Lovecraftian Cinema

With all the TV series that are being made these days why haven't anyone made one based on Lovecraft's writings? Is there some problem with the rights to the material (I think I read something about it but I can't remember)? Surely it would have enough name recognition to appeal to the general public.
 
With all the TV series that are being made these days why haven't anyone made one based on Lovecraft's writings? Is there some problem with the rights to the material (I think I read something about it but I can't remember)? Surely it would have enough name recognition to appeal to the general public.

It's been a couple months since you posted this but I fully agree. Has anyone watched the first season of HBO's True Detective? I was all but convinced half-way-thru they were going 'Lovecraftian' with the hodo cultist and weird totems. Perhaps they were, but they bent the story arch to where it was almost kissing the 'cosmic horror' before righting the ship and ending up the season in reality. Still a fantastic season (season 2 not so much) but I would have liked a bit more LC.
 
Unfortunately, it's a pretty small niche, as I've discovered as a filmmaker trying to develop/promote a Lovecraftian series. I LOVED the aforementioned elements in S1 of True Detective, but it turns out we're a relatively small group of fans, in terms of cosmic horror.
 
Sorry if anyone else has mentioned it, but the James Spader film 'Supernova' is HEAVILY Lovecraftian

Now that you mention and now that I think about it. Your absolutely right. :):cool:
 
The 1956 film X The Unknown has a bit lovecraft in it . The Crawling Chaos or a variation on it?
 
Cloverfield kind of feels a little Lovecraftian to me, though I suppose Godzilla is the main/biggest inspiration.

Fantasy RPG PC Games often have very Lovecraft inspired elements, whether in their worlds mythology, a part of the plot, or in characters/deities.
In the Elder Scrolls world (games such as Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind are set in the ES world) for example, you have the Daedric Princes, who are kind of effectively Gods, though, Demon is perhaps a better description, they are incredibly powerful beings who reside in Oblivion, another plane, or a set of multiple planes of existence to the main reality/Plane - iirc, the Princes, are generally trapped/locked up in their individual planes (for various reasons, in the game Oblivion, portals to some of the Oblivion plains are opening up across Tamriel, and one of the Princes is attempting to enter "reality" if you like) but usually, they are heavily restricted, they cannot normally enter reality - they can watch us Mortals from afar, they can make small Nuisances of themselves but that is it, by operating through agents, cults that worship them and so on - Clavicus Vile, like most of them, for example can access/possess statues built to him in Shrines, but all he can do really when there is talk, he cannot make the statues move - his main "Agent" if you like, is a talking Dog called Barnabus, as Barnabus is to all effects and purposes a living dog, he just happens to be able to talk, he is able to travel around, and act as Clavicus' eyes and ears, but no more than that.

The most Lovecraftian influence I suspect is Hermaeus Mora, who is the daedric prince of fate, knowledge and memory.
His image feels very Lovecraft - you meet a Mage who is either a willing agent of Hermaeus, or Hermaeus has been whispering into his mind, to get him to do various things, and the poor guy is totally barking mad - that's what happens if you work for Hermaeus, willingly or not.
This is what he looks like.

Hermaeus_Mora_Concept_Art.jpg
hermaeus_mora__master_of_fate_by_spynder4-d67glna.jpg
 
I havent watched it, but the Shuttered Room 1967 is another (I see it is mentioned in the Lurker list).
 
Even though this thread petered out in December last year, I'm yet surprised that nobody so far has mentioned Pickman's Muse (2010) (a mingling of "Pickman's Model" and "Dreams in the Witch-House"):


or The Void (2016):

 
I havent watched it, but the Shuttered Room 1967 is another (I see it is mentioned in the Lurker list).

Ive seen this film and found it to be a disappointment , There is nothing remotely lovecraftin to it.
 
I can't go through this entire thread without going blind but if it is not on here already then absolutely
TOWER OF EVIL 1972 is Lovecraftian in idea. It is usually considered a proto-slasher but I see other influences that stand out.

The story is a fisherman and his father go to a remote island/abandoned lighthouse and they find bodies of teenagers. The father is killed by a naked teenager. She ends up committed to an asylum to be studied and an archeological team is hired to check the island because, when the girl was arrested, they found a golden sword used to kill one of her friends--and it is a Phoenician ritual sword which implies that a Phoenician ship ended up on this remote island 3000 years ago and they may find various artifacts including an idol of the fertility god Baal which was usually carried on their vessels.
A private investigator from America is part of the team--hired by the family of the girl to clear her name for the murders.
They get to the island and the fisherman reveals that his brother and his wife and infant son Michael (who we are told died in infancy) had been living on the island until six months before. The father of this child, so his brother explains, was mentally disturbed and got worse after they arrived at the island.
Spoilers next:

they discover the corpse of the wife and then find the deranged brother--who the fisherman assures them is harmless and not a murderer.
But the archeological team members keep dying and when they have the hermit cornered in a cave where they also find the statue of Baal (kind of looks like Gonzo the Great), he is shot dead. The fisherman and the heroine go into the lighthouse building while the other two survivors are looking around outside for the raft they can leave on. The fisherman goes upstairs and is attacked. We then see the killer--the son Michael who has the features of the statue.
Was he transformed into a living version of the god Baal or was he deformed before exposure to the statue?
It isn't explained but it has a twisted Joseph-Mary-Jesus theme to it. Contamination by an exotic culture and hereditary madness. Baal standing in for Dagon.
 
Godawful film.
There's little connection to the supernatural from what I remember. I don't know if the secret in the attic had been done already at that point but it felt more like a drama than a horror story.
 
There's little connection to the supernatural from what I remember. I don't know if the secret in the attic had been done already at that point but it felt more like a drama than a horror story.

There was a deranged woman in the attic who killed the father and did something awful to the daughter , scarred her physically . You got no information about what went on.
 
There was a deranged woman in the attic who killed the father and did something awful to the daughter , scarred her physically . You got no information about what went on.

I haven't seen this movie but the August Derleth story draws from both the Dunwich Horror and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I remember the story was quite effective until the end where, in typical Derleth fashion, he crams as many mythos references as he can into one or two italicized paragraphs.
 

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