Lovecraft Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Getting an entire feature-length film out of a short story always seemed odd to me. Adapting a piece of fiction by H.P. Lovecraft is even more of a trick since much of his work doesn't translate to film (see my review of The Call of Cthulhu for a notable exception). Director Ulli Lommel sidesteps both issues by completely ignoring the Lovecraft story on which The Tomb (released on DVD this past week by Lionsgate) is allegedly based. Names of some of Lovecraft's characters from other stories like Charles Dexter Ward and David Pickman are kicked around, and there's mention of a "witch house" which also refers to Lovecraft's work, but it feels like an afterthought. Lovecraft's "The Tomb" concerned a man's morbid fascination with a crypt he finds as he wanders through the woods, while Lommel goes in another direction entirely, delivering a pretty blatant knock off of the Saw movies, right down to the creepy doll puppet.

Tara Griffin (Victoria Ullman) and Billy Trafford (Christian Behm) both awaken in what appears to be a warehouse basement. They don't know one another, but they've both been beaten bloody and each has a tag tied to their toe with a date written on it. A sinister and electronically filtered voice announces over a P.A. system that one of them will survive if they follow the rules of the game set out for them, or at least that's what I think he says. Poor audio is one of this film's many negative features, and the mysterious villain's distorted voice is hard to understand, as are other characters in the many scenes where Lommel is so enthralled with the musical score that he lets it play louder than the dialogue. One thing the mystery villain does say repeatedly is "eight nails, who fails," which refers to the nails driven into the many coffin lids we see in the movie and that only one person will get out alive. Someone obviously thought this line was a lot more clever than it actually is as it is repeated ad nauseum.

According to Sci Fi Wire, Guillermo del Toro's next project after the completion of Hellboy 2 next year may be an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. The story deals with an Antarctic expedition from Miskatonic University (a school that appears in much of Lovecraft's work) that discovers remains of utterly alien creatures that pre-date humanity's time on earth. When members of the expedition are slaughtered, the survivors deduce that it is the work of "shoggoths," shape-shifting servants of the creatures they have discovered. Del Toro has been working on the adaptation of the 1931 novella since 2003.

"The whole idea of Lovecraft's position towards the universe, he's very much like an Albert Camus position," says del Toro, referring to the French novelist and philosopher. "He's an existentialist. He says the cosmos is indifferent to man. At the very best is indifferent. And [it] just sees us as fleas, or ... are hostile to us."

I find the idea of del Toro doing a Lovecraft film quite exciting, and it's not like it's a huge leap for him. Remember those enormous tentacled creatures descending from space to destroy humanity in Hellboy? Pure Lovecraft. Lovecraft's fiction does not adapt easily to film, though many have tried, most notably Stuart Gordon who directed Re-animator, From Beyond and Dagon. The latter captured Lovecraft's style better than most, but was hampered by an inadequate lead actor. The other two, while highly entertaining, are very free adaptations of the source material.

The writer/director says he is unsure whether his next project will be At the Mountains of Madness, or Montecristo -- an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's novel that moves the action from France in the 1830s to Mexico in the 1870s. His adaptation of Tarzan, which Christopher Campbell discussed here just a few days ago, would come some time later. Del Toro's latest film, Pan's Labyrinth goes into limited release on December 29, with a wider release to come in January.

A lot of people have taken to calling the Masters of Horror series a Showtime production, but the truth is that the experiment was born over at Anchor Bay. Series creator Mick Garris had the idea to snag a bunch of the finest horror-makers under the sun, have each one direct an hour-long mini-movie, and then let the Gorehounds devour the goods through the magic of DVD. But then Showtime got involved, and they aired 12 of the 13 episodes between last December and March of this year. (The 13th episode, Takashi Miike's Imprint, was deemed too harsh by the Showtime folks, which means you won't be able to see it till the DVD hits shelves.)

Unfortunately, Anchor Bay has taken a fairly money-hungry approach to releasing Masters on DVD: Two episodes hit stores yesterday, available individually or as part of a 2-pack. But with a list price of $16.98 apiece (which means a retail cost of about 11 bucks each), it seems that the horror faithful are expected to dole out about $150 if they want the entire season. (By comparison, my 13-episode collection of the brilliant Firefly set me back only about 40 bucks!) But hey, nobody's saying you have to buy 'em all, right? We horror geeks aren't ravenous completists and ferocious collectors ... are we? (To be fair, if the first 2 DVDs are any indication, each release promises to come stocked with loads of extra goodies, so at least we're getting some value for our money.)

Anyway, to commemorate the DVD debut of the series (well, the first two episodes) I thought it might be helpful to give our readers a Masters Guide -- despite the fact that I've seen precisely ONE episode of the show so far! Click below for a list of all the actors, the Masters, the release dates, all 13 plot synopses, and a variety of trivial hoo-hah intended mainly for the hardcore horror freaks.