The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard

Necro Crom Icon

The Cthulhu Stories
of Robert E. Howard
Edited by Paul Di Filippo
Word Fire Press ISBN:  9781680570984

If you are into H. P. Lovecraft you’ll know that his most famous legacy, a common thread running through many of his stories recalling ancient, tentacle, aggressive God-like creatures known in its various guises as Chtulhu... was not just something that Lovecraft wrote himself. He freely gave friends and correspondents licence to also reference this, sometimes somewhat tenuous thematic tentacle, in their own writings... often published in similar pulp magazines as Lovecraft’s own tales. So you had people like August Derleth and, I believe, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber. One of these writers and pen pals was the late, great Robert E. Howard, who would be best remembered for his tales of his Cimmerian barbarian Conan, not to mention such characters as Solomon Kane and Kull The Conqueror. And it’s some of his stories which feature, rather tenuously I should add, in terms of this selection at least (I hear there are many other examples of his tales with Cthulhu elements) in the volume The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard, which was published a couple of years ago.

Now, I am mostly only familiar with Howard's Conan and Kane stories so I was very pleased to have this. As it is, there is a lot of stuff in here which I find oblique in terms of accessing even the sometimes hard to pin down Cthulhu element of Lovecraft’s tales and I have to warn you that if you are expecting horror stories full of madness and creeping dread... well, there are a few of those but there are also a lot of other things which are less likely to make you think of one of Lovecraft’s slithering horrors. For instance, I’d read one of the tales in this tome before... a Kull story called The Shadow Kingdom, in an equally unlikely tome for it to be collected in... a complete Conan in Weird Tales collection (reviewed here). The most this and, a fair amount of the other twelve tales joining it in this collection, has in common with the spirit of Cthulhu is maybe a brief reference to an ancient alien race, perhaps originating from the stars. Some of the stories will make more pointed references to Lovecraft creations such as Dagon and the demonic book known as The Necronomicon and, yeah, others have almost no tenuous grip on the subject at hand, it seemed to me. There are, however, a few tales which are absolutely fitting  in with the spirit and atmosphere of the tales and, as you would expect, Howard has his own way of doing things...

The editor makes the point, in his introduction, that Howard’s version of this ‘horror brand’ is less likely to result in the descent into madness for his main protagonists... Howard being someone who would have his characters meet the lurking dread in a less passive and more heroic manner. Indeed, by way of an example, there is a ‘round robin’ collaborative story near to the end of this volume which was issued as a challenge to some writers from Fantasy Magazine. The story is called The Challenge From Beyond and it’s started off by C. L. Moore and the writers A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long all add excerpts of the story as a chain to bring it to a conclusion...

It’s interesting to note that the authors of the piece really don’t do too much to hide their own style and although the story certainly gets from point A to B, the small chapters all seem to have a different energy to them. Once Moore has set things up and Merritt further has the main character’s mind transformed through the power of a well worn, black stone cube... we get to Lovecraft’s section where the whole thing is turned to absolute bleak terror and a fate worse than death for the main protagonist as he finds his mind swapped across the cosmos with an alien creature, with absolutely no hope of returning to his body. But then Howard comes in and suddenly, the hero is pretty happy with his lot because he is in an alien body with a human thinking mind and, taking just a shard of rock, overpowers the various aliens on their own world and becomes their God. So, yeah, not a passive madness but a conquering spirit for sure. What really annoyed me about this story, however, is that the year before I read a book called The Complete Fiction of H. P Lovecraft (reviewed here) and this tale certainly wasn’t included... how the heck is that complete then?

And it’s a hit and miss affair, as you would expect but there are certainly some things of note. For instance, Howard uses a black, monolithic stone to run a common thread between some of his unrelated tales and there’s more than one story in here which has people transformed from his present day in the 1930s and back to ancient times to have an adventure, before returning to their modern day guise. One of these is actually, although people may want to argue with me on this (and I don’t care), a Conan story. People Of The Dark was written a month or so before the first of Howard’s more widely acknowledged Conan tales and tells of a man who, on his way to murder a rival in love with a pistol, gets magically transported back to ancient times at the same location and spins a tale which is a metaphor for the one going on simultaneously in the 1930s. Granted it’s all told from the first person but much if it is told by the barbarian character Conan who also, of course, invokes his God Crom. So, frankly, I don’t know why this isn’t included in collections of the Conan stories just because it’s considered by some a prototype (perhaps even by Howard himself) because it seems pretty plain to me.

And talking of Conan, there’s even reference in another story in here, again set in more contemporary times to when it was written, where the black ring of one Thoth-amon is invoked. So, yeah, there are Conan references in these tales as well as the Lovecraftian mentions.

