The Dunwich Horror (1970)

Before AIP’s The Dunwich Horror, a 1970 film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror novella The Dunwich Horror from 1929, not a whole lot had been done yet to try and bring Lovecraft to the screen. The Haunted Palace from 1963 is partially based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward; Die, Monster, Die! from 1965 is a loose adaptation of The Color out of Space; The Shuttered Room from 1967 is an adaptation of August Derleth's story of the same name that was inspired by Lovecraft, and The Crimson Cult from 1969 only takes mild inspiration from Dreams in the Witch House. As far as I can tell, The Dunwich Horror is the first film to be a faithful attempt at a direct title adaptation of an HP Lovecraft story. Not surprisingly some liberties were taken with this film, such as updating it for the late '60s, early '70s, but that’s always to be expected. I do think the The Dunwich Horror movie, for its era, does do Lovecraft justice, even if it doesn’t quite live up to the novella.

It was filmed in Mendocino California, a small coastal community that kind of passes for a New England looking town. I don’t think there was any kind of ocean near Dunwich in the original story, but the seaside connection is suitably Lovecraftian and serves the film well, as it’s usually filmed at night to look dark and ominous with unseen horrors.

The stylish occult and satanic animated intro credits set to the classical and catchy main theme by Les Baxter is a great start that gets you into both a ‘70s and a Lovecraft mood. It has a cartoony and imaginative way of painting the ceremonial birth of the main character Wilbur Whateley on Sentinel Hill. Even the film's detractors agree that this animated segment is terrific.

Cthulhu (2007)

Cthulhu probably stands as one of the more controversial attempts at bringing the Cthulhu mythos to the screen, exploring certain themes completely absent from H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional writing. It’s a totally modern take on the novella The Shadow over Innsmouth that, at its core, still ends up feeling like a very true embodiment of Lovecraft horror.

Taking the more suggestive and indescribable approach, not much is seen yet much is insinuated. Hearing the radio news reporting on wild polar bears going extinct and the oceans rising, amongst others, suggests a kind of world that is falling apart, an uneasy feeling of an approaching end. Blending this with an emphasis on a beautiful but ominous dark ocean, it really feels like Cthulhu might be rising very soon and the Old Ones will be claiming what is rightfully theirs. The East Coast New England settings fans of the author are more in tune with have been transferred over to the West Coast in Astoria Oregon, and the setting is an interesting and fitting shift that doesn’t feel disagreeable at all. There’s just something about seaside towns that work so well for the Lovecraft sensibility. Why, after all, cannot the Old Ones haunt a port town on the other side of the country?

From Beyond (1986)

While Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond is known as an adaptation to H.P. Lovecraft’s short story of the same name, the movie is nonetheless its own beast, with the original literature being more like a seed to what Gordon and his team developed in this FX heavy, gory ‘80s shocker. The pre-credits intro is more or less the component that is primarily adapted from Lovecraft’s ultra-short, seven page story, while the rest of the film continues on as an imagining of what could’ve happened had the original story not ended so abruptly. Whether or not Gordon got it spot-on is arguable, but Lovecraft’s ideas in From Beyond did have a lot of unexplored potential, and Gordon took liberties to explore this potential and, at the same time, do things his way, by including those far-out sexual elements á la Re-Animator (the Barbara Crampton escapades), some of the coolest grotesque interdimensional creatures and transformations since John Carpenter’s The Thing, and a face full of the good ol’ nauseating gore; most of which didn’t make it past the censors at the time of its initial release.

Due to the success of Re-Animator, Gordon wanted to do another Lovecraft film, and he wanted to reuse the key actors from Re-Animator, Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, who all ended up being extremely successful and welcome returns. However, I remember really wanting to see this when I found out that Ken Foree was in it, my favorite zombie killer (Dawn of the Dead). Here, Foree still has that likability he had as Peter in Romero’s film, but his character in From Beyond just wasn’t as skilled with handling interdimensional creatures, as Peter was with zombies, to make it all the way through this one.

