The Call of Cthulhu
The Lovecraft Historical Society films the unfilmable
No author has influenced metal more than H.P. Lovecraft. Ol’ Howard Phillips’ writings have become so ingrained in metal culture that some music can handily be described as Lovecraftian, such as Morbid Angel’s chaotic invocations to murky cosmic doom. The Cthulhu Mythos is Lovecraft’s most enduring creation, stories full of crazed cultists making deals with ancient races of fish-people, Abdul Alhazred and the Necronomicon (death metal’s favorite book) and, beyond all of it, the Old Ones orchestrating discord and despair. Non-mythos stories like “Herbert West, the Re-Animator” have been adapted into cult classic movies, but no one’s really tackled the Mythos on film. It’d cost hundreds of millions in effects alone or failing that, ingenuity, inspired retro techniques and a serious drive to do H.P. and his tentacled horrors proud. Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, have adapted “The Call of Cthulhu,” the most famous (and Metallica-inspiring) Mythos story, into a 47-minute time warp back to the silent era.
Filmed in “Mythoscope,” The Call of Cthulhu takes its production techniques back to the old-timey ’20s with grainy black-and-white visuals and a musical score and title cards taking the place of dialogue. But there’s no scaling back of the epic globe-hopping story, including sea battles, the cosmic dream-city of R’lyeh, and Cthulhu itself. And fuck that CGI noise; Leman (who directed) and Branney (who adapted the story) go true-school and bring Cthulhu to life through stop-motion animation and puppetry. As you’d expect from a Lovecraft Historical Society, the adaptation is faithful to the story, taking title cards and on-screen journals directly from the story. Cthulhu cultists, get down. More info on The Call of Cthulhu is available at http://www.cthulhulives.org/cocmovie/index.html. - Anthony Bartkewicz
