By: Mona Bassil …….
Cosmic dread, inescapable doom, scientific disasters, madness and haunting visions, the decline of civilization, the dark side of spirituality and the occult, mysterious and terrifying creatures and extraterrestrials… These are the overall characteristics of a subgenre of horror that is described as Lovecraftian, in reference to the American author who depicted such bizarre, disturbing, and mind-bending themes: H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937).
“All my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large. When we cross the line to the boundless and hideous unknown—the shadow-haunted Outside—we must remember to leave our humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold.”
– Lovecraft, Note to the editor of the pulp magazine Weird Tales
He may have been relatively unknown in his lifetime, but he influenced the works of many contemporary writers and directors, namely Stephen King, John Carpenter, Neil Gaiman, and Guillermo del Toro. Not to mention psychedelic rock, black metal, and heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath, Metallica, Cradle of Filth, and naturally, the eponymous The Great Old Ones and H. P. Lovecraft.
Here is a selection of Lovecraftian horror movies that were either adapted from the author’s works or inspired by his unsettling and thought-provoking fictional universe.
The Dunwich Horror (1970)
“People seldom visit Dunwich. The town is ruined, decadent, and its annals reek of overt viciousness, murder, crime, and violent deed, unnamable.”
Adapted from Lovecraft’s short story of the same name, The Dunwich Horror is directed by Daniel Haller and stars Sandra Dee as Nancy Wagner, Dean Stockwell as Wilbur Whateley, and Ed Begley as Dr. Henry Armitage. It’s a story of witchcraft and necromancy that involves a young man with a hypnotic gaze, his “almost human” twin who goes on a killing spree, a student he abducts and impregnates, his mother locked in an asylum, and a ritual to revive The Old Ones using the Necronomicon or Book of the Dead.
Necronomicon (1993)
Directed by Brian Yuzna, Christophe Gans, and Shusuke Kaneko, Necronomicon is a French-American anthology film famous for its artistic makeup and animatronic effects, winning the award for Best Special Effects at the 1994 Fantafestival. It is inspired by Lovecraft’s The Rats in the Walls, Cool Air, and The Whisperer in Darkness and is divided into four segments. The Library is the frame story that stars the ever-versatile Jeffrey Combs as the author, who visits a monastery to check out a copy of the Necronomicon.
The Drowned features Bruce Payne as Edward De Lapoer, a distraught widower and father who loses faith in God and uses the Book of the Dead to bring his family back. The Cold follows reporter Dale Porkel (Dennis Christopher) as he investigates a series of bizarre murders in Boston. And finally, Whispers centers on Philadelphia police officers Paul (Obba Babatundé) and Sarah (Signy Coleman), who are tracking a suspect known as The Butcher.
Castle Freak (1995)
Inspired by Lovecraft’s The Outsider, Stuart Gordon’s Castle Freak is a gory, low-budget, direct-to-video flick starring Combs as John Reilly, a recovering alcoholic who inherits a 12th-century castle in Italy and moves there with his wife Susan (Barbara Crampton) and blind daughter Rebecca (Jessica Dollarhide). Little do they know that there is a murderous monster locked underneath.
Reviewers on IMDb are generally enthusiastic, concluding, “The make-up is outstanding and very realistic,” “The film is creepy and highly atmospheric throughout and has many intense moments,” and “The monster inspires a complex blend of fear, pity, and revulsion.”
The Resurrected (1991)
Also marketed as The Ancestor and Shatterbrain, Dan O’Bannon’s The Resurrected is adapted from the novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and features John Terry, Jane Sibbett, Chris Sarandon, and Robert Romanus. It is considered one of the best horror films of the 1990s due to its main cast’s compelling performances, eerie New England atmosphere, and faithful, albeit modernized, adaptation of a literary classic. The plot centers on inexplicable, brutal murders and an antisocial chemical engineer who raises his necromancer ancestor from the dead.
Color Out of Space (2019)
Based on the short story of the same name, Color Out of Space is co-written and directed by Richard Stanley and stars Nicolas Cage as the farmer Nathan Gardner, Joely Richardson as his entrepreneur wife Theresa, Madeleine Arthur as their Wiccan teenage daughter Lavinia, Elliot Knight as hydrologist Ward Phillips, Tommy Chong as the squatter Ezra, and Josh C. Waller as Sheriff Pierce. After a brightly colored meteorite crashes on the Gardner farm and contaminates the water, the family starts experiencing strange hallucinations and unprecedented rage, prompting Lavinia to perform a ritual from the Necronomicon in an act of desperation. It is later revealed that the colored phenomenon originates from an exoplanet with tentacled creatures.
