All right; I've been meaning to get to this all week, but it's been a wonky week and I've not really had much of a chance to organize my thoughts, but here goes:
As stated, last week (August 20) I attended the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival here in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse. I include that information because, according to the response it got, it looks like Andrew Migliore, the founder of the festival (held yearly in Portland, Oregon in October) will be coming back here next year around HPL's birthday again for this new offshoot of the original; so those unable to make it to Portland now have another option to see some of these often rarely seen films.
The program began with a presentation of the old
Night Gallery adaptation of "Pickman's Model", which it was nice to see again for the first time in 35 years (lord! it's been
that long???) yet which, as is all too typical with Hollywood adaptations of the Old Gent's tales, fell flat because it ended up going with the "guy-in-a-rubber-suit" monster at the end. Had they avoided that, despite the addition of a romantic involvement, it might have been an adequate, though not good production. Nonetheless, it had its moments and, as I said, was quite nice to see after all this time.
This was followed by a presentation on the big screen of the recent 47-minute silent short adaptation of "The Call of Cthulhu" by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society; a film which has garnered much well-deserved praise. For those who have not seen this, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It was done on a shoestring budget by fans of Lovecraft and, despite literally being done in a basement and in a back yard, is actually quite a beautiful film, and extremely faithful to the story, capturing much of the flavor not only of the story itself, but of the silent-movie era with astonishing
eclat. If you have any chance to see it, this is definitely one not to be missed.
After a rather lengthy break for a special presentation of Trainspotting, there was a rather lengthy presentation of several short, amateur, independent and student films based on Lovecraft's work, including: two shorts by Richard Corben (adaptations of two of the
Fungi from Yuggoth sonnets);
Maryia's Hubris (a modern loose adaptation of the central theme of "The Thing on the Doorstep") from Germany; Christian Matzke's adaptation of "Nyarlathotep"; a film titled Between the Stars, which was a very interesting take on the HPL fragment "The Book" (a tad slow, but fascinating visually), as well as several others, both animated films and live action, and culminating in a presentation of Austinite Cathy Welch's 1980 Master's thesis adaptation of "Pickman's Model" (which I had the pleasure of seeing all the way back then). This one is interesting because, despite being filmed in Austin and on a student budget, it actually captures much more of the atmosphere and charm of Lovecraft's story, even with the updating necessary for costs, than the earlier
Night Gallery episode. Of course, it suffers from the flaws of trying to adapt a tale centered around 300-year-old sections of Boston to a town dating back not quite 150 years; but it is nonetheless an admirable and very enjoyable effort, well worth seeing.
And the program wrapped up with a screening of the 1991 HBO film
Cast a Deadly Spell, featuring Fred Ward as hard-bitten private eye Philip Lovecraft; a quirky, entertaining, and quite successful blending of Raymond Chandler and Lovecraft featuring such actors as David Ward, Julianne Moore and Charles Hallahan. Set in the late 1940s in Los Angeles, at a time where literally everyone uses magic of some sort, which has consequently become big business; the only holdout against this is Lovecraft, who believes in standing on his own two feet and his ethics, both of which frequently take a beating, especially when he is hired to find a certain book stolen from a rich collector's library: the infamous
Necronomicon. The problem is that the reason he has been hired to find the book is hardly as straightforward as it at first seems.... And, again, for those who have not seen this (as I had not, until this opportunity), this is one well worth seeking out. The tongue-in-cheek aspects only rarely mar the overall excellent production, and for any fan of either film noir, Lovecraft, or the hard-bitten Hammett/Chandler school of detective fiction, this one is a rare treat.
As for the shorts... they proved a somewhat mixed bag (I must admit that I grow weary of all female figures in Corben -- including what must be a very bizarre sort of dryad in one of these -- having huge breasts; it would be nice to have a bit of variety, at least); nonetheless they were all at least interesting, and many were actually quite impressive.
So, for anyone who has a chance, by all means attend the film festival either this year in Portland in October, or next year (the Elder Gods willing) here in Austin in August or in Portland in October. For more information on tickets and the various attendees (such as, I understand, Ramsey Campbell and Stuart Gordon, as well as HPL scholar S. T. Joshi) for the one in October, all such can be found at the parent website
www.lurkerfilms.com or at
www.hplfilmfestival.com. You can also find out about the three volumes of the H. P. Lovecraft film collection (of which a fourth is due out later this year), all of which I highly recommend.
Hope to see some of you next year!
