The Call Of Cthulhu!

A BIG, Texas-sized CHT to the reader who e-mailed me a link to the just-released DVD of The Call of Cthulhu!

For those who may not know, The Call of Cthulhu is one of the keystone stories of early 20th-century weird fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft.

The story dates from 1926, and now the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society has adapted the story to film–done in the style of a 1926 silent film!

This was an outstanding choice.

Though there have been a number of Lovecraft film adaptations, they are generally regarded as unworthy by Lovecraft fans. Too much of Lovecraft’s ability to create mood depends on his narration, and when you have characters speaking to each other in naturalistic dialogue, the same effect just can’t be created. Also, many filmmakers who have adapted his stories have been notoriously unfaithful in doing so, changing elements left and right so that the film bears little resemblance to what Lovecraft wrote.

This film, being done by a historical society, is extremely faithful to the story and, by chucking out naturalistic dialogue in the manner of a silent film, it is able to capture the eerie mood of a Lovecraft story through the power of image and music.

This film is a REALLY good adaptation. Lovecraft (who did go to the movies and even had a job as a ticket salesman at a movie theater for a while) would have LOVED this flim if it had been made in 1926 so that he could have seen it. He would have raved about it in his letters to friends.

One of the changes that the filmmakers do make in the story is they add a framing sequence in which the narrator is telling his story to a sympathetic listener (apparently a doctor in a mental hospital). This lets them get into the first-person perspective that Lovecraft used to tell the story.

As with any silent film, most of the story is told visually, but there are title cards representing the words of the characters to help move the flow of information along.

Most of the film was shot in Hollywood, but they do have a location shoot at the Fleur-de-lis bulding in Providence, Rhode Island–a building that Lovecraft knew and used in the original story.

This film was produced on a tiny budget, and it’s AMAZING what they were able to do with the money they had. The low budget does show through in some places, though. For example, the scene in which Inspector Legrasse of the New Orleans P.D. meets with the American Archaeological Society is rather too small in scope and makes it look like the AAS has only five members.

The sequence in which Inspector Legrasse pursues the cultists worshipping in the Lousiana swamps, though, is SPECTACULAR.

The crazy architecture of the sunken city of R’Lyeh is also excellently portrayed in the film.

And Cthulhu himself is REALLY scary when he rises out of the ocean in front of the bow of the ship.

It’s really impressive what the folks at the HPLHS were able to do–PARTICULARLY when you consider that they made this whole film on just $50,000!

One bit I was especially interested to see how they handled it was during the chase scene on R’Lyeh where a fleeing sailor "was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an
angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse" according to Lovecraft.

This worked BRILLIANTLY on screen! It was WICKED COOL!

But you’ll have to buy the DVD yourself to see it. I won’t give away what they do.

WATCH THE TRAILER! (Love that "Utterly Cyclopean" file size version!)

GET THE DVD!

The film has a running time of 47 minutes, and the DVD includes a bunch
of bonus features, including a "making of" documentary that runs almost
as long as the film itself. It was SURPRISING to learn how the
filmmakers were able to pull off some of the things you see on screen.
Low-tech approaches can sometimes work AMAZINGLY well. (Content
Advisory: There are also a few offputting things mentioned in the
"making of" documentary that I wish they hadn’t included. That doesn’t affect the film itself, though.)