The film won Best Feature, Audience Choice at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival and Best Horror Film at Fantastic Fest.
Dagon (2001)
Inspired by the eponymous short story and the novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Stuart Gordon’s Dagon is a Spanish production that stars Ezra Godden as Paul Marsh / Pablo Cambarro, Francisco Rabal in his last role as Ezequiel, Raquel Meroño as Barbara, and Macarena Gómez as Uxía Cambarro. The story revolves around two shipwrecked couples on vacation and a fishing town controlled by a sea deity and its half-human spawn.
Paul: You’re a bunch of freaks!
Uxía: Your dreams. Remember your dreams, Pablo. They brought you here.
Paul: No. They were nightmares. They weren’t real.
Uxía: Every dream is a wish.
Dark Intruder (1965)
Starring Leslie Nielsen as Brett Kingsford, Peter Mark Richman as Robert Vandenburg, and Judi Meredith as Evelyn Lang, Harvey Hart’s atmospheric, one-hour-long Dark Intruder was intended as a pilot for an aborted television series titled The Black Cloak. A humpbacked, caped entity with long fingernails is on a killing spree in San Francisco, leaving a statuette with a reptilian head next to the victims. Brett, a supernatural expert, investigates, and his sleuthing will lead him to a Chinese priest with a mummified, fanged Sumerian demon.
The Endless (2017)
Directed, produced by, and starring Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, The Endless is a science-fiction horror film revolving on two brothers and their return to Camp Arcadia, a UFO cult in the woods of San Diego. Per Roger Ebert, “What these brothers are ultimately searching for is a place to call home. It doesn’t matter to them if it’s a cult compound full of deluded, psychologically destructive manipulators or some sort of intergalactic prison, torture compound or zoo, as long as they know their way around, and are surrounded by faces they recognize.”
The Whisperer in Darkness (2011)
“Lovecraft’s weird tale of ALIEN HORROR comes to VIVID LIFE. In the deepest woods of the most remote hills… a dark mystery BEYOND BELIEF! Filmed in genuine Mythoscope.”
The Whisperer in Darkness is a 104-minute, black-and-white, indie horror film with an early 1930s feel, directed and produced by Sean Branney, Andrew Leman, and David Robertson, and distributed by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. The plot centers on folklore professor Albert Wilmarth (Matt Foyer), who sets out to investigate reports of strange creatures in Vermont that emerged from a recent flood.
From Beyond (1986)
Vaguely inspired by Lovecraft’s short story of the same name, Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond features Jeffrey Combs as Dr. Crawford Tillinghast, Barbara Crampton as Dr. Katherine McMichaels, Ted Sorel as Dr. Edward Pretorius, and Ken Foree as Detective Bubba Brownlee. The story centers on The Resonator, a machine developed by Pretorius and his assistant Tillinghast. After it malfunctions and decapitates the former, it starts creating bee and worm-like creatures and turning people into brain eaters. This cult classic is a must for audiences interested in schizophrenia, psychiatric wards, mutations, alternate planes of consciousness, and mad scientists.
X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963)
Produced and directed by Roger Corman, X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes features Ray Milland as Dr. James Xavier, who creates eye drops that may allow users to perceive the ultraviolet and x-ray wavelengths. After he tests the product on himself, he develops the ability to see through people’s clothes and diagnose hidden illnesses. While on the run from an accidental murder, he starts working at a carnival as a mind reader. Later, he falls more and more under the drops’ control, to the extent of cheating at a Las Vegas casino. Will the religious gathering he finally wanders into be his doom or his salvation?
Event Horizon (1997)
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson and starring Laurence Fishburne as Captain S. J. Miller, Sam Neill Dr. William Weir, Kathleen Quinlan as medical technician Peters, and Joely Richardson as Lieutenant M. L. Starck, Event Horizon is a science-fiction, thriller, and horror film set in 2047. The plot revolves around a crew of astronauts who go on an investigative rescue mission after a spaceship that went missing seven years prior suddenly appears in Neptune’s orbit. Little do they know that the ship had opened a dimension to a malevolent world and was turned into a sentient, mind-controlling, and deadly entity. Hallucinations, fears, regrets, and gratuitous gore abound in this unsettling film that gathered an important cult following and inspired the Dead Space videogame series.
Weir: The ship brought me back. I told you she won’t let me leave – she won’t let anyone leave. Did you really think you could destroy this ship? She’s defied space and time. She’s been to a place you couldn’t possibly imagine. And now, it is time to go back.
Miller: I know. To hell.
