H.P. LOVECRAFT

The cult of Cthulhu As the romantically inclined Victorian age of the nineteenth century became the down-to-earth industrial age of the twentieth, so too did the fiction, bound and published in impressive volumes, of that earlier age change into the mass-production of the pulp magazine. Supernatural fiction became 'fantasy' and a host of new writers brought a host of new directions. These magazines were anthologies, publishing short stories and serialised novels by new writers, working almost exclusively in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. Of all the magazines of the day, Weird Tales was the most prominent and most famous. The writers whose work first saw the light of day in Weird Tales became the first writers of supernatural fiction that were truly denizens of the twentieth century. Though their influence is undeniable and has been widely recognized, their appearance signaled the loss of the genre's almost baroque literary grandeur, the status it held in the previous century, with the stories of Edgar Allan Poe and the Victorian horror novels of Shelley and Stoker. The works of the pulp writers float somewhere in between sensational stories and true literature. Too literary for the former, too sensationalist for the latter. The most famous names to emerge from the pulps (so named because of the low quality paper, not the low quality fiction) are science fiction writer Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451), horror writer Robert Bloch (Psycho), and fantasy writer Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian). One name has surpassed all these, however. A man who combined these three specific genres to create a body of work that represented a self-contained, unique world. A world or universe with its own myths and its own rules, though not as rigidly and linearly enforced a universe as the one created by for instance Tolkien. Rather it was a pervasive influence, a feeling or a mood that undeniably ran through all the author's stories. The author motivated his self-created world with the following words: "All my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on the fundamental lore or legend that this world was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practising black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside ever ready to take possession of this earth again". The author's name was H.P. Lovecraft and his fictional world would become known as the Cthulhu mythos. Lovecraft was a man of consistency. Not only in applying the elements of the mythos to most all of his sories, but in other areas as well. A Lovecraft story is instantly recognisable by its title alone. The Thing On The Doorstep, The Color Out Of Space, The Call Of Cthulhu, The Shadow Over Innsmouth; these are Lovecraftian titles, their rigidly applied grammar often imitated by Lovecraft-related stories or merchandising, their link to Lovecraft's work immediately recognisable. These details make a reader feel like he's part of something special. Lovecraft and everything related to him somehow make up a world of their own, a subculture even. For not only is Lovecraft a phenomenon in fiction, his vision and uniqueness have inspired many to use his stories as a basis for their own projects. One of the most gripping parts of his stories is the appearance of a book called Necronomicon. Literally translated "book of dead names", this volume has a basis in history, but Lovecraft's version was truly fictional. In his stories the Necronomicon is an eight-hundred page book of magic, filled with stories and illustrations of The Great Old Ones, that race of interdimensional beings that serve as the invisible threatening force behind all Lovecraft's stories. It was written by Abdul Alhazred, the "mad Arab", who clearly had extensive knowledge of this elder race and of the ways to bring them back into this world. The Necronomicon has only ever existed in Lovecraft's mind, but this hasn't stopped countless enthusiasts from actually trying to find it. Some have even attempted to write their own versions in order to satisfy the desire for owning the thing. Some of these version have actually been published and are available in book stores. Swiss artist H.R. Giger, creator of Alien and devoted fan of Lovecraft's work, even published two volumes of his own work under the name Giger's Necronomicon. So what leads rational adults to produce such behaviour? Well, it's all down to Lovecraft's effective writing. The way he utilises the book in his stories does indeed make you wish there was a Necronomicon, and that all its power was yours to have. All this hasn't passed the attention of filmmakers unnoticed. Lovecraft has been a rich source of inspiration for many films. Like William Shakespeare or Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft seems to get rediscovered by every new generation of filmmakers. There hasn't been a Lovecraftian variation on Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe cycle (one of