Killer B's on DVD: The Call of Cthulhu

The stories of H.P. Lovecraft have been notoriously difficult to translate to film. The author's work has been adapted many times ranging from a surprisingly delightful episode of The Real Ghostbusters called "The Collect Call of Cthulhu" to the appallingly bad 2006 film version of Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Movies like Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator and From Beyond used Lovecraft's work as a basis, but the final products have more to do with the the film maker's vision than Lovecraft's. Not that some of these films aren't entertaining, but they are far from faithful adaptations. That's why this film based onThe Call of Cthulhu is such a revelation: someone finally got it right. The movie was produced as if it had been made in 1926, the year Lovecraft's story first saw print. In the classic style of silent film, dialog is rendered with intertitles -- of which there are 26 languages to choose from -- and an orchestral score nicely sets the mood of cosmic doom. Period costumes and old school (and I mean old school) film making techniques create a world that is so far removed from our own that the nightmares within seem all the more possible.

The main character/narrator is never given a name (he's called "The Man" in the closing credits), and the film opens with him begging his doctor to burn both his research and that of his great uncle. Years earlier, the narrator had come across a locked box containing his great uncle's work, which included several interviews with an artist named Henry Wilcox who related a series of bizarre dreams. In these dreams the young man is wandering through a strange Caligari-esque city with structures built on impossible angles, and something is calling to him. After one of these increasingly maddening dreams, Wilcox creates a clay tablet with inscriptions in an unidentifiable language, and an image of a hideous tentacle-faced beast. He eventually falls into a fevered delirium, and when he awakens has no memory of the strange dreams.
The narrator delves deeper into his uncle's research and finds an incident involving a New Orleans police detective named Inspector Legrasse. The Inspector had consulted the narrator's uncle and several other archaeologists, in hopes of identifying a statuette of a squid-faced monstrosity bearing the inscription "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." The inspector then relates a tale of ritual sacrifice performed by a cult that worships The Great Old Ones, beings that came from the stars aeons before mankind. Disturbed by the horrors he's uncovered, the narrator abandons his uncle's research, but is drawn back to it when he reads a newspaper account of a strange occurrence at sea. This leads to a better understanding of what the creature Cthulhu is, and what its return could mean for humanity.

The Call of Cthulhu DVD was released about a year ago, but has been unavailable for some time and is now being re-released by Microcinema International DVD. The running time is a lean 47 minutes; just enough time to cover the events of the short story without the need to pad the film out to ninety minutes or so. The effects are not flawless, but that's in keeping with the premise that the film was made in 1926. The digital image is still a little too smooth to pass for film, and while the hair and scratches in the "film" are a nice touch (presumably this is the "Mythoscope" process referred to on the box cover), the picture could stand to be degraded further.

Still, this is not only the most faithful Lovecraft adaptation to date, but also a horror film that in many places duplicates the sensation of a nightmare. I've always been of the opinion that stop-motion animation is perfect for monsters because it bestows them with an unearthly style of movement. The animation here is not state of the art, but it is the stuff of which nightmares are made. I think Lovecraft fans will enjoy this, as well as those who are looking for something unique in the field of independent horror. Extras include the trailer with Mythophonic sound, whatever the hell that is, as well as some image galleries, deleted footage including additional stop-motion scenes, and a twenty-five minute behind the scenes featurette.