Now, in the 1970s, I remember there were one or more story collections which were basically tales of different Howard characters that were transformed, by unscrupulous publishers who shall not be named here, by changing the character and location names to ones found in the Conan tales and reprinted as Conan stories. I believe the story in this collection entitled The Gods of Bal-Sagoth may indeed have been a victim of this practice at some point over the decades... and possibly more than one of the tales in this story may have been further transformed, perhaps.

There are some other tales which almost seem like dry runs for Conan stories by Howard here too... as you might expect. More than one story included here is a little close in structure or idea to existing Conan tales which may have come later and, certainly, the tale here entitled Worms Of The Earth, which tells a tale of Bran Mak Morn, the king of the Picts... and his vengeance unleashed on certain agents of the Roman army, seemed to me to bear a striking structural similarity, in a much simpler and less round about form, to Howard’s one and only Conan novel, The Hour Of The Dragon, if I’m not mistaken. I can see where he may have built on the idea at play in this tale.

My favourite story in this collection, however, has little to do with Cthulhu. It’s called Skull Face and it’s obviously been ‘inspired’ by Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu stories, if Fu Manchu was called Skull Face and was a hideous, resurrected Egyptian sorcerer mummy. Starting in the opium dens of Limehouse, the main protagonist actually starts off as a henchman, of sorts, owing the titular character the debt of his life but, soon, the beauty of an oriental girl and the heroism of another character inspire him to attempt to kick his hashish habit and team up against the atrophied but powerful, demonic wizard. It’s one of the longer stories in this volume but certainly the jewel in the crown, as far as I’m concerned. Although, I did find it interesting that, in another story called The Fire Of Asshurbanipal, the two adventurous heroes have to avoid looking at a demonic manifestation causing destruction around them to their enemies, much like the climax of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

And that’s about it from me on this one. The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard is a handsome tome with a beautiful cover (on the hardback at least) depicting a Cthulhu terror and, on the wraparound, a man fleeing for his life as it doggedly pursues him. The tales are not all nearly Cthulhu enough, for my liking, for the tome to use such a title but, it doesn’t really matter all that much as it’s a fine collection and Howard is as good a writer when he’s telling tales that don’t involve his famous Cimmerian, as when he’s depicting the Hyborian Age. Definitely worth a read and some space on your bookshelf if you are a Robert E. Howard fan, for sure.

Suitable Flesh

Flesh, M’Lady

Suitable Flesh
Directed by Joe Lynch
USA 2023 Eyevox Entertainment
Screened 24 August 2023 at FrightFest, London
 

I’ve only seen one other film directed by Joe Lynch (Everly, reviewed here) but I would have expected a film based on H. P. Lovecraft’s The Thing On The Doorstep to be something right up my street. Alas, although Suitable Flesh can claim that it’s a, loose at best, adaptation of that tale... the other main target of the film does actually preclude me a little, in terms of being the target audience. I went to see this one because it was opening FrightFest, has Heather Graham in it and also I was kinda hoping Barbara Crampton would turn up (alas, she was originally expected but had to send her apologies due to the writers/actors strike in the US at the moment... and good for her, that’s a pretty good reason for not coming, I think).

Okay, so the main target was for this to be a Lovecraft adaptation in the style of one of Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft adaptations of the mid to late 80s. Now, I have only, as far as I know (and not including TV episodes... I’m assuming he directed one of the excellent Masters Of Horror episodes a while back), ever seen one Stuart Gordon movie. I rented it from the off licence over the road on VHS in the late 1980s, when I was in my late teens. The movie was Reanimator and, I’m sorry, I was incensed throughout the whole film because the composer was ripping off the opening titles to Bernard Herrmann’s score to Psycho. I stayed enraged throughout the whole movie and... yeah... still to this day so, I never watched another Gordon movie (I’ve never revisited the original Total Recall again either, since being greatly angered in the cinema on its first release that Goldsmith had presumably been asked to copy Basil Poledouris’ iconic title music for Conan The Barbarian and, looking around me in the cinema, my heart sank when other people weren't standing up in their seats to voice their displeasure at this temp track plagiarism).

Anyway, I say all this by way of demonstrating that I’m not the most sympathetic target audience for this movie and I also don’t have the preferred point of reference to fully appreciate this film on its own terms.

However, I do have a couple of positives I can give you about the experience... and then I guess I’ll do some of the negative stuff because, yeah, I have to be truthful I suppose.

Okay, so the film was nicely shot, switching seamlessly between smooth camera moves, hand held camera, a few iris shots to focus on specific details the director wants you to catch and even a couple of swirly camera shots embracing chaos which were, it has to be said, a little reminiscent of something Brian De Palma might do (at least that’s the way I felt, I don’t know if the director was influenced by his stuff or not).

Another good thing about the movie was the actors. They’re all pretty great and do a terrific job of nailing what is quite a hard mix of comedy juxtaposed with horror in tone. Barbara Crampton had a smaller but significant role and Heather Graham is always good... although, at 53 years old already, I still can’t figure out how she always looks like she’s in her early twenties. Is she a clone? Also a big shout out to the obnoxious brat of a sometimes villain, sometimes damsel in distress (it’s a mind swap plot so that damsel thing is literal), played by Judah Lewis. I hated him in this but... yeah, I think that was the idea. So job well done.

