Overall experience: somewhat favorable for a lazy afternoon.
I recently dug out some old and "new" books by H.P. Lovecraft (hmmm...explains my not so cryptic screen name) and decided to watch 1967's Die Monster Die put out by the Midnite Movie series. The movie is supposedly based on "The Colour Out of Space" and Lovecraft is mentioned in the opening credits, but the movie has almost nill to do with the short story. Instead it seems to borrow from several Lovecraftian ideas. Namely a reference to a cult worshipping "old ones", the appearance of a land-dwelling octopus (Lovecraft loved tentacles), a scientist placed in a seemingly supernatural setting, said setting in england or new england, physical sickness, a family shunned by their village, and an old Necronomicon sort of book.
The original story is about a meteorite that affects some new england farm land and eventually people perish at the non-existent hands of a space force of some sort (a color that doesn't naturally occur within our spectrum..."out of space") that contaminates people and food. And there is also something (a glowing mist) in a well that stalks and kills. The story has a great other-wordly atmosphere rich in scientific details. The story was recently included in The Annotated Lovecraft and the notes read like a text book. Lovecraft was pretty up on chemistry and so forth.
The movie has a few things going for it. One is Boris Karloff and the other is a story that moves pretty quickly (even though it strays from the original story). There are some moments that capture the england atmosphere, even though the story took place in new england. However, the american scientist is over the top. He is more like a two-bit private investigator and his scientific prowess is only mentioned but never displayed. He even wears a Bogart-like overcoat for the whole film. Basically the story was twisted into some sort of cop-like detective-in-a-haunted house story. Ideally this character should have been more professor-like as opposed to the Dragnet approach.
I don't know if I would have liked it differently without having recently read the story. Early on I gave up hoping for a faithful version of the story and just took it on it's own terms.
I saw the film before reading the story a few years ago, it doesn't help. As we all know Lovecraft is hard to adapt to the screen well, All that atmosphere of dread and gloom works on the page but is hard to flesh out into a film script.
If you want a bad Lovecraft movie go find the Spanish made shot on video mess "The Shunned House". I haven't yet read any of the stories used in that movie, but "incoherent trainwreck" would be a good short summary of the film on it's own.
Thanks for the "Shunned House" tip.
Back in December or maybe October, sci-fi was showing Dagon. There was a movie of Lovecraft stories on as well but I can't remember the name. Any idea what it was?
The movie had a story about a cop finding a secret entrance in the basement of an apartment building leading to a prehistoric labrynth (I haven't read all that much of Lovecraft's shorter stories, but it was probably based on "The Rats in the Walls"). There was another story about prolonging life by injecting the spinal fluid from living victims. What I saw of the movie was pretty good and I'd like see the rest.
That movie is NECRONOMICON. It features Jeffrey Combs playing H. P. Lovecraft in the connecting segments between the stories.
I would agree that it is basically impossible to bring Lovecraft's vision to the big screen. Though, "Dagon," which is based on two of Lovecraft's stories, "Dagon" and "Shadow over Innismouth" is a good try. Another good attempt , supposedly, at bringing Lovecraft to the big screen is "The Haunted Palace" w/ Vincent Price, Leo Gordon, Lon Chaney, jr., and Eisha Cook, jr. And while I have not see them, the "Reanimator" series of films w/ Jeffrey Combs has its adherents.
"The Haunted Palace" is decent, but they tried really hard to pass it off as a Poe film since it was part of the AIP/Corman/Price/Poe cycle. But the story is clearly Lovecraft territory to anyone even vaguely familiar with his work. Based on "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". I'd recommend it over "The Shunned House", "The Dunwich Horror" or the HPL phony "Cthulhu Mansion".
"From Beyond" has good HPL atmosphere, but from what I understand only the opening of the film is taken directly from the source story.
The two "The Unnamable" films have their fans. Lots of people point out that "In the Mouth of Madness" has a great HPL atmosphere without actually being based on his work.