Cthulhu...

[DraconianOne]

...the movie.

Knowing there's a couple of Lovecraft lovers on the site and not seeing a link to this elsewhere, thought I'd lower the tone some.

Set in the modern day and starring your favourite Beverly Hills 90210 alumni, Tori Spelling.  From what I gather, it's loosely based on Shadow of Innsmouth but having had no budget for makeup effects, they swapped fishmen for gays.  Or something.

World Premiere is at Seattle International Film Festival on June 14th.

Low res trailer here
Myspace site (with different trailer?) here

[Trippy]

Tori Spelling is playing Cthulhu? I guess I can see that...

[Riggswolfe]

I couldn 't finish watching the trailer. Tori Spelling was the best actor in the trailer and that's saying something. *sigh*

[schild]

Lovecraft is going to rise from his grave and kill every single person associated with this movie.

[Murgos]

I would suggest that if any F13'ers live in Seattle they consider moving pretty soon.  The Great Old Ones are going to do something pretty horrific to that city for hosting the movie and I am pretty sure you won't want to be around for that.

[Furiously]

I'm pretty sure they will go after LA first.

[Engels]

Well, I'm in trouble. The 'studio' for Cthulhu Teh Movie is literally 2 blocks away. Its a shack type dealio, with Cthulhu spray painted on the corrugated metal exterior. It looks largely abandoned.

[ahoythematey]

That movie is going to be as painful to watch as Tori Spelling is hideous.  On looks alone, she's so fugly she could be an Old One.

Besides, a Cthulu movie was already made, and it wasn't half bad at that.

[HaemishM]

Any adaptation of a Lovecraft tale that starts with a digital phone ringing is sure to open the mouths of hell and spew forth bilious shit. This movie will fail on all levels with the wet slap thud of a turd hitting the floor.

[WayAbvPar]

Every year I swear I am going to go to the SIFF, and never make it. This might just be the thing to get me there. I may just sit in the lobby and watch all the people streaming out, shaking their heads and screaming for refunds.

[Righ]

Tori Spelling is playing Cthulhu? I guess I can see that...

She would be better cast as Ghatanothoa.

[Furiously]

And so I learn about the darkside of Kitten Huffing.

[WayAbvPar]

And so I learn about the darkside of Kitten Huffing.

Hahaha- I found that same article. Great minds...

[Polysorbate80]

I would suggest that if any F13'ers live in Seattle they consider moving pretty soon.  The Great Old Ones are going to do something pretty horrific to that city for hosting the movie and I am pretty sure you won't want to be around for that.

Only out of jealously that something could be more damaging to man's sanity than they themselves are...

[Samwise]

My expectations are pretty low where Lovecraft-inspired movies are concerned, since so many of them barely qualify for the term "B-movie".

Are they really basing this one on "Shadow over Innsmouth" and not "Call of Cthulhu"?  I don't think anyone's going to do Innsmouth better than Dagon did, tbh.

[Ironwood]

I still think this was the most Lovecraftian thing I've seen.

Yes, I know, but it's still the closest...

[Samwise]

I agree, that one was also good.  Better than I expected, at least.

[Numtini]

There's an amateur silent of Call of Cthulhu that I thought was quite good. For me at least, the B/W silent treatment overcame a lot.

[ahoythematey]

http://www.cthulhulives.org/cocmovie/
I fucking love the poster for that.

Dagon looks like it could be really decent, I'll have to check that one out.

[Murgos]

I still think this was the most Lovecraftian thing I've seen.

Yes, I know, but it's still the closest...

Yeah, that one grabbed the whole 'inescapably going insane' thing that Lovecraft worked so hard to portray.

[schild]

I <3 Sam Neill.

[DraconianOne]

My expectations are pretty low where Lovecraft-inspired movies are concerned, since so many of them barely qualify for the term "B-movie".

Are they really basing this one on "Shadow over Innsmouth" and not "Call of Cthulhu"?  I don't think anyone's going to do Innsmouth better than Dagon did, tbh.

I gather Cthulhu actually has nothing to do with it:

The Lovecraft short story "Shadow over Innsmouth" concerns a man who takes an archaeological interest in a small New England town, only to discover that its people worship a sinister fish-god called Dagon. Soon he learns that his own ancestors interbred with a race of amphibious monsters on the site, and that he's in danger of becoming a monster himself. Cogswell saw in the story's subtext a horror of small-town life that he says resonated with the experience of gay friends: "I knew folks who grew up in these backwoods places and then in their 30s, one of their parents died or had a stroke, and they had to go back and face their past." In Cthulhu, the protagonist is a gay professor at Cascadia University (played by Seattle University), who is called back to his hostile Oregon hometown in order to execute his mother's will.

Source

"It's beginning to look a lot like fishmen..."

[NowhereMan]

Sounds like it'll turn out the real demon twisting the souls of mortals is homophobia. Who knew fag haters could live forever as physically grotesque amphibian immortals.

[Samwise]

Dagon looks like it could be really decent, I'll have to check that one out.

It's exceptionally decent.  Still squarely in B-movie territory, of course, but leagues ahead of, say, The Dunwich Horror.

I'm disappointed to hear that Cthulhu will be based on the same story, because I'm pretty confident that it won't do it nearly as well.

[Fargull]

http://www.cthulhulives.org/cocmovie/
I fucking love the poster for that.