Okay, I’ll leave one last positive for the end of this review but I will say that, I really didn’t enjoy this movie. There were no real surprises in it at all (and, again, there maybe weren’t supposed to be). It kind of hangs together but I did feel it was kinda dull. The gory scenes of violence weren’t particularly shocking or anything you’ve not seen before... which is fine but it didn’t keep me interested either. 

What should have kept me interested were the many sex scenes in the film but... wow! Is there something in everyone’s contracts now that states you can’t have any real nudity in sex scenes. I mean, there’s just a dash but, honestly, there’s nothing gratuitous in here at all, which, doesn’t make it a good advert for the 1980s Stuart Gordon thing, I’m guessing. I mean, an 80s sex scene would have had naked people performing a ‘Hollywood perfect’ version of people getting passionate. This had people getting passionate for no apparent reason half the time (it seemed to me). I was honestly surprised at Heather Graham only exposing a breast or two for maybe a second and a half because, after all, one of her many great roles was as Rollergirl in Boogie Nights. But in terms of sex scenes, this film is ‘Boogie Light’.

So, yeah, the film is a little prudish, the violence didn’t have a real lot of shock value either and, the stuff which I suspect will keep a lot of people happy would be the Stuart Gordon vibes they might be getting from it... I just don’t have the right reference point to pick up on that stuff, I’m afraid to say. Although I will say that, for the most part, the FrightFest audience were behind this and it seemed to get a good reaction from them.

So, one last thing... Steve Moore’s score was great. At least, I thought it was Steve Moore. I thought that’s who was listed on the credits but I can’t find his or any composer’s name listed on the IMDB for this film (at time of writing). It was admittedly owing a debt to certain sections of John Carpenter’s score for The Fog (reviewed here) at times but, yeah, I’d buy this on a proper CD release if it ever came out (but not on a dodgy download or scratchy vinyl).

Other than that, not much more for me to say about Suitable Flesh. It wasn’t a big hit with me and I almost regret buying a ticket but, it wasn’t a terrible movie and it went down well with the audience, I thought. I have some other FrightFest films lined up this week so I’ll hopefully be able to let you know how those went over the course of next six days.

Call Girl Of Cthulhu

Crafty Love

Call Girl Of Cthulhu
USA 2014
Directed by Chris LaMartina
Midnight Crew Studios

Warning: Some details of specific
scenes in a spoilerish manner.

Ha! This is a fun movie. It’s one of those “this was okayish” recommendations I saw strolling through in a conversation by two of my followers on Twitter so, since the title of the movie, Call Girl Of Cthulhu, was obviously referencing H. P. Lovecraft’s Eldritch creations I thought I’d give it a go... even though I’d already seen another comedy horror inspired by his writings, The Last Lovecraft (reviewed here) only a couple of years before.

This one follows a similar plot to that one, actually, with a group of Cthulhu worshipping cultists (pretty much tentacle heads) who are after something which they need to summon ‘the Ancient Ones’ and bring about the end of the world, with a group of reluctant heroes headed up by main protagonist Carter (played by David Phillip Carollo) trying to stop them and simultaneously figure out what the heck is going on. Carter is a virginal artist who’s obsessed with pornography and who accidentally stumbles on a call girl called Riley (played brilliantly by Melissa LaMartina), who happens to have (although she doesn’t realise the significance of it), a specific Cthulhuian birthmark on her backside. Carter goes on his first proper date with her, despite the misgivings of his flat mate Erica (played by Nicolette le Faye). A group of people determined to stop the cult get Carter to make a copy of a stolen book used to open a portal (I can only assume it’s supposed to be a version of Lovecraft’s infamous Necronomicon) but don’t know that he knows the same call girl who they have also been looking for, to try and stop the incoming apocalypse. That’s the plot and I won’t go into that any further...

But it’s a really fun film for sure. It’s one of those films where some of the humour comes from the main protagonist’s innocence in the face of suddenly being thrust into the entertainingly sleazy underbelly of commercially exploited sexuality but, also, the film entertains with its completely over the top levels of proportionately inappropriate goriness. And it really doesn’t hold back on either of those elements either. The gorinesss is truly outstanding in both its quantity and inventiveness but there’s also loads of nudity, which is something I’d expected the film’s producers to shy away from.

Some of the special effects (which all looked practical to me, as opposed to CGI... but I may be wrong) are pretty good while others look really cheap, do-it-yourself ‘amateur hour’ and, although I’ve no doubt this is partially due to budgetary reasons, I have to say that I suspect that some of this stuff was left the way it was to help aid the humour of the movie... it does have a certain Heath Robinson kind of appeal to the effects.

