Tuesday, September 9, 2008
A&E Got Cthulhu? It's "Lovecraft Week" at Plaza Theatre
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 1:55 PM
By accident, coincidence or the hand of occult forces beyond human understanding, the Plaza Theatre is presenting two films this week based on the works of pioneering American horror author H.P. Lovecraft. Tonight, Sep. 9, the monthly gorefest Splatter Cinema presents director Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, a frequently hilarious adaptation of Lovecraft's story, "Herbert West: Re-Animator." Replete with dark comedy, grisly make-up effects and a soundtrack reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Re-Animator is also worth seeing just for the transcendently twitchy performance by Jeffrey Combs as Dr. Herbert West, an obnoxious young scientist who discovers the means to return the spark of life to the recently deceased. Here's the trailer from 1985:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/UCM7oG9UGKc" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Re-Animator may be the cinema's most entertaining adaptation of a Lovecraft tale, but it stands outside the author's signature tales of ancient, alien gods and demons on the verge of returning to Earth and causing Armageddon. Dan Gildark's Cthulhu, opening Friday at the Plaza (and reviewed here), offers a loose but intriguing adaptation of Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." Gildark takes great liberties with Lovecraft's text, but creates an eerie mood and captures the menacing mystique of the Old Ones like the gigantic, monstrous Cthulhu:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/mJDS9jUx0Ic" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Guillermo Del Toro, director of Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, has long sought to adapt Lovecraft's novella In the Mountains of Madness for the big screen. He'll be occupied for several years doing The Hobbit, so that might not happen. The most faithful Lovecraft adaptation yet filmed is probably The Call of Cthulhu, recently adapted from Lovecraft's short story of the same name. Andrew Leman presents the film as a letter-perfect homage to the silent films of the 1920s, which both coincides with the story's publication date and creates dreamlike images that neatly substitute for Lovecraft's prose. It's available on Netflix:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/XHuY2wXTd0o" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Comments (2)
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The perfect triple feature of ironic gore flicks: "Re-Animator," Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead 2" and Peter Jackson's "Dead Alive" aka "Brain-Dead." Now that would rule.
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