Dagon looks like it could be really decent, I'll have to check that one out.

I bought the movie.  Was very well done and I recommend it if your a Cthulhu fan.

In the Mouth of Madness is great of course, so is The Unnamable or Lord of Illusions and an olde The Haunted Palace.

This generation needs a Vincent Price.

[Murgos]

Lord of Illusions was good.  Very much a Clive Barker tale though and not really Lovecraftian.

I don't know if I care for subverting The Shadow Over Innsmouth into a dealing with being gay thing though.  To me those stories were just all about the strange fucked up shit people get into when you give them to much time alone.

Go into some old back-asswards fishing town with a few hundred residents out in the middle of nowhere and tell me you don't start wondering where they are hiding the fish-people within about 30 minutes of being there.

[SnakeCharmer]

I gotta ask.

How do you pronounce "cthulhu"?

ca-thewl-hue?

chewl-hue?

cee-thewl-hue?

Keep in mind I'm from Al-uh-bam-uh and we say things funny down here.  So, make sure your phonetic description has a deep Southern twang to it.  I haven't seen the commercial for it.

[CmdrSlack]

Every year I swear I am going to go to the SIFF, and never make it. This might just be the thing to get me there. I may just sit in the lobby and watch all the people streaming out, shaking their heads and screaming for refunds.

Here's your reason to go to the SIFF this year.  If I had the likely HUGE amount of cash needed to get a flight out to Seattle this late in the game, I'd be going solely to see this.  I can't find a screening here in Chicago.

[Murgos]

I gotta ask.

How do you pronounce "cthulhu"?

ca-thewl-hue?

chewl-hue?

cee-thewl-hue?

Keep in mind I'm from Al-uh-bam-uh and we say things funny down here.  So, make sure your phonetic description has a deep Southern twang to it.  I haven't seen the commercial for it.

I always thought it was

Ka-Thew-Lew

But I've heard

Ka-Tew-Lew

Often enough too.

[SnakeCharmer]

I still think this was the most Lovecraftian thing I've seen.

Yes, I know, but it's still the closest...

That's a GREAT flick....

[Llava]

Ka-Tew-Lew

That's how I say it at the chants.  I never really paid much attention to what everyone else is saying.

[Numtini]

Go into some old back-asswards fishing town with a few hundred residents out in the middle of nowhere and tell me you don't start wondering where they are hiding the fish-people within about 30 minutes of being there.

That describes pretty much of where I live on Cape Cod. I can walk in the vault in town hall, pick up a town report from 200 years ago, and see some of the same lastnames on the board of selectmen that are there now.

And well, I swear I'm not making this up, but there's a local "look" that a lot of people have that is vaguely fish faced, with the face jutting out around the lips, weak chin, slightly recessed forehead. My partner and I jokingly call it The Innsmouth Look, but honestly, I'm not sure it wasn't what Lovecraft was thinking of. We're only an hour from Providence here and the same look is all over SE Mass. I know Lovecraft was a pretty typical "yankee" racist, worried about the non-Anglo European immigrants, and I wonder if this isn't his reaction to what is obviously some type of standard ethnic mix locally.

[Samwise]

I don't wonder.  I'm pretty certain that's exactly what it was.

[Johny Cee]

Go into some old back-asswards fishing town with a few hundred residents out in the middle of nowhere and tell me you don't start wondering where they are hiding the fish-people within about 30 minutes of being there.

That describes pretty much of where I live on Cape Cod. I can walk in the vault in town hall, pick up a town report from 200 years ago, and see some of the same lastnames on the board of selectmen that are there now.

And well, I swear I'm not making this up, but there's a local "look" that a lot of people have that is vaguely fish faced, with the face jutting out around the lips, weak chin, slightly recessed forehead. My partner and I jokingly call it The Innsmouth Look, but honestly, I'm not sure it wasn't what Lovecraft was thinking of. We're only an hour from Providence here and the same look is all over SE Mass. I know Lovecraft was a pretty typical "yankee" racist, worried about the non-Anglo European immigrants, and I wonder if this isn't his reaction to what is obviously some type of standard ethnic mix locally.

Lovecraft was a blue-blood Protestant who's family fell on hard times (he was an atheist,  but you have to understand he came from the New England blue-blood).  He had that 19th century/early 20th century xenophobia with a dose of social darwinism.

He liked to describe most country folk in his early work as obvious degenerate from inbreeding.

His later work,  most of the racism/ethnocentrism was pretty muted.  He was actually married to a New York jew for a while,  which seems to have toned it down.

[Johny Cee]

I think I posted this once in a thread no one read, but...  Neil Gaiman has written a couple of Mythos related short stories that are available online.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/shortstories

"A Study in Emerald" was Hugo nominated,  and is a Arthur Conan Doyle style detective riff in a world with Lovecraftian leanings.  "I, Cthulthu" is...  alright.


As far as movies capturing the feel of Lovecraft...  what about The Thing and Event Horizon?  I know the Thing was based on another author's short story,  but the film had the paranoia, mental strain, and futility in the face of truly alien beings down pat.

I'm not sure Dagon is worth a rental,  but it's probably one of the best adaptations of Lovecrafts works.  There was a Jeffrey Coombs movie loosely based on Lovecraft that was pretty messed up....  besides Reanimator.

"From Beyond"