As you would expect, there are a fair few Lovecraftian joke references scattered throughout such as Rick ‘The Dick’ Pickman who, due to some plot developments, grows a monster cock with teeth which threaten to kill his victims... and a nice moment where we see the that Carter (not Randolph Carter but, of course, that’s who he’s named after) has saved a special H. P. Lovecraft ‘Deep Ones’ branded condom for that someone special who comes into his life.

And there are lots of gory sex jokes too, such as a man being given a golden shower by the title character after she’s been ‘Cthulhu’d up’ only to have his face melting off from the experience... or a nice moment where the porn model on Carter’s computer suddenly reveals her breasts to be twin snapping monsters that come out of his screen and try to eat him.

The actors in this are all great too, especially the three leads I’ve already mentioned who have certainly realised that they need to give a certain tongue in cheek style, heightened performance to make some of this ridiculous but, it has to be said, hugely entertaining material work. I’ve read that people think this movie has some bad acting in it but.... no, I think it’s very much a deliberate, stylistic choice being made here and I think some people may be trying to take this material too seriously... which is something the cast and crew definitely are not. They are all having a lot of fun with it, I suspect and that comes out in the performances and just made the film all the more enjoyable.

So yeah, a shortish review for Call Girl Of Cthulhu but, only because I can’t find much of anything bad to say about it and I thought most of the artistic decisions in the presentation were spot on, truth be told. If you like Lovecraftian tentacle horror with a fair amount of nudity and absolute buckets of fake blood then you should find yourself having a good time with this movie. A good ice breaker for an all nighter screening too, I would think.

The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage

Brundage Domination

The Alluring Art of
Margaret Brundage -
Queen Of Pulp Pin-Up Art
by Stephen D. Korshak and J. David Spurlock
Vanguard ISBN: 9781934331507

I remember seeing my first Margaret Brundage cover printed in a large format, hardback anthology book about the early days of science fiction maybe 40 or more years ago. It was for one of the Conan stories, Queen Of The Black Coast in the 1934 issue of Weird Tales. My one big takeaway, at the time, was that no matter how splendid and inviting the female figure in the illustration looked, the guy in the picture didn’t look a heck of a lot like Conan, even for the period it was illustrated when perceptions of body types were much different to what they are today (I now know the model for the picture is Margaret’s once husband ‘Slim’ Brundage). During Autumn of 2020, I re-read the complete run of the Conan stories that were published in Weird Tales again (a review will be forthcoming at some point this year, in a special Robert E. Howard Prose and Movies themed week on this blog) and with it, I rediscovered the beautiful artwork of Brundage once again.

It’s true, to my eyes the male figure still looks nothing like the descriptions of Conan in the stories (I think Frank Frazetta probably gave us the truest rendition of Howard’s powerhouse Cimmerian) but the girls are something else and, now I have this book, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage - Queen Of Pulp Pin-Up Art, I find that it was mainly the profusion of scantily clad and often totally naked women rendered lovingly by Brundage in pastels which were the main selling point of Weird Tales... a magazine she started doing covers for in the early 1930s through to the late 30s/early to mid 40s. I was also surprised to learn that, asides from the novelty of a female cover artist plying her trade with such erotically provocative imagery, she was also something of the trendsetter of this style, with most magazine cover art which came before her being of sci-fi style machinery, rockets etc. for these kinds of publications.

Alas, despite the fact that we have this lovely and brilliant book with her illustrations in it, there seems to be a lot of information lacking about her actual life. We do know that she was born in 1900 in Chicago and had a hasty marriage (with a protracted aftermath) to ‘Slim’ Brundage, who she met while working at The Dil Pickle Club, a hotspot of bohemian art and socialism. I know she was a six foot tall chain smoker and that she went for the cover artist job for Weird Tales in order to support her young son and crippled mother. When the owners of Weird Tales were bought out and relocated, various factors including the transportation of delicate, fragile pastel work to those offices of the new publishers meant that she no longer had a job. She clung on to life tenaciously though, leaving her cover artist days behind her and becoming involved in various political organisations, sadly outliving her son by a few years.

There are other details which I won’t summarise here (hey, read the damned book) but what little facts are available, plus a hell of a lot about the political and social background of where Margaret was and who she was seen with at various stages of her life, is lovingly put together for this publication. There’s even a second ‘book within a book’ which organises a lot of this info into more of a chronology and really fleshes things out, which is called The Secret Life Of Margaret Brundage or: Slim & Margaret: A Bohemian Romance of the Chicago Renaissance by J. David Spurlock.

As well as all this stuff though, there are many beautiful full page renditions of her artworks, in their original form without any of the typography plates later seen on the cover versions. There are also page sized reprints of all her magazine covers as they appeared here too and it’s these replicas of well over 60 covers (and not just her ones for Weird Tales) that are the buried treasure compiled within these pages. Along with a few surviving photos of Margaret herself (not many, she was a woman who seemed allmost inadvertently shrouded in mystery) plus the odd photo from the kind of nudie girly magazines that Margaret would be using as reference for her images (I’m glad to see nothing changes in the world of art... I used to do the same thing for fashion drawings when I was at college).

