Lovecraftian Cinema

With Rosemary's Baby, you forget one of the lines in dialogue: "God is dead! All hail Satan!" Judeo-christian concept of evil is a motif used in an existential nightmare. There's nothing optimistic in this film which you must notice in Lovecraft, there wasn't anything optimistic in his tales.
Suspiria is more of a fairy tale like that of Brothers Grimm. There's a little bit of M.R. James and Blackwood with its elemental terrors sprinkled with light and shadow. I only said it's slightly Lovecraftian at the ending where the Jessica Harper character came out laughing. Now, is she going slightly insane or was she just happy she's alive? It's hard to say.
Black Sunday springs immediately to mind "Dreams Of the Witch House", where the witch craved immortality by transforming into something not human. It is slightly LeFanu, where the writer is a legends & folklore type of guy with his stories. I don't agree that there was an M.R. James' presence in it. I think there's a definite Poe in this one. Poe's influence is strongly felt in Lovecraft's fiction. If you're thinking that standard story is that a witch or wizard tries to bring about a monster or an alien type demon that would spell the end of the world and someone tries to thwart the mad plans. That's not necessarily Lovecraft. Maybe in Cthulhu Mythos stories but certainly not Lovecraft.
 
brsrkrkomdy said:
With Rosemary's Baby, you forget one of the lines in dialogue: "God is dead! All hail Satan!" Judeo-christian concept of evil is a motif used in an existential nightmare. There's nothing optimistic in this film which you must notice in Lovecraft, there wasn't anything optimistic in his tales.
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I must admit that I see very little Lovecraft influence on Rosemary's Baby; and as for the line you quote -- that was much more the sort of claim that was being made in the 1960s, especially with the rise of the Church of Satan and various other occult and mystical societies. I can even recall various magazines (such as Time or Life, etc.) carrying that "Is God Dead" debate as a feature article with a large headline on the cover. There may be some Lovecraft influence there, but I really think it was much more the cultural aspects that influenced that film -- as well as the novel from which it was adapted.

Black Sunday springs immediately to mind "Dreams Of the Witch House", where the witch craved immortality by transforming into something not human.
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I'm afraid you lost me there. Where does Keziah Mason "crave immortality by transforming into something not human"? It is even quite debatable that immortality was her goal, or that she achieved such -- she certainly remained human, or Gilman couldn't have killed her by strangling her with that chain. What she did achieve was the ability to travel through hyperspace, going anywhere in time or space which would allow (even briefly) human life. This did enable her to continue into the early 20th century, but only because she had not lived through the intervening years. The witch in Black Sunday (or, more properly, "La maschero del demonio") simply intends to replace her modern counterpart, in order to return to life and have her revenge. If there is any nod to Lovecraft here, I'd say it's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, with Joseph Curwen. But the film itself is inspired by Gogol's "The Viy"; so I'm rather dubious about the Lovecraft connection.

As for the Poe connection... I'm not really seeing a great deal of that, either, unless it be "Ligeia", and even then quite loosely. Or are you referring to a general atmosphere of Poe -- in which case I'd argue that this is much more a mark of the late Gothic and the Romantic writers of the time, rather than exclusively Poe. Wonderful film though... very well sustained atmosphere.
 
That "God is dead" part was sort of a quote from Fredrich Neitzche's. Lovecraft's stories were often scarier when you take away the existence of God in the stories. Same went for Rosemary's Baby. With God being "dead", the tale gets bleaker in the outcome with malevolent entities that are not here for Mankind's benefit.
As for the witch of Black Sunday and the witch in "Dreams Of the Witch House", maybe "achieving immortality" is the not exactly the right objective to describe what these two were trying to do. Yet they are similar in character. The one in Black Sunday was killed twice. As for the witch in "Dreams", I gotta reread that one. My memory's a bit hazy. I do, however, think their objective was for revenge. Why else would they come back?
As for Poe, it's the gothic atmosphere in the likes of Pit & The Pendulum and Fall Of the House of Usher, not necessarily in plot. Poe did have influence on the later gothics. Gothic is a genre that started back in the early nineteenth century and Poe was part of that century. The Romantics influencing Bava's film? I dunno. I doubt it.
 
