. Aye there’s the rub.

Because of those limitations watching H.P. Lovecraft adaptations requires a different mindset. Like any book that is brought to screen, if you come into them expecting exact translations, you are just setting yourself up for disappointment. Even some of the most ballyhooed genre films, such as BLADE RUNNER (1982) and RE-ANIMATOR (1985), as much as I love them both, they really have very little to do with their source material. I’m not saying that running off into left field is always a good thing, so much as it isn’t always a bad thing and keeping an open mind is essential.

Everybody has their favorite Lovecraft stories and one of mine is “Cool Air”. I think it’s a story that, however brief, is not only creepy and atmospheric as it stands, but provides a great premise for a movie or short film. It’s a great idea, but it also doesn’t feature the “unfilmable” elements of many of his other stories. This one is about people, one of whom has a horrible secret. You can read the story in its entirety here.

ROD SERLING'S NIGHT GALLERY: COOL AIR (1971)

The earliest adaptation I can find of “Cool Air” is the 18th episode of NIGHT GALLERY which aired on December 8th 1971. In this version Serling decides he wants to put a romantic spin on the tale and changes the lead character (the narrator in the original story) to an attractive female (Barbara Rush) who tells the story in flashback from Dr. Munoz's grave. Here she is not a writer looking for a room, but merely trying to track down Munoz, to give him the news that her father, his friend of many years with whom he has been exchanging letters for some time, has died. Expecting an older man around her father’s age she is surprised to find Munoz (Henry Darrow) to be fit and swarthy, complete with whiskers and smoking jacket (ahhh the ‘70s!). This leads to many dinner conversations, candle-light conversations and moon-eyed flirty conversations in which you'd almost expect a tuxedo-clad violinist to pop into the scenes serenading our lovebirds. While watching this you’ll think “this must be going somewhere” and it is. After filling up it’s time with TV-style romance that would be considered timid in a G-rated movie, the last minutes feature the breakdown of the air-conditioning, the revelation of Dr. Munoz’s pruney corpse and the letter explaining it all.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell Rod was thinking when he wrote some of the stuff for NIGHT GALLERY. I had a discussion with my brother about this and I staunchly defended the integrity of the show based on 25 year old recollections. So I set out to sit down and start plowing through them and damned if he wasn’t right! While THE TWILIGHT ZONE still holds up as one of the best anthology television shows ever made, NIGHT GALLERY does not. It’s interesting to note that the NIGHT GALLERY adaptation of Pickman’s Model also is given new female lead and a strong romantic bent. I’m guessing Serling was using NIGHT GALLERY as some sort of televised catharsis, but either way, I ain’t havin' none of it.

THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981)

“Steve?” “Steve?” “Steve!” “Steve?”
“Bob?” “Bob?” “Bob!” “Bob?”

In 1981 Lucio Fulci finished off his quadrilogy of E.A. Poe and H.P. Lovecraft inspired films with THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY. Out of the four films that included THE BEYOND (1981) and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980), Fulci wisely avoiding any direct adaptation of Poe or Lovecraft with the exception of THE BLACK CAT (1981) which is loosely based on the Poe story. If you do a direct adaptation, you open yourself up to a hail of negative criticism because it wasn’t done exactly the way each individual reader imagined it would when reading the story. Instead, if you do not point fingers at your literary sources, you gain praise for being influenced by great authors. Whether this was a conscious decision on Fulci’s part is debatable, but it made for some classic exploitation filmmaking. Seeming to start life as a modern reworking of Mary Shelly's “Frankenstein,” a plan perhaps scuttled by flaky backers, the finished film, THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, is a gothic, very loose adaptation of “Cool Air”.

After a Boston scientist working on some secret project kills his family and commits suicide, another scientist, Dr. Boyle (Paolo Malco), is brought in to try to piece together the clues. For some reason Dr. Boyle and his family (Catriona MacColl and Giovanni Frezza as “Bob”) move into the house where the murder-suicide occurred. Known to the locals as The Freudstein house, the house is in a state of neglect to the point where some teen-ages are shown using it for a place to plow the beanfield before being slaughtered by an unseen assailant in the beginning of the film. Mrs. Boyle, who apparently has a mental condition, soon finds some weird shit going down; a sealed tomb in the middle of an entry hall, strange crying sounds, a cellar door that won’t open and her son Bob claiming to be getting warnings from a little girl that no one else can see. As it turns out the basement contains the subject of the previous doctor’s work, the long-dead corpse of Dr. Freudstein, a scientist who figured out how to keep himself alive in a state of undeath by killing everyone who sets foot in the house.