There’s also the odd, fantastic anecdote along the way and the design of the book is such that some of these appear as asides to the main text in some nice, solid layouts. For instance, H. P. Lovecraft seemed somewhat disapproving of how naked girlies could help magazine sales (and I don’t believe she ever illustrated one of his covers) whereas Robert E. Howard seemed totally in love with her illustrations. I also love the fact that, once the writers had cottoned on to her style of content that raised the sales, they would start working scenes with naked damsels into their tales for a better shot at getting the coveted cover spot with their story. There’s a sad anecdote about Brundage calling in at the Weird Tales offices and crying the day away along with the guy running it when they heard of Howard’s tragic suicide in 1936. He was certainly her favourite writer of the whole Weird Tales bunch.

Another thing I took away from this was an insight into her working process. She would be sent a ‘cover story’ for publication due in two months time (she would work on one cover a month) and that would be the one story from the magazine she would read. She’d then send pencil sketches of possible covers for a few scenes and then get the green light as to which one to work up into a cover. Occasionally there would also be changes after the cover was done... by her own admission, she wasn’t that great at hands (they look alright to me but what do I know, to be honest, the hands are not the first thing the eyes are drawn to in a Margaret Brundage illustration).

There’s much more here too, especially about her political leanings but, for me and probably a lot of people, it all plays second fiddle to the wondrous, provocative and truly gorgeous art which is lovingly reproduced on the interior pages of this beautiful book. A book which is adorned with the usual critic quotes on the back which, when you look more closely at them, you realise aren’t what they appear and are, instead, comments about Brundage from her contemporaries such as some of the writers of Weird Tales... another nice touch.  I’m really glad to have this one and am especially grateful to the young lady who gifted this to me at Christmas. If you are a lover of either ‘heroic fantasy’ art or the female form (or, you know, that thrilling combination of the two) then you would do well to pick up a copy of The Alluring Art Of Margaret Brundage - Queen Of Pulp Pin-Up Art before it goes out of print. An essential volume as far as I’m concerned.

The Last Lovecraft - Relic Of Cthulhu

Cthulhu You Think You Are?

The Last Lovecraft - Relic Of Cthulhu
USA 2009 Directed by Henry Saine
Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment DVD Region 2

The Last Lovecraft - Relic Of Cthulhu is a movie I bought for a couple of quid at a Film Fair, maybe ten years ago... and then promptly forgot about. However, my recent re-reading of The Complete Fiction Of H. P. Lovecraft (reviewed here) reminded me that I still had this comedy horror film to watch.

The film starts off with two pre-credits sequences, the first of which shows the Cult Of Cthulhu in Egypt, unearthing a part of a relic which is needed to be present when the Cthulhu monsters from H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories retake the Earth from humanity... something which should be happening pretty soon in the story’s timeline. The second sequence shows two guys on a fishing boat, drinking beer, being picked off by an unseen Lovecraftian fish monster, so the audience can see for themselves how deadly these creatures can be. The second guy is hoisted through a doorway and up out of shot before we see his bloody intestines dropping to the floor in a moment which is over the top enough to produce laughter, maybe, rather than horror. That’s the idea, though.

Then, after a short animated opening credits sequence which relies mostly on the tentacles of the Cthulhu creatures, we meet the film’s two main protagonists, Jeff and Charlie, played by Kyle Davis and Devin McGinn (Devin also wrote this movie). Jeff’s second name is Phillips and, it turns out, he is the last in line of the Lovecraft bloodline. He is sought out and entrusted by a guardian from the Miskatonic University to protect the second part of the relic from the Cult of Cthulhu... who are made up mostly of a telepathic tentacle monsters and a bunch of fish-men (also some humans but, you know, when the fish-men arrive they need someone to eat). Jeff has never heard of H. P. Lovecraft but Charlie is heavily into comics and explains everything he knows about Chtulhu. Then, a visit from some cult members who attack the guardian sends them on the run with the relic, where they pick up someone they used to know from high school who is a Lovecraft specialist/nerd (played by Matt Bauer) and then go on a road trip to seek out Captain Olaf, who they hear has had some experience of The Old Ones and the fish people of the Cthulhu mythos.

Now, as horror comedies go, it’s not exactly the funniest I’ve seen but it did make me laugh inside heartily a few times and I couldn’t say I wasn’t entertained by it. The film starts off really strong and, maybe dead ends itself towards the finish but... it’s got a lot of charm and I was certainly kept enthralled for the majority of its short storyline.

