Dagon, by Stuart Gordon

[Neville]

For those who don't know, Gordon and other fellas recently settled in Spain and have produced several B-movies. The last one is Stuart Gordon's "Dagon", film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's tale "The shadow over Innsmouth". A few days ago, I saw it on a local cinema, and I have to say I am quite impressed. Never been a fan of Gordon's work, but this cheap-looking gloomy and gory movie seems to have been made just to figure in this website. Non-initiates on Lovecraft literature or "Scream" fans, be warned: this is not a movie for you.

You can check info, pictures and a trailer at www.fantasticfactory.com

[Cullen]

Small quibble here.  From what I’ve read about the movie it sounds like its been influenced by "Shadow Over Innsmouth", but "Dagon" is supposed to be an adaptation of another Lovecraft story, which is also called "Dagon".  Stuart Gordon says as much in an interview with Fangoria.  I have a quote here, from the article:

“‘It’s about a guy who’s shipwrecked on an island which is actually a piece of land that has come up from the bottom of the ocean, and he discovers this monolith with strange carvings on it made by someone other than human beings.  At the end of the story, he discovers who made all of this, and we’ve kind of expanded on that.’â€�

The whole article can be found at www.fangoria.com/Partners/Fangoria/Fearful_Features/articles/1951001.htm

The quote is a fair summation of D.  The plot description in IMDB sounds a bit like SOI, so one has to wonder how faithful the movie is to the story.  Not that Gordon has ever really been faithful to Lovecraft's stuff *before*, mind you...  (Or anyone else has for that matter.)

Still, sounds intresting to me

[Neville]

Interesting. Either Gordon is a big liar or the quotes from the article are old and he speaks of the previous drafts of the "Dagon" script (could happen). I have not read "Dagon", but I have been told it is only six pages long, so you will understand it is quite difficult to make a film adaptation from it. I have read "Shadow over Innsmouth" and a kind of sequel from another Cthulhu circle author, and the final story in the film is quite faithful to them. About Gordon's ramblings over the monolith and the floating island... nothing of it is on the movie, I can tell you. Either he is referring to old drafts of the "Dagon" or he is deliberately trying to hide his film is in fact "Shadow over Innsmouth". Legal rights could be a reason? I find quite interesting his energic negative that he is in fact adapting "Shadow...".

[Nathan]

Stuart was originally tapped to do Shadow Over Innsmouth for Charles Band, back in the early heydays of Full Moon.  (It was mentioned in one of the VideoZones, along with some prospective cover art.)  As you may have noticed, it never happened -- it was to be the next Lovecraft project after The Lurking Fear, which stank like Burrito Grande aftermath.

So I'm glad to see that Stuart gets to pull some of that preparation work out of the trashcan and get it to the screen.

Nathan

[Neville]

This should finish with the polemic about that Fangoria article. Looks like Fangoria used very old statements from Stuart Gordon without cheking for new info. (bad, bad researchers!). There's a Stuart Gordon Interview at the Fantastic Factory Website (www.fantasticfactory.com) where he says the following:

"Hemos tomado varias historias de Lovecraft y las hemos mezclado porque la de Dagon es muy corta. Sólo consta de 5 páginas y de ese modo hubiera sido una película muy corta. Lovecraft desarrolló la idea de los Mitos de Cthulhu, que afirmaban que la Tierra estaba originalmente habitada por tribus indias, una de las cuales habitaba en el fondo del mar, y la llamó los Deep One. Nosotros hemos unido las diferentes historias para crear Dagon."

In short, for those who don't speak Spanish, he says Dagon is such a short story (5 pages long) that it was impossible to make a film of it, so they took several Lovecraft stories (no titles are mentioned, but surely most of the plot came from The shadow over Innsmouth and its sequel) and they took elements from everywhere.