Obviously the screenwriters (including the genre icon Dardano Sacchetti) took the premise of  “Cool Air” and ran with it. The film throws weirdness and unanswered questions at you from every conceivable angle (why is coffee more important than all that blood all over the kitchen floor?) and drenches you in gothic atmosphere. In fact the atmosphere is so thick and story so strange that it’s easy to be completely oblivious to the movie’s budgetary shortcomings. Almost the entire movie takes place in the house with occasional, and perfectly placed, cutaways to very small scenes in one or two locations. This adds to the claustrophobic atmosphere and at the same time broadens the scope of the film just enough to keep the viewer from getting bored seeing the same interiors over and over.

In addition to the camera prowling behind cobwebs thicker than Cousin It's hair, you have a great cast of regulars including the striking Ania Pieroni (TENEBRAE, 1982), the prolific Dagmar Lassander (A HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON, 1970), the frequently killed Daniela Doria (CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD), Gianpaolo Saccarola (THE BEYOND, 1981), and even Lucio Fulci himself, Dr. Boyle’s boss, who sets the plot in motion. For better or for worse, no discussion of a Fulci film is complete without mentioning the pretty extreme, even by modern standards, make-up effects. Here the brilliant Giannetto De Rossi provides the stunning carnage that turns disposing of a pesky bat into a grisly bloodbath of epic proportions. Surprisingly even the clarity of DVD doesn’t diminish the gory shocks as in many other films of the era, most notably THE BEYOND. It’s like listening to The Dead Boys or Black Flag on a digitally remastered CD instead of vinyl, somehow all that low fidelity noise made it so much more subversive. Of course I say that, but I don’t see myself going back to my old import VHS tapes any time soon!

NECRONOMICON: THE COLD (1993)

Bryan Yuzna made his name by producing Stuart Gordon’s seminal onslaught of black humor and bloody carnage RE-ANIMATOR (1985), something that both of them have been trying to cash-in on ever since (RE-ANIMATOR the musical? Ummmm… yeah).

In a weird twist, writers Kazunori Ito and Brent V. Friedman (who is also credited with writing Dan O’Bannon’s superlative 1992 Lovecraft film THE RESURRECTED) decide to remake Rod Serling’s take on the story with a female protagonist who is romantically involved with Dr. Munoz (David Warner). It’s basically a NIGHT GALLERY remake with RE-ANIMATOR sensibility. Again told in flashback by the female lead, the story tells of a teenage girl, Emily, who has run away from her drunken mother and sexually abusive step-father, answering the ad for a room to rent in an old Victorian. Once there the landlady (who turns out to be Munoz’s assistant) tells Emily of the elusive Munoz and his strange condition.

All of the elements of the story are included, such as the fluid dripping from the ceiling, but most have been slightly altered. Instead of a heart-attack, Emily finds herself unconscious in front of Munoz’s door when her step-father manages to track her down and puts out her lights. Unbeknownst to Emily, Munoz disposes of the bum with a scalpel and a staircase. The relationship develops from there and becomes “complicated” in the middle of the greenhouse where Munoz shows Emily his serum that when injected into the stem re-animates a dried rose. What he doesn’t tell her, at least right away, is that the serums efficacy is dependent on fresh spinal fluid. Of course all good things must come to an end with Munoz melting down in spectacularly gruesome fashion. The final twist regarding Emily’s pregnancy is a wonderfully nasty little bit of business that feels like it has its roots in EC Comics.

Shusuke Kaneko does a nice job of balancing the characters and chilling atmosphere with the over-the-top gore effects. Following this he went on to reinvent the GAMERA films with state of the art technology, but after trying to suffer through DEATH NOTE (2006), I feel like we lost another one to the Corporate Film-making Machine.

I guess it should be noted that the other two stories and the wrap-around segment are not actually based on any Lovecraft stories at all. The final one, WHISPERS, about two police officers following a serial killer and discovering subterranean aliens, is actually a reasonable facsimile of Clive Barker's short story “The Midnight Meat Train”.