One of the characters is heavily into comics and is writing and drawing one... and this informs the movie a lot of times, giving it a kind of quirky, comic book sensibility. For example, there’s a lovely animated sequence near the start, when Charlie is explaining about the Cult of Cthulhu and their war with the ancient ones at the mountain of madness (yeah, if you’re a Lovecraft fan you can see the way this goes already, right?), which is quite funny and, like the rest of the film, treats the source material in a witty and irreverent way while still, in the case of this scene, giving a fairly good if overly prescriptive interpretation of the Cthulhu mythos and back story. Indeed, the film is so into bringing in a comic book feel to it that I was wondering for a while if this film had actually been based on a comic book itself, although it appears not.

This is a short review perhaps and the film itself is no masterpiece... but it is fast paced, keeps you interested and also dishes out an unexpected, often gory death, at times. The guy playing Charlie, who I confused with someone much more famous while I was watching this and didn’t realise who he wasn’t until after I’d finished the film, has got a lot of charisma and is a fun actor to watch. I don’t know why Kyle Davis got the part of the last of Lovecraft’s bloodline but I suspect his looks didn’t hurt here. He does look vaguely like some of the photos of H. P. Lovecraft you see from time to time and, like Lovecraft, he has those kind of ‘fishy eyes’ which might, if the fictional world ever collided with real life, mark him out as a native of Innsmouth from HPL’s tale The Shadow Over Innsmouth. There’s also a huge reference to this tale in the movie too but... I don’t want to put too many spoilers up.  

Indeed, apart from the occasional physical resemblance, there are a fair few references to Lovecraft in this, including a kind of epilogue scene where our protagonists end up... At The Mountains Of Madness but, unless there are some really subtle references in here I didn’t spot, there are also, I believe, elements/characters which are made up and are not native to the writings from which the movie takes its inspiration. It’s all a bit of a romp anyway and so mostly this is not really important. Also, you may remember if you read my review of The Complete Fiction Of H. P. Lovecraft that I was definitely aware of a strong streak of self-aware humour running through the ‘deadly serious’ writings of this writer on my latest read through so, I don’t think Lovecraft would have minded so much.  All in all, I’d probably recommend The Last Lovecraft - Relic Of Cthulhu to friends who are into the comedy/horror hybrid genre and, like I said, while it’s no masterpiece, it is funny and I had a fairly good time with it. The film seems to leave itself open for a possible sequel but, I shouldn’t think anyone is particularly holding their breath on this, least of all the writers and I’m guessing the epilogue sequence was there more to appease the distribution company that there could be more of these if it somehow made phenomenal amounts of money which, considering the way I found it, probably isn’t the case. A nice little movie though and something which I think some people will really get a lot out of. Maybe give it a go sometime.

The Complete Fiction Of H. P. Lovecraft

HP Source

The Complete Fiction
Of H. P. Lovecraft
by H. P. Lovecraft
Knickerbocker Classics - Racepoint Publishing
ISBN: 978-1631060014

I write this account of my recent researches into The Complete Fiction Of H. P. Lovecraft, not to serve as a caution or celebration to such explorers of literary intent who come after me but more as an accurate account of my findings that stand as testament to the slip into the mind shredding insanity that may be lifted wholesale from the sweet and slow miasma of his enthusiastic portent.

The facts simply, as I see them, are that I have been reading the works of one Howard Philips Lovecraft, off and on, for almost four decades of my life in one form or another, conveyed by various and fantastical lurid covered compendiums of his words in varying forms up to about ten years ago, when the Penguin Modern Classics published three collective volumes of his work in paperback form. However, I then came, a year or two ago, upon a handsome looking hardback tome proclaiming the entirety of his fictional output, minus the poetry which is of less interest to me and without samples of his non-fictional articles of which, I have to confess to the world now, that I know very little about. My hand was drawn to this heavy edition, comprising some eleven hundred pages of his fantastical gnarly brain windings in a foil blocked and embossed slipcase, because I felt that, despite the brilliance of the Penguin editions, this would be both everything in one venue and also may contain, which upon reflection I’m sure it does, small stories which may not have been included in the various other chilling anthologies from which I have partaken over the years.

So it was then, that I chose the two weeks of the summer recess from my working environment in the year of our Lord 2020, when the accursed Covid plague that has breached the livelihood and sanity of my fellow man lay lurking outside the city population’s front door like a shadow lurking in the whispering darkness, to further delve into these cosmic mysteries. Each afternoon, after my morning’s ponderous and sometimes sinister early activities, I organised a brief sojourn into the summer house at the far end of my garden and sat with the volume in question as the sun ate away at the day and the squirrels peaked in past the double doors of my preferred exile.

The works, I realised, as I began to devour them with less trepidation than I perhaps should have exhibited, were organised into some kind of chronology reminiscent of the order in which Lovecraft wrote these tales of other worlds and his legendary Cthulhu mythos - often peppered with the effects and paraphernalia of the Elder Gods and their alien brethren - as opposed to the ragged order in which they, indeed, found commercial publication to the general public at large, some posthumously in the long wake of success after this writer’s tragically early demise in 1937,  at the tender age of 46 and one half years old. This gives one a sense of the honing and development of both the author's skill at crafting his yarns and also of the rising degree of sophistication which such tales of questionable implication can be considered to have some great merit or accomplishment. Which, I might add, for the most part, the majority of these narratives certainly demonstrate.

