Sunday, October 31, 2010

October Movie Reviews: Lovecraft Film Fest

Last ones. This last round are some Lovecraft movies.  Pity poor Lovecraft, his books are so good and so scary; but the movie adaptations are usually so bad.  There are some exceptions.


Dagon (2001)
Loosely based on "The Shadows Over Insmouth" it moves the action to Spain.  Here the EoD is slicing up  humans to make "costumes" for the fish mutants.  It has gore, it has sub-par acting and most of the story is preserved but the overall effect is a bit sub-par.  It was an enjoyable little flick, but certainly more of the Lovecraft frame of mind (ie. how many and who survives) than what you normally see in Hollywood films.  It has it's problems to be sure, but it is one of the better adaptations.



Beyond The Dunwich Horror (2008)
This direct to Sci-Fi Channel movie (with an unrated version out there) is Dean Stockwell's second chance at doing The Dunwich Horror (the first was 1970).  This one is more Hollywood and it shows.  In a bad way.  Only barley recognizable as Lovecraft's tale it does have some nice special effects, Yog-Sothoth looks pretty cool.  But there is this whole drug-dream sequences with Abdul Alhazred and his harem of naked girls (I am not 100% sure that Lovecraft ever actually had any women in his stories).  There is a starting scene that is more "Exorcist" or even the movie version of "Constantine" than Lovecraft.  In the end this is weak movie, despite Dean Stockwell playing Henry Armitage and Lovecraft regular Jeffry Combs playing Wilbur Whateley. In fact both are completely misused here to let some D-List actors have all the screen time.  I guess that is how they paid for those special effects.



I'll tally up my movies later.

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