The Call of Cthulhu





A couple weeks back I was at the Necronomicon convention in Tampa. One of the more interesting things I saw there was the short movie based on H.P. Lovecraft’s story The Call of Cthulhu. The central conceit is that this movie is supposed to be a silent movie made in 1920's, contemporary to when Lovecraft’s story was published. This also means the movie has an excuse to have no dialogue and to use primitive special effects to portray things that would be budget busting even for a Hollywood movie, like a sunken city with “impossible” geometry and a seventy-foot-tall alien god attacking a ship.



The movie is very faithful to Lovecrraft’s story, even keeping the structure of flashbacks within flashbacks. All the important events of the story are there, from Lagrasse interrupting the cult ceremony to the Alert finding the risen R'lyeh. As I mentioned earlier everything is done to look like a movie made in the 1920’s, so R'lyeh, for example, is realized using simple Caligari-style flat sets. Cthulhu is a stop motion animated puppet, and not a very good one. A neat Georges Méliès-looking trick (though probably really done with computers) is used for the bit where a sailor falls into an impossible angle.

If you're really into Lovecraft it's probably worth the $20. I've been meaning to buy it myself. If you're not into Lovecraft, I can't imagine you would find it very interesting.

Posted: Thu - November 17, 2005 at      

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