The Whisperer in Darkness (2011)

THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS is one of the creepier and tenser short stories from H.P. Lovecraft. Readers are given enough hints to know all too well that something bad is going on as the story’s protagonist, despite his academic intelligence, seems too clueless and too stubbornly grounded in his notion of the realistic world to realize that he’s heading to a perilous destination. Journeying along with this character, Professor Albert Wilmarth, into an unnatural and creepy situation written in a first person perspective is largely what I think makes this short story work so well. In the first half there’s a lot of tension that is built up from the letter exchange correspondence between Albert and another character, Henry Akeley, whose farm is seemingly being invaded by alien monsters. However, nothing really ends up being truly conclusive with a lot being left to suggestion or just being the possible result of some weird and unexplainable phenomena or coincidences.

While I don’t think that it reaches the same high tension found in Lovecraft’s original story, the film adaptation by The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS) does an exceptional job at taking the liberty of filling in a lot of blanks by rounding out the story with much more definite events and including a third act that contains some new surprises that don’t disgrace the original story in the least. Though the narrative is understandably tweaked a bit to be more suitable for film, this still feels like one of the most faithful and near-perfect Lovecraft adaptations since the HPLHS’s CALL OF CTHULHU from 2005, though I honestly enjoyed THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS a bit more.

Colour from the Dark (2008)

Ivan Zuccon’s COLOUR FROM THE DARK is an adaptation to my favorite and in my opinion most frightening H.P. Lovecraft story, THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE. Zuccon’s film runs its own unique ideas alongside Lovecraft’s story fairly smoothly, helping it to be more than just a mere retelling. The outcome of how the characters are affected by a life draining contamination on a farm is similar in both tales, but the means is much more demonic and supernatural in Zuccon’s, while that in Lovecraft’s is something alien and chronically hazardous that feels realistic and not all together unlike a nuclear fallout. 

The most interesting original idea introduced in the film is the character of Alice (Marysia Kay), a mute childish woman, who despite being around 22 years old, is very much a portrait of a young and easily frightened child. She has a fear of the stairway in her home and when passing through it an anxiety generates in her that causes her to rush down the stairs afraid of something unseen and unknown. This easily reminds me of that same fear we felt as children all alone late at night in the hallways of our own homes, afraid of something not there, with an impulse to run through the hallway and back into bed under the secure blankets after a late night trip to the bathroom. Alice has a tendency to rely on her doll for security from the perceived hidden threats that lurk in the dark. Wandering around late at night, she covers one hand over her eyes while looking though her fingers and holding her doll out in front of her as if the doll is her protector, watching and letting her know if it is safe ahead. This introduction to Alice at the beginning of the film made me feel that I was in store for something pretty interesting with that surreal sensibility one can expect from Zuccon. 

Out of Mind: The Stories of H.P. Lovecraft (1998)

One can only dream of having the privilege to meet and converse face to face with significant figures in history, to live the same events as our ancestors, or to reach out through time and take possession of the bodies of descendants in the future and never have to succumb to death. If such a book contained the key to making this possible, it would likely be best kept forbidden and locked away forever, lest we find ourselves in danger from our own ancestors clawing away at our souls, trying to take possession of our lives. If you, like the main character in tonight’s film review, often find yourself dreaming that you are someone else in an entirely different time period, then it’s possible you may have been cursed from someone high above you in your own family tree that wants your life very much. 

By the way, all of this talk about taking the lives of descendants is the theme to H.P. Lovecraft’s THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, which is the basis for Raymond Saint-Jean’s 56-minute long, made for TV film, OUT OF MIND: THE STORIES OF H.P. LOVECRAFT. As the title suggests, the film also contains familiar scenarios from a few other Lovecraft tales that fans will likely enjoy noticing. However, the film’s main highlight is that it actually includes a very convincing H.P. Lovecraft played with stellar acting by Christopher Heyerdahl, who teaches us how CTHULHU is really pronounced. A pronunciation I’m unable to duplicate myself despite multiple attempts.