Howard Phillips Lovecraft

[Menard]

I do believe most of us at least can agree that H. P. Lovecraft was one of the most influential, if not the most influential, writers of the twentienth century. His writings have influenced other writers like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith among his other contemporaries and modern writers. As well his influence has reach into various forms of media.


Movies: It has been interesting the many different takes on Lovecraft's writings in the movies. Few movies that have tried to adapt Lovecraft's stories have been very good. HERBERT WEST: RE-ANIMATOR has interestingly been one of the most entertaining although based on a story Lovecraft himself personally hated (he wrote it according to a preset outline to be published as a series by another publisher) and would rather have not been remembered for it. Of course there was THE RESSURECTED which I found to be an interesting adaption of THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD even if the climax was a little weak.

Aside from the Good, we have a plethora of movies that fall into the Bad (DIE, MONSTER, DIE) and the downright Ugly (THE DUNWICH HORROR, CTHULHU MANSION).


Games: 25 years ago, Chaosium published the CALL OF CTHULHU Role-playing Game and certainly introduced a new base of fans to Lovecraft as well giving an interesting game to the old base of fans. Unfortunately Chaosium became full of themselves and began to treat any of their own work as canonical as any of Lovecraft's. This basically made their game not much different than a movie adaptation as a player not that familiar with Lovecraft would have difficulty distinguishing what was and was not Lovecraft. Although, despite this, it is still an interesting game.

Many computer games also incorporated elements of Lovecraft into their stories: ALONE IN THE DARK; Chaosium's own SHADOW OF THE COMET; as well many interactive fiction games.


Although I personally love any Lovecraft story, my personal favorite is THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE.


Does anyone have any favorite Lovecraft stories; favorite movie; least favorite movie; gaming experience; or television and radio shows that show the influence of Lovecraft.



Howard Phillips Lovecraft: born August 20, 1890 in Providence, RI; died March 15, 1937 (in body only).

[Brother Ragnarok]

Quite.  I have to figure out what to do as my senior thesis for my Philosophy of Literature class, and I've narrowed it down to deciding between Lovecraft or 70's grindhouse and exploitation movies.

[cheecky-monkey]

I never really liked Mr. Lovecraft's writing to be honest, but boy were his monsters great!

[Menard]

Even though I am a huge fan of Lovecraft, I am actually rooting for you to do the Grindhouse thesis. It should be a way cool subject.

[Menard]

Well now I do respect your opinion [blasphemer...( : ]. Lovecraft's writing was analytical, introspective, and well layered. Although for some this brought about the response, "Could you get to the point?". For me, I find his writing to be a journey within the story itself. Lovecraft's style of the obsessive storyteller certainly influenced many writers, as well his characters preoccupation with documenting events lent an air of authenticity to the horror. Lovecraft was a slow writer who found his composition to be of utmost importance, in contrast to Robert E. Howard who loved to tell a story and embellish it as well, but without too much concern about the composition. Each of their styles worked well for them. Howard had one edge over Lovecraft in that he could imitate another writer's style (although he had his own style); Lovecraft's interest was in doing the best he could at all times, which shows in his work, even if it took him a while. Consequently, Howard wrote a larger volume of work than Lovecraft in a much shorter lifetime (Howard committed suicide at the age of 30). Lovecraft had a great respect for young Howard, even though Howard's grammar and composition would at times irritate him. Both are favorites of mine and come from a great age of pulp fiction writing. Many of the greatest science fiction, fantasy, adventure, and horror writers came from this era. Another interesting thing is that a lot of these writers corresponded with each other and even shared ideas. This may well have influenced each of them as writers and improved their craft.

[Ozzymandias]

I received a Night Gallery DVD set for Christmas. One episode had Carl Reiner as a obnoxious college professor giving a lecture on "mythical gods."  All of them are Lovecraft's monsters. Two students in the class are named Lovecraft and Delerth.

[saintmort]

Go for the Caine/Hackman theory

[Max Gardner]

I enjoy the entire Weird Tales crew. Lovecraft, Howard, Smith and so on. They all influenced one another for better or for worse, and, while Lovecraft may be the most recognizeably influential in terms of modern horror cinema and storytelling, let's not forget that he was in turn influenced by his fellow writers. All of them have written great work. They've written miserable work (read Lovecraft's "Arthur Jermyn" if you don't believe me). Lovecraft at his best is among my favorite 20th-century literature. My personal favorite Lovecraft story would probably be The Lurking Fear. Scared the hell out of me. So did The Thing in the Moonlight, which was a remarkably interesting piece of work, though fragmentary.

Movies based on Lovecraft (and Howard, for that matter - look at Conan, then read some of the stories and see how completely they missed the mark - thanks for that screenplay, Oliver Stone) fare less well. I can't remember any that are really good. "Re-animator" was fun, but it wasn't the story. The middle 45 minutes of "Dagon" are a pretty much dead-on adaptation of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." It's the beginning and the end you have to look past.