As I began to approach the half way mark, where loosely recurring characters such as Charles Dexter Ward and Richard Upton Pickman, in whatever form, human or otherworldly, they appear to be manifesting in each subsequent tale, I began to realise that there was both a pattern to the general nature of his works but also, as I read further, I realised that there was one unflinching truth which was astonishing in its occurrence in the majority of this man’s work. I should perhaps hold my tongue, or at least stay my keyboard, rather than utter the central contrivance upon which I stumbled at this time. I have read various volumes in my studies of the dark worlds beyond our human recognition over the years but I had not made such an alarming discovery even in such tomes as the Liber Ivonis, the Cultes de Goules or the De Vermis Mysteriis. Nor, even, had my dabblings with a certain ‘hard to find’ French translation of the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred revealed a similar ingredient to that which I had stumbled upon in my appreciation of this much ‘influential beyond the realm of sleep and death’ writer who is H. P. Lovecraft. I will not write of this again unless I feel, later in my ramblings, that I am forced to reveal this fateful ‘trick of the wit’ which I can scarcely consider without a troubled frown reshaping my outer visage.

That Charles Dexter Ward could be considered a cypher of that very writer is perhaps not problematical until one finds mention, without actually meeting, a quick reference to a character in Through The Gates Of The Silver Key... which he wrote with the help of one Edgar Hoffmann Price... known simply as ‘Howard Philips’. Of course, the fact that these are where the source of Mr. Lovecraft’s initials spring, perhaps should in no way make the former any less of a stand in for the latter, thoroughly unexplored character. I did, however, find it startling in his use of the nomenclature in this instance.

As I continued my explorations I had, as I made clear, found a pattern to his work and this seems to take the form of three kinds of tale made manifest in his writings. The first type, which tend to develop to almost unendurable lengths, a curiously intense sense of foreshadowing of things to come, are the tales of terror of either a supernatural or alien design. These I find honest and noble but, although my mind could recall almost no details of Lovecraft’s fiction which I had previously perused, they held no real surprise as to the nature of the twist in the tale... an outcome which is sadly shared by the entirety of his output, although truth be told, my revelation as to the nature of his strategy and the layers of continually creeping portent certainly doesn’t help the potency of his ultimate ambition.

The second type that he demonstrates is that which I can only think of as his travelogues. These tend to take place in the shadowy world of dreams, in which the central characters - most of Lovecraft’s aspects tend to narrate proceedings in the first person form - describe the architecture and psychological feel of certain wonderlands and forbidden places in a realm entered by sleep but with sometimes less of an obvious return in sight. These I find perhaps the dullest of affairs in all this writer’s canon although, I have to say, that I finally took some small enjoyment from his somewhat gruelling and long work The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath, where none was found before.

The third type is the happier fusion of these two styles with the travelogue nature of certain styles of the second archetype supporting and making more concrete the diabolical nature of the account and it is these that tend to make up a proportion of my favourite of his tales. I might mention here that of my two absolute favourites, At The Mountains Of Madness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the former exhibits the third type of yarn spinning while the latter is perhaps, in some ways, a much loved throwback to his earlier tales of terror, albeit one which demonstrates that a sense of humour, though not readily apparent in the po-faced nature of his written form, is certainly not lacking in the heart of the artist.

As I read through this mad mountain of erstwhile fantasy, comprising examples of varying human transformation such as of fish or ape, reanimated corpses stumbling about in varying degrees of success, body swaps from one realm to another and the hideous, lurking horrors of Lovecraft’s fantastic imagination... I also found there to be the profound influence of such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, not to mention the name checking of certain friendly contemporaries and the stuff of their tales such as Robert E. Howard and young Robert Bloch. There is even a tale, ghostwritten as the popular Harry Houdini, which was a commission for the esapologist’s own magazine, where his central ‘real life’ character certainly takes up the familiar visage of a typical Lovecraft protagonist and this, too, tends to slip into the less dreamstate version of his travelogue template.

In addition to these references and, perhaps the reason for the successful incline and influence of this wordsmith in later years, was the weaving together of many of his ‘weird tales’ into a single, if loose fitting, cloth. The metatextual nature of which nobody can deny and perhaps this knitting together of different parts of his tales with the many references to the Necronomicon, Cthulhu and places in Arkham such as Innsmouth and Dunwich, is what made the workmanship so proudly displayed now an appealing prospect for the preservation of his life’s work. There's even a tale, The Thing On The Doorstep, that acts as a direct sequel to The Shadow Over Innsmouth... although the concept explored therein is much different.

