Dunwich Horror and body painted Symbolism

Was interesting watched this film earlier today. Dean Stockwell gets painted up in strange incantations, I suppose Amerindinan symbolism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM8EbSvNFqg

At 1:25 and 1:37/38.

He also uses some strange hypnotism on Sandra Dee briefly while staring into her eyes at the beginning of the movie.

Strange movie, not bad and not good at the same time...

Yeah i agree there, it wasnt really good but had some minute likable quality yet. The creature had many tentacle or literately serpent heads but was mostly invisible which is typical for Lovecraft I guess right?! One scene when the beast attacks the house, it felt like Oliver Stone's Wolf Witch hut or Evil Dead, which is cause they took it outve Lovecraft.

Sure, now that you mention it the creature is very reminiscent of these invisible spirits in Evil Dead. Same use of the camera. Also, I dunno if this scene was in the version you watched but the invisible creature appears to rape a woman in the woods, like in Evil Dead.

It doesn't follow the original HPL tale too closely, which is far better than the movie in every way. In the original tale Wilbur Whateley is described as an hybrid between human and alien, as his mother (a witch) used to have sex with invisible aliens called in the cromlech. Wilbur is only apparently human half waist above. The belly and legs are totally madness.

http://www.johncoulthart.com/images/whateley.jpg

His brother, the invisible thing, is also invisible in the movie though the main characters find the way of "painting" its surface to make it visible. It's a gigantic mountain of flesh with tentacles and lots of legs, and a deformed humanoid face above, some kind of Carpenter's "The thing" shit.



It's a very good tale, one of the good quality ones, as there are a lot of HPL tales which are extremely repetitive and unoriginal. That and MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, SHADOW OVER INSSMOUTH and maybe SHADOW OUT OF TIME are my favourites, I think these are really excellent over the rest.ç, minor ones IMO.

Guillermo del Toro was thinking about adapting MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS into film, with H.R.Giger designs. That could have been an ass kicking movie, even when Giger i'm not sure if is capable of really drawing something today. I love Giger but no doubt is one of the most overrated artists ever. It was decades ago since he stopped being good...

Mountains of Madness had an unnoficial film adaptation, though, in Carpenter's "The Thing", being that and "Alien" two of the veeeeery few quality lovecraftian movies ever made. And they are not official... The official HPL movies are simply unwatchable.

Brian Yuzna had some not good and not bad at the same time movies, also. "Dagon" and "Re-sonator" had very good moments, and some other shitty ones... "Re-Animator" had nothing to do about Lovecraft but the name, was a funny movie anyway. There was another movie with 3 or 4 directors, called "Necronomicon", with 3 stories adapting Lovecraft. Nothing really good, there, but it's watchable. The first story is shit but the atmosphere and fx are very well done, the second one is weak and boring and simply doesn't fit even when it's directly adapting a Lovecraft tale. The third one has nothing to do about HPL, it's really amazingly horrible and gory, though it's so original it's worth a watch. But it's really like the worst bad acid trip in history.



https://2img.net/h/i158.photobucket.com/albums/t114/todocolnuevo/PELICULAS2/RESONATOR.jpg



Some years ago I heard somehting about a movie called CTHULHU starring Tori Spelling... Go figure...

My recomendation would be this fan-made film, it's simply the one and only true adaptation of a HPL tale with quality. It's not perfect and it's a little boring, but it's a little jewel as it is filmed as a mute 20s b/w film:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Hy3BsSuzaOI/SKnJ8tuezmI/AAAAAAAAA2I/sITUyaTcf38/s1600-h/the_call_of_cthulhu_dvd_cover.jpg

Really, I had a very bad adiction some years ago, I used to collect every Lovecraft related movie I could find, but got so sick watching these pieces of absolute shit that luckily my addition dissapeared. There are some films there that really hurts, like "Beyond the wall of sleep". which is one of the worst movies I have ever watched, a highly pretentious fan-made movie with zero talent and a vomitive attitude. Run away from this waste and the 99% rest of Lovecraftian films, trust me.

Flaming Turd wrote:

"Re-sonator"

aka "From Beyond"

True, same thing with Hellboy, the comics are very much in the vein of the old "Weird Tales" pulps. Carpenter's "In the mouth of Madness" was certainly a homage(or pastiche) to Lovecraft as was another film he made, "Prince of Darkness". Funny reason why I remember "The Re-Animator" was cause I used to watch it when I was a kid, mainly for the nudity,lol. Havent seen it since.