brsrkrkomdy said:
That "God is dead" part was sort of a quote from Fredrich Neitzche's. Lovecraft's stories were often scarier when you take away the existence of God in the stories. Same went for Rosemary's Baby. With God being "dead", the tale gets bleaker in the outcome with malevolent entities that are not here for Mankind's benefit.
As for the witch of Black Sunday and the witch in "Dreams Of the Witch House", maybe "achieving immortality" is the not exactly the right objective to describe what these two were trying to do. Yet they are similar in character. The one in Black Sunday was killed twice. As for the witch in "Dreams", I gotta reread that one. My memory's a bit hazy. I do, however, think their objective was for revenge. Why else would they come back?
As for Poe, it's the gothic atmosphere in the likes of Pit & The Pendulum and Fall Of the House of Usher, not necessarily in plot. Poe did have influence on the later gothics. Gothic is a genre that started back in the early nineteenth century and Poe was part of that century. The Romantics influencing Bava's film? I dunno. I doubt it.
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Yes, the "God is dead" is (more or less) from Nietzsche (a paraphrase, as I recall, rather than a quote); but it had become a very important part of the culture here in the States in the late 1960s, in connection with the movements mentioned in my earlier post, some of which took it as a sort of banner. The cultural divide over this one went fairly deep, and there were some serious battle lines drawn. So, while the origin is with Nietzsche, I'd still argue the relevance was from what was going on culturally at the time; in neither case from Lovecraft, who did tend to avoid directly bringing in aspects of the Judaeo-Christian tradition (save for exclamations using "God" or such as indications of the narrator's increasingly unsettled emotional -- not necessarily mental -- state).

As for the witch in the Bava film (whose name, by the way, is Asa) and Keziah Mason (she of "The Dreams in the Witch House") -- while there are some very loose similarities, they are really poles apart. Asa is a fully human witch, driven by human passions; while with Keziah we never really have an indication of her motivations, save for brief bursts of anger against Gilman when he does something that threatens what she's doing at the time. And she doesn't "return" -- she moves in and out of our part of (or dimension of) spacetime according to either some alien rhythm (hinted at, perhaps, in the descriptions of the cycles and rhythms in hyperspace) or at her own whim; but she has evidently been around that house periodically ever since her original life was interrupted by being hauled off and tried for witchcraft in the late 17th century. There is no indication of any kind of revenge motif going on there, as there is no one in the tale connected to Keziah or her past in any way.

As for Poe having an influence on the later Gothics... actually, this would be the other way around. The first acknowledged Gothic novel was published in 1765; by the time Poe's writing began to be published (the late 1820s), it was nearly spent, with only a handful (at most) of the Gothics to come. Even "the greatest as well as the last of the Goths", Melmoth the Wanderer, had been published before Poe's first tale ("Metzengerstein", itself something of a send-up of the Gothic genre) saw print. Poe himself was heavily influenced by much of the Gothic paraphernalia and mood -- especially an interesting take on the Burkean sublime, which formed one of the philosophical foundations for the Gothic movement -- but he was perhaps even more heavily influenced by the translations of the German Schaueromantik or such writers as Hoffmann, as well as Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who was very highly regarded by Poe, Mary Shelley, Dickens, etc., though he is largely ignored or denigrated today (more so than is deserved, I'd say).
 
Just to let all you Lovecraftophiles know that Amazon is now accepting pre-orders for volume 5 of the Lovecraft Collection (Strange Aeons).

I've got mine on order:)
 
Pre-orders??? That one has been available for some time from Lurker films....

Here's the link:

Lurker Films—Lovecraft, Cthulhu, Poe, Weird Tales, Movies, FIlms, DVDs

It's an interesting take on the tale, but a bit shakier than earlier entries in the series, in my opinion. Still, I support the efforts because these filmmakers are trying very conscientiously to walk that line between slavishly following text and doing something genuinely creative with it... and I'm glad to see so many small filmmakers, especially amateurs, putting out such serious efforts; as an amateur himself, HPL is likely to have approved of the intent and the spirit, if not always the result....
 
Strangely enough Annabel Lee is also available for pre-order (with the same issue date ...28th Oct). Perhaps it's a relaunch through Lurker's new distributor (Microcinema International)
 
Did anyone think that Cloverfield had Lovecraftian themes? It seemed to me that it was one of the old ones that had awoken and risen from the depths and wreaking havoc in New York city? At least it could be interpreted in that way, right? Or is it just me reading seeing what I want to see?
 
I'm amazed nobody's mentioned Hellboy yet. The ending in particular, featuring tentacled elder gods breaking through to our dimension from space, was pure Lovecraft.

World of Warcraft features a giant tentacled boss called C'Thon in one of its many dungeons.
 