which, The Haunted Palace, was actually an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward) or Laurence Olivier's series of Shakespeare adaptations, though american studio AIP produced a number of loose adaptations in the sixties. More recently, one man who keeps returning to Lovecraft's work is producer/director Brian Yuzna. He started out with director Stuart Gordon in the mid-eighties on the delirious masterpiece Re-Animator (based on Herbert West: The Re-animator) and the lesser From Beyond, then went on by himself with the sequel Bride Of Re-Animator (combining Frankenstein with elements of the original story not used in the first film) and the anthology Necronomicon, a trio of Lovecraft-inspired stories that actually featured a wraparound starring Re-Animator star Jeffrey Combs as H.P. Lovecraft, which quite unsuccessfully tried to turn the author into a monster-fighting horror hero. This type of "Lovecraft-inspired" filmmaking is actually more common than straight-ahead adaptation. Lovecraftian elements have crept up in films by John Carpenter (The Thing being very similar to At The Mountains Of Madness, while the title of Carpenter's film In The Mouth Of Madness clearly belies its source of inspiration), Sam Raimi (the Necronomicon features heavily in his Evil Dead series), and even Lucio Fulci (the Necronomicon-like Book Of Eibon appears in The Beyond, while City Of the Living Dead was set in the Lovecraftian town of Dunwich). Actually the Cthulhu mythos itself doesn't feature very heavily in any of the films. This is most likely due to the inherent production cost (lots and lots of special effects) and to the simple fact that putting the mystical Great Old Ones on screen for all to see would be seriously less effective than keeping them in the background as an ever-threatening presence, which is the way Lovecraft used them. One thing that keeps creeping up in the minds of most of these (and other) filmmakers is "the definitive Lovecraft adaptation". For some reason people feel that somehow there's one film hiding somewhere, waiting to get made, that will make any other adaptations redundant. Dan O'Bannon saw his The Resurrected as a rehearsal for the definitive Lovecraft film, but six years have passed since. Jean Paul Ouellette took time off after doing second unit work on The Terminator to write a whole host of scripts based on Lovecraft stories, supposedly culminating in what he calls his "tour-de-force Lovecraft movie" The Thing On The Doorstep. Ouellette directed two fairly entertaining versions of The Unnamable and hasn't been heard from since. It's highly doubtful that the definitive Lovecraft film will ever get made. An adaptation of a single story certainly wouldn't be very definitive, seeing how Lovecraft wrote close to a hundred during his 47 years. This would mean the film would have to use Lovecraft as an inspiration, as opposed to a blueprint, combining the recurring elements of his oeuvre into one film. But this in itself would exclude the whole definitiveness of the project, simply because it's not directly based on Lovecraft. So far the best film ever made from Lovecraft's material is Re-Animator, and this is solely because it's a great film, not because it has stuck close to the Lovecraftian philosophy. We will have to wait and see. Filmmakers should simply keep making these movies. A hundred years from now people can decide what the definitive one was. Despite having died exactly sixty years ago, and never having seen any success as an author during his lifetime, Lovecraft's spirit continues to live on and prosper. Though he is relatively unknown to the masses, he continues to have a strong and fervent following. H.P. Lovecraft has to all intents and purposes become a cult figure. The films: Die, Monster, Die - director: Daniel Haller The Haunted Palace - director: Roger Corman The Dunwich Horror - director: Daniel Haller The Crimson Cult - director: Vernon Sewell Re-Animator - director: Stuart Gordon Bride Of Re-Animator - director: Brian Yuzna From Beyond - director: Stuart Gordon The Curse - director: David Keith The Unnamable - director: Jean Paul Ouelette The Unnamable Returns - director: Jean Paul Ouelette Cthulhu Mansion - director: J.P. Simon The Resurrected - director: Dan O'Bannon The Lurking Fear - director: C. Courtney Joyner Necronomicon - directors: Brian Yuzna, Christophe Gans, Shusuki Kaneko In The Mouth Of Madness - director: John Carpenter The books: H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 1 - At The Mountains Of Madness H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 2 - Dagon and other macabre tales H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus 3 - The Haunter Of The Dark An excellent near-complete collection of Lovecraft's stories, published by Grafton/HarperCollins Lin Sprague de Camp - Lovecraft: A Biography Anonymous - Necronomicon published by Avon Books Koen Hottentot - Necronomicon H.R. Giger - Giger's Necronomicon H.R. Giger - Giger's Necronomicon 2 Tom Mes