Dean Stockwell is to be in a re-make of this very same movie btw, havent a clue though when it will be released if ever.

You know as pointless as it was in the script, the more I re-read Stone's script the more I liked Thulsa Doom summoning the demi-god Set from outve the earth--Same goes for the invisible evil threatening Conan at the Wolf Witch's lair and the return of the Wolf-Witch as a shade at the tent before the end battle.

If somehow one can merge Stone's script with Milius 1-3 versions, I think we could have great movie(s) and I wouldnt mind seeing it made..even in CGI animation, but with a more Frazettian Conan and atmosphere.

Cromulus The Destroyer wrote:

You know as pointless as it was in the script, the more I re-read Stone's script the more I liked Thulsa Doom summoning the demi-god Set from outve the earth--Same goes for the invisible evil threatening Conan at the Wolf Witch's lair and the return of the Wolf-Witch as a shade at the tent before the end battle.
.

It's strange but the Lovecraftian concepts, entities and creatures are very attractive. Though i can't really explain why. Maybe t's because these monsters are not simple "psycopath animals", you know, ugly animals who kill people, but much more. They have very deep psichological lectures and even when we are not capable of seen those conciously, they work in some level. That was the importance of lovecraft, i'm already writting some texts about the topic, how Lovecraft patented the "Cosmic Horror" which basicaly sets in an universe without god or afterlife. It's populated by aliens absolutely unknown by humans, us who are totally ignorant about the truth. We believe (and hold that hope though religion and faith) that the Universe and the Unknown is gentle, but the universe is pure hostility. Human beings can only become crazy, knowing the truth.

This is much more terrifying than any vampire or ghost or devil who takes you to hell. Nah, what really scares modern people is madness, this is a real fear, also the posibility of a horrible sickness or physical deformation. Lovecraft was all about that.

The design of his monsters is strangely highly related to "vanguardias" like cubism, expresionism and other abstract styles born in the 20's and 30's. Funny cause HPL hated this kind of art and only liked classical stuff, though he was extremely cubist, like it or not.

I believe Lovecraft's childhood was really painful, psychological terms. Very comfortable in a way -his family adored him- but also very terrible -his family was very repressive, go figure how a kind of family like that would affect a so imaginative little kid-.

Writting was a good way of exortizing his pain and fear, in the form of expresionistic monsters. Reason why he was sane in person, a very soft, calm and nice man, as everybody described him. He put all his shit in his writtings. Though, it wasn't enough. Lovecraft would have needed thousand of years of therapy, lol. He commited passive suicide, mistreating his body till he got cancer. He didn't respected his body at all, he was 100% intellectual and thought the body was a minor thing...

What I hate about Loveacraft the way is allways seen, or adapted, is almost allways the authors take Loveacraft's sickness and don't add anything. HPL was very cultivated though he was very wrong in a lot of his phylosophies, also had a very repressive mind and judged and prejudged everything all the time, He was very obssessive and that is not really a quality a good writter should have. Ultimately, today a lot of his views are very antiquated. Reason why is so hard to adapt him. The atmospheres of course still works but not the main phylosophy.

His "Universe without a God" is an answer to the old classic Ghost Tales, though his "monsters" are today named and studied by psychology (not yet developed during Lovecraft life). I mean, CTHULHU is, today, not an unknown monster, but a very well known one by all of us. If you want to adapt LOVECRAFT today the author shuld be aware of the modern meanings of the monsters, if not, the movies will allways be a monster body count -and not a too good one-. "Alien" is the best example of a very studied HPL adaptation, as the monster there symbolizes a lot of things the authors of the movie were very aware of. That's why it worked so well and became a classic.