Has anyone mentioned MESSIAH OF EVIL on this thread? It was a 70s film, made I think by the people who later did the SWAMP THING movie. It follows the investigations of a young woman whose artist father has been off the radar for a while. She goes to the small seaside town where he has been living and painting, to find he seems to have vanished altogether leaving bizarre paintings all over his house there (these are very well executed, a wonderful mix of hyper-realism and surrrealism) and records of his descent into horror. The movie is mildly incoherent at times, with an opening sequence that has no connection to the rest of the story, and it does descend into zombie-movie style cliche at the end, but for a while there it's a great 70s-tinged take on a decidedly Lovecraftian creepy-little-town-hiding-ancient-curses theme.

One of Roger Corman's Poe adaptations was actually a Lovecraft adaptation. I'd have loved to have seen Vincent Price essay more Lovecraftian roles. I can just see him as the ghoulish painter, Pickman.
 
knivesout said:
Has anyone mentioned MESSIAH OF EVIL on this thread? It was a 70s film, made I think by the people who later did the SWAMP THING movie. It follows the investigations of a young woman whose artist father has been off the radar for a while. She goes to the small seaside town where he has been living and painting, to find he seems to have vanished altogether leaving bizarre paintings all over his house there (these are very well executed, a wonderful mix of hyper-realism and surrrealism) and records of his descent into horror. The movie is mildly incoherent at times, with an opening sequence that has no connection to the rest of the story, and it does descend into zombie-movie style cliche at the end, but for a while there it's a great 70s-tinged take on a decidedly Lovecraftian creepy-little-town-hiding-ancient-curses theme.
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Now, that's a new one (to me, at any rate). I've not run into it before; but I see it is in public domain now. Hmmm.....

One of Roger Corman's Poe adaptations was actually a Lovecraft adaptation. I'd have loved to have seen Vincent Price essay more Lovecraftian roles. I can just see him as the ghoulish painter, Pickman.
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Oi, the pun! Yes, that was Edgar Allan Poe's The Haunted Palace -- which was an adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. (It also featured Lon Chaney, Jr., and Elisha Cook, Jr., for the matter of that....) Written by Charles Beamont -- a not-particularly-sympathetic handling of Lovecraft, but it definitely has its good points.

And, while this isn't an adaptation of any of his fiction, the new documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, has been released on DVD and Blu-ray just last week; all the reviews I've seen of this one have been quite positive:

Lovecraft - Fear of the Unknown

Unfortunately, even though I ordered it well in advance, Amazon either didn't get their copies, or didn't get enough of them, as mine has been delayed (I hope for not too long a period)....
 
Messiah Of Evil is available from Amazon 3rd party suppliers for £1.38 as part of a double bill DVD (that'll be about 2 or 3 dollars for the Americanos among us:))

P.S. Good to see you back knivesout. I hope you are well.
 
Looking through this thread, I find I've also seen Die, Monster, Die! a somewhat haphazard adaptation of The Colour Out Of Space, starring Boris Karloff. I thought it had some good atmospheric moments - really, the first half of the movie is quite decent, apart from the melodramatic ham-acting by the younger actors - but the second half gets completely out of hand, apart from some reasonably creepy moments in the greenhouse and down in the cellars. The thing is I'm rather fond of these kinds of not-very-good horror flicks with the mouldy old mansion, suspicious townsfolk and whatnot. It's certainly not going to give you anything like the authentic Lovecraftian chill, however.

P.S. I'm fine , Foxbat, thanks. Have you seen Messiah Of Evil?
 
Speaking of... I landed a loan of that film and have now seen it. Very odd... but it works. Think I'll need to pick up a copy at some point. I can see a certain affinity to Lovecraftian themes there, yes; I'm not sure it quite fits the term Lovecraftian overall, but it's an intriguing little film. Flawed, but rather catching.
 
How cryptic. Which film do you mean?

ETA: Messiah Of Evil, I think? Yes, it is indeed flawed but oddly compelling. The Lovecraft connection is not overt, not even implicit in the film-maker's intentions perhaps, but the film can be 'read' in a Lovecraftian light.
 
Sorry. I was going on your reference in the post just above. Yes, Messiah of Evil is what I am referring to. Just finished watching it tonight, and I can see what you mean. I like the fact that you never actually see the Dark Stranger's face clearly... adds a nice touch. (Michael Greer's alienated performance rather adds to the bizarre, nightmarish feel of the whole, too. And a brief, but very effective, performance by Royal Dano, as well.)

For all the pure bilge that was produced in the 1970s in the field, occasionally they did come up with something which genuinely haunts. This odd little item is definitely in that category.
 
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