By far the best piece of Lovecraftian media I've seen is "Eternal Darkness," one of the few reasons to own a Nintendo Gamecube. The first game in some years by Silicon Knights, the crew behind the story of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain on PSX, "Eternal Darkness" covers just about every aspect of Lovecraft's fiction. Dream worlds, ancient evil, spooky New England houses, dark family legacies and so on. The game's storyline covers several centuries, and you play as about twelve or so characters in different settings, from a Dutch settler in 1800's Rhode Island to a firefighter in the Middle East during the Gulf War, and everything connects perfectly in the end. Highly recommended, and happens to be about the cheapest game on the system for some reason at $12 or so.

[ulthar]

I like "The Statement of Randolph Carter" for it's staccato punch.  Obviously, I like "The Cats of Ulthar" as well.  ;)

I remember standing in line at the theatre to see "Re-Animator" when it first came out.  I was so excited; I had been anticipating the release.  The girl I took saw a friend her boyfriend, so we hung out with them. Neither of the young ladies had ever heard of Lovecraft.  So, the other dude and I were trying to compare Stephen King (whom they both dug) to Lovecraft.  It was an interesting conversation.

One thing I've noticed in several Lovecraft stories, though.  He builds and builds and builds the expectation of 'terror' to such a height that there are cases that the climax just fails to live up to the level created for it.  Take for example "At the Mountains of Madness."  I like the story, but I have to be honest: he ran out of adjectives after about five pages and just rehashed things like "unspeakable" far too many times.  By the end, I find myself so distracted by the notion that there is nothing he could write that would do THIS level of suspense building justice, and just feel, well, kind of let down.

Enter "The Statement of Randolph Carter:"  The story is over DURING the building, and I think his type of rising action is very well suited to this sort of almost unexpected climax.

As for movies, it's been a while since I've seen 'From Beyond,' but I recall it being pretty good.  Here's a link to one review:

http://www.b-independent.com/reviews/frombeyond.htm

[Ozzymandias]

Has anyone mentioned Haunted Palace with Vincent Price as Charles Dexter Ward. Corman attatched the Poe name and title to it at the insistence of AIP's marketing.

[JohnL]

>Many computer games also incorporated elements of Lovecraft into their
>stories: ALONE IN THE DARK; Chaosium's own SHADOW OF THE COMET; as
>well many interactive fiction games.

Not the least of which is The Lurking Horror by Infocom. Also, another Lovecraft inspired IF game is Theater, which is freely downloadable from the IF Archive in the Games/Zcode directory. You'll also need an interpreter such as Frotz (which will also run all the old Infocom games, provided you have the data files).

>I received a Night Gallery DVD set for Christmas. One episode had Carl Reiner
>as a obnoxious college professor giving a lecture on "mythical gods." All of
>them are Lovecraft's monsters. Two students in the class are named Lovecraft
>and Delerth.

There's another episode, Pickman's Model. An artist paints horrible creatures that everyone assumes come from his imagination. Actually, he just paints what he knows...

[Brother Ragnarok]

While we're on the topic of Lovecraft's scope of influence, anyone else read Brian Lumley's "Hero of Dreams" series?  Damn good stuff, like most of Lumley's work.  Really, I think the only Lumley-authored things I thought were a bit lacking were Demogorgon, and to a lesser extent, House of Doors.

[Ozzymandias]

John L: I know Night Gallery did several Lovecraft stories. What was funny about this one was how it was a sort of homage to Lovecraft and his friends.

[AlexB]

I quite liked the finale of Dagon (the movie). Up to then, the movie has moments of great silliness (except, of course the meeting with Uxia), but the whole sacrifice scene and the ending have a kind of Lovecraftian madness to it. It reminded me vaguely of 'The Festival'.

As for Lovecraft himself, his style takes a bit geting used to, but once you are there, it is gripping.

[Neville]

I discobered Lovecraft some years ago. My sister gave to me a compilation of his work for my birthday and loved it. Soon after, I started noticing how influential his work had been in other shapes of fiction, like movies or literature. Even Stephen King has a great Lovecraft-kian short story, De Vermis Mysteries.

I can agree that his climaxes are often weak, but is one of those cases of "it's not the goal, it's the journey". Lovecraft describes like nobody else the voyage from reality to absolute horror and madness like nobody else can. His detailed, deliberately archaic and slow - burning style is perfect for such stories. If you can, read his essays on writting fiction, they are very ilustrating on why did he chose that approach over others.

Probably my favourite Lovecraft is "The Mount", a not very known short novel about some archeologists that decides to investigate the regular appearences of a ghost in an isolate mount. Very original story, and top-notch writing.