Best Lovecraft adaptation ever in comics, these two:

Alberto Breccia HPL faithfull adaptations. The art is expressionist as the essence of HPL literature.

http://www.adn.es/clipping/ADNIMA20071017_1673/4.jpg

http://www.dandare.info/artists/images/breccia_les%20mythes%20de%20cthulhu.jpg

Also, his son Enrique Breccia made this comic, excellent. Not translating word for word HPL but adapting his world. Simply excellent, and with new lectures and views. Also, his world, allways depicted as black and white, appears in full color, not loosing it's dangerous and sinister essence. Simply necessary to understand (hopefully) the literary world of the man.

http://www.atlanticacomic.com/imagenes/imagenesArticulos/463/Lovecraft

Yeah, one of the things I liked was that aspect also the usage of the Titans/Titanomachy/ Chthonic dieties of Greek mythology-- although their more ET in nature in Lovecraft and melded with every other races and cultures, including Amerindian.

A download link for the Lovecraft adapatation to comic I talked about in previous posts.

Sorry, the texts are in spanish, Still, if you know the original Lovecraft writtings maybe you won't need to understand the language, also the subrrealistic, almost abstract artwork is interesting enough.

http://www.4shared.com/file/42106287/f921da1a/Los_Mitos_De_Cthulhu__Lovecraft-Breccia_.html

Was Howard's horror stories any good? Or were they Edger Allen Poe imitation....

Yeah, some worth reading like "Pigeons from Hell", that one did work for me. -And now you mention, it is really "poe-sque" in atmosphere, but not in style-.

There was a tv adapation, -"TV Thrillerr" (1961) -, in black and white. And I downloaded it some years ago, it was nice. One of the most -and also, if i'm not wrong, the first- faithful adaptations of Howard.

http://www.tebeosfera.com/1/Libris/REH/otros/medios/cineTV/PigeonsFromHellTV.jpg

The text. Enjoy.

http://arthursclassicnovels.com/arthurs/howard/pighell10.html


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There were some other stories like "THE BLACK STONE", set in the Cthulhu mythos. Indeed, that one was written following Lovecraft's style. It's interesting, though is more a bad acid trip than a true horror story, really.

The text.

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601711h.html

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There were some others, but I can't remember, don't think they impressed me that much. Some werewolf and ghosts stories...

Thanks, I'll check them out in a bit.

By the way, Robert Howard and Lovecraft wrotte a story together.

It was some other pulp friends in some kind of literary game/experiment. One started a tale, wrotte 5 pages of it, then the next guy came and wrotte the next 5 and so.

http://www.howardworks.com/challengefrombeyond.html

The authors (in writting order) were C. L. Moore, Abraham Merrit, Lovecraft, R.E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long.

Was it good? Nope, too weird still 100% pulpy. Though is interesting noticing how Lovecraft wanna go into mystery and more passive main character who is interested in intellectual knoledge, and then Howard turns him into an action hero . I must admit I don't really know much about the rest of authors, I read some C.L.Moore -a woman "sword&sorcery" writter!- story when I was a teen but I can't really remember. Instead remember an Abraham Merrit story about satanism and witches which I bougth for my cousin while he was hospitalized, then he passed me the book and I think it wasn't bad in terms of mystery and storytelling, had the flavour of old black and white movies with Lugosi and so.

The text:

http://entr0py.org/lovecraft/challenge.htm

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In Lovecraft's story "The shadow out of time", appears (briefly) a CIMMERIAN character called CROM-NA -(or something like that, surely was called CROM-SOMETHING).

Other references in Lovecraft to Howard were the Unspraischten Kulten (or somehting like that ) which was a book ala Necronomicon that Howard invented, and lovecraft took it for his library of fictional dangerous tomes.

Once I met a guy who BELIEVED a copy of the Necronomicon was in the dungeons of the Vatican. The guy was in his 40 or so, and directed a spanish fanzine about Robert E. Howard -which is still being edited today - Shit... The fanzine was, well, I never really liked the fandom world, you know, once I met some nice people but most of the times they were all extremely weird people. Besides I used to collaborate in a fanzine about Lovecraft. I was in my 15... I used to make drawings of monsters and cartoons, the logo of the fanzine was also mine, the typical Cthulhu with open wings...

http://www.tercerafundacion.net/biblioteca/ver/coleccion/499

One day in high school, during a greek exam which I wasn't into at all, I started to writte a tale inspired by the teacher of greek -a fat old red nosed witch- and then I made a horrible tale about a fat withch who comes to a cromlech in the forest for some nude dancing summoning a fatal wind that kills all the little creatures from the forest. The tale was included in issue number 6. I think if i read that today, i puke

I never branched out from KULL or CONAN, when I get the time I'll view some of those, thanks man!