Weir: You know nothing. Hell is only a word. The reality is much, much worse.
The Haunted Palace (1963)
This list wouldn’t be complete without the hypnotizing Vincent Price, who portrayed both Joseph Curwen and his descendent Charles Ward in Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace, a film inspired by Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Charles and his wife Anne (Debra Paget in her last role) move into an inherited palace in the town of Arkham, Massachusetts, and are met with hostility from the villagers, most of whom appear deformed. The estate was once owned by Curwen, a warlock who frequently used the Necronomicon to summon the Elder Gods Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth and have them impregnate local women. History is doomed to repeat itself, now that Curwen seems to have possessed Ward’s body.
Annihilation (2018)
Written and directed by Alex Garland, Annihilation is a psychological thriller and science-fiction horror starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Isaac. It revolves around five women: a cellular biology professor, a psychiatrist, a geomorphologist, a paramedic, and a physicist. Their mission is to explore The Shimmer, a quarantined and militarily guarded area bursting with mutated, deadly animals and plants created by a crashed alien entity. All previous expeditions resulted in disappearances and deaths, and now it’s up to this group to solve the mystery (and come back safe and sound).
The Mist (2007)
Based on the titular novella by Stephen King featuring a storm that releases ravenous creatures in a small Maine town and traps a group of locals in a supermarket, The Mist is a science-fiction horror movie written and directed by Frank Darabont and starring Thomas Jane as the painter David Drayton, Marcia Gay Harden as the religious Mrs. Carmody, Laurie Holden as the perpetually armed school teacher Amanda Dunfrey, Andre Braugher as the attorney Brent Norton, and Sam Witwer as Private Wayne Jessup.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
Helmed and scored by John Carpenter, the supernatural horror feature In the Mouth of Madness stars Sam Neill as John Trent, Julie Carmen as Linda Styles, Jürgen Prochnow as Sutter Cane, and Charlton Heston as Jackson Harglow. It centers on an insurance investigator trying to make sense of the disappearance of a horror novelist, whose fictional world has suddenly come to life in the small town of Hobb’s End. The film was honored with the Fantasporto Critics’ Award and nominated for Best Horror Film and Best Make-Up at the 22nd Saturn Awards.
The Call of Cthulhu (2005)
Directed by Andrew Leman and distributed by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, The Call of Cthulhu is a 47-minute indie silent film with a 1920s feel that earned several awards, including Best Feature at Eerie Horror Film Festival and Prix Tournage for the Best American Movie at 23rd Avignon Film Festival. Starring Matt Foyer as Francis Wayland Thurston, John Bolen as The Listener, David Mersault as Inspector Legrasse, and Barry Lynch as Professor Webb, it centers on Cthulhu, Lovecraft’s most famous fictional cosmic entity, a gigantic octopoid lurking beneath the Pacific Ocean.
Re-Animator (1985)
Inspired by the serial novelette Herbert West–Reanimator, Stuart Gordon’s gory and comedic Re-Animator stars Jeffrey Combs as the ambitious medical student Herbert West, Bruce Abbott as his roommate Daniel Cain, Barbara Crampton as the latter’s girlfriend Megan Halsey, and David Gale as the plagiarizing antagonist, Dr. Carl Hill. Herbert is obsessed with reanimating carcasses; it doesn’t take long until he experiments with a fluid on dead tissue and drags Dan and Barbara with him.
Roger Ebert praises Gordon’s direction and his use of “Special effects not as set pieces for us to study, but as dazzling throwaways as the action hurtles ahead. By the end of the film, we are keenly aware that nothing of consequence has happened, but so what? We have been assaulted by a lurid imagination, amazed by unspeakable sights, blindsided by the movie’s curiously dry sense of humor.”
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
More ethereal mystery than horror, Picnic at Hanging Rock is directed by Peter Weir and stars Rachel Roberts, Dominic Guard, Helen Morse, and Vivean Gray. On Valentine’s Day in 1900, a group of teachers and students from a private girls’ school go on a picnic near a strange geological formation in Victoria, Australia. A few of them vanish into a crevice in a bizarre red cloud, while others are rendered unconscious or semi-catatonic.
The Lighthouse (2019)
Co-written, produced, and helmed by Robert Eggers, The Lighthouse is a homoerotic survival, psychological thriller, and horror film that is set in the late 19th century and features two irritable lighthouse keepers on a secluded New England island. It stars Willem Dafoe as Thomas Wake, Robert Pattinson as Ephraim Winslow / Thomas Howard, and Valeriia Karamän as the Mermaid, and it won Best Cinematography from the Independent Spirit Awards and the San Diego Film Critics Society.
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