A Contrast in Cool... Next!

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: THE TERRIBLE OLD MAN

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: The "Never Got Made" File #14 - SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH

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.

Talk of an adaptation of SHADOW initially began after Gordon and Yuzna’s success with Lovecraft's RE-ANIMATOR (1985). Gordon has often cited the adaptation as his dream project as he told Fangoria, “It’s always been my favorite Lovecraft story.” With a script in place by frequent collaborator Dennis Paoli, Gordon initially lined this up as his second horror feature. But further commitments to Charles Band’s Empire Pictures (another Lovecraft adaptation in FROM BEYOND, DOLLS and ROBOT JOX) put the project on the back burner. Eventually Gordon and company were able to set up a production deal at another one of the 1980s most prolific B-movie producers. From the 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 Innsmouth. Below are just a sampling of the work he turned in as shown in Fangoria and the Lovecraft cinema book "The Lurker in the Lobby."

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?

Despite a healthy amount of pre-production, Gordon and his team slowly began to realize they couldn’t do this film properly for the ascribed $4 million dollar budget Vestron was offering and the project eventually was put on hold. As Gordon told the magazine:

“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.”

Eighteen months later, Fangoria revisited the subject in their “Special H.P. Lovecraft issue” (Fangoria #106). In “The Lurking Film Projects” article by Anthony C. Ferrante, the status of the INNSMOUTH adaptation is given an update. Vestron and their Vestron Pictures line had now bitten the dust and significant legal wrangling got the project back into Gordon and Yuzna’s hands where it found a new home at Charles Band’s bustling new Full Moon Entertainment outfit. Gordon and Paoli had just done an update of THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1991) for Band, so a it seemed a natural progression. Band was very high on the project as he mentioned it in VideoZones and delivered an updated version of Wrightson’s naked fish woman artwork (see Cinefantastique cover). Yet budget issues arose again and a promised late summer 1991 filming in Malta never materialized.

As Band told Cinefantastique:

“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.”

Band and Gordon instead collaborated on the lower-budget CASTLE FREAK (1995), an adaptation of “The Outsider” short story by Lovecraft. They eventually parted ways as Band needed to make less odd films about killer bongs and deadly gingerbread men while Gordon focused on truckers in outer space and magical ice cream colored suits. And you thought fish people were weird?

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 Spain’s Filmax and they started a production company called Fantastic Factory. The third film made under this banner was DAGON (2001), which saw Gordon directing and Paoli scripting. In a clever twist (possibly to circumvent legal ramifications), the film is indeed an adaptation of the 5-page Lovecraft short story “Dagon” but also adapts “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” Lensed in Spain, the film effectively brings to life the town inhabited by fish folk and – despite a wooden lead performance by Ezra Godden – proves to be atmospheric and one of Gordon’s best films. Ironically, the film was made for an estimated budget of $4.8 million.

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H.P. Lovecraft Week: Claymation FROM BEYOND

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A Week of Blind Vengeance

As you may have noticed, time in the world of the Video Junkie is much like Ray Milland spending a weekend in the country. Our "Week of Blind Vengeance" has turned into "A Couple of Weeks of Blind Vengeance". Granted it's not quite as catchy, but hey, you get twice the Blind Vengeance for the same low price of... well, nothing.

You don't see any Pay Pal links or advertisements do ya? That's because when you are sightless and pissed off, you only take payments in blood!

Next week we will be starting a new theme week that promises to be a breath of cool air. In the meantime, send our link to your rotten, drunken friends and enjoy our continuation of the exploits of ocular and judgement impaired killers!

BLIND RAGE (1978)

The Legacy of Zatoichi, Part 1: The BLIND OICHI Series

The Legacy of Zatoichi, Part 2: BLINDMAN (1971) & THE WARRIOR AND THE BLIND SWORDSMAN (1983)

The Legacy of Zatoichi, Part 3: BLIND FURY (1989) & ZATOICHI (2003)

The Legacy of Zatoichi, Part 4: ICHI (2008) and THE BOOK OF ELI (2010)

Blind Dead Bamboozlement: GRAVEYARD OF THE DEAD (2008) and DON'T WAKE THE DEAD (2008)

THE BLIND WARRIOR (1987)

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