All this I took in as I continued to read, afternoon upon afternoon, with a fervour no alienist could cease, until I at last reached the final tale which, once again, proved my terrifying deduction about the structure in which this consummate artist presented these antediluvian phantasmata to his potential readers. This is the one thing which made me shudder and which has haunted my dreams when I think back to those sunny afternoons of reading these chill and casually unspeakable terrors, rewarding the efforts of my matutinal activities. As Lovecraft himself wrote at the opening of his famous tale The Call Of Cthulhu, which I quote here for the understanding of the reader... “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”

Alas, such correlation was not destined to be stifled in mine own case as I reveal now to you, patient reader, my one terrible discovery of this writer’s eerie and powerful works which will forever mock me when I revisit his fantastical realms - otherworldly or terraqueous. And it is this.

For the majority of these stories found in The Complete Fiction Of H. P. Lovecraft, the writer crafts the tale in such a way that, since we usually know the outcome of the final fate of the central character given the tremendous amount of foreshadowing employed by the artist, that character will usually make a dreadful and groundshaking discovery about two thirds or three quarters of the way through and then, after this has happened, will give excuses as to not reveal that dark secret until such a time as it needs to be truly known. Hiding this information in plain sight from the reader, he waits until the very last paragraph, sometimes the very last sentence of a tale to... REVEAL THE NIGHTMARISH TWIST OF THE THING THAT HIS WHOLE DISCOURSE RESTS UPON.

Professor Nuts4r2
Miskatonic University
Arkham

Colour Out Of Space

Drag Me To Well

Colour Out Of Space
(aka Color Out Of Space)
Portugal/USA 2019 Directed by Richard Stanley
Screening at the London Film Festival 8th October 2019

Okay, so the sixth and final film of my London Film Festival experience this year was also a treat, in the form of a new H. P. Lovecraft adaptation. Now, I’ve always had a soft spot for Lovecraft but he’s a hard writer to get up on screen. Mostly, I suspect, because the majority of what he wrote used the short story form so it’s hard to expand out into a feature anyway. Also, Lovecraft’s preoccupation of describing ancient, ‘nameless’ horrors or alluding to the unspeakable things which happen rather than actually giving you full descriptions... the literary equivalent of hiding your monsters in the shadows so nobody can see how bad your creature costume is... doesn’t help potential film-makers when it comes to trying to adapt his stuff. I do, however, tend to enjoy a certain amount of what passes for ‘screen Lovecraft’. I could happily rewatch Die, Monster, Die, a 1965 attempt at bringing The Colour Out Of Space to the screen and I was even tolerant when they insisted on presenting one of his key stories, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, as Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace... I still don’t know how they got away with that one, though.

So, yeah, I was chomping at the bit to see this new movie but not, necessarily, because it was based on Lovecraft (although that was always going to be one of the plus points) but because this was the triumphant return... and having seen the film I can certainly confirm it is ‘full on triumphant’... of much loved director Richard Stanley. I loved his movies ‘back in the day’ when he directed Hardware and Dust Devil but, it appears that this is the first feature film he’s attempted to make since, by my reckoning, 1992. I’ve seen a few shorts and documentaries by him since then but he’s been hiding in the shadows for a while now due to various reasons, some of them personal, and now somebody has let him have another proper crack at making a low budget feature and... well, good idea. I just wanted to see it regardless because I know how special his first two films are.

So I was delighted to be in attendance at one of the two screenings that Colour Out Of Space got at the London Film Festival this year and even more happy that the great man was in attendance himself, to give an intro to the movie and then get into a question and answer session with the audience afterwards. He’s got one of those hypnotic voices I always find so easy to listen to for long periods of time which, in a way, is just as well because he is a bit of a talker.

So anyway, based on a work by Lovecraft, a writer who Stanley said in the Q & A that his mother got him into at the age of seven, Colour Out Of Space stars Nicholas Cage as Nathan, the head of a secluded homestead in New Orleans where he keeps a farm of tomatoes and alpacas and lives with his wife Thereza, played by Joely Richardson and his three children Benny (played by Brendan Meyer), young Jack (played by Julian Hilliard) and Lavinia (played by Madeleine Arthur).

The film is re-set in modern times but as the film’s ‘outsider’ character, a water surveyor played by Elliot Knight, walks into the forest and finds Lavinia, she is dressed in antiquated looking clothes and standing by her horse as she is trying to ‘summon up a spell’. It’s a lovely opening actually because, it’s not until Knight walks in on her and you can see him wearing modern clothes, that you are able to get a better time fix on the thing. It’s almost like you are looking at something which Roger Corman might have made in the mid-1960s for a minute. Knight’s character is called Ward Phillips which is, of course, a shortening of the original writer’s first two initials, Howard Philips.

Actually, the film is absolutely cluttered with allusions to the life and literature of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, with references to Dunwich and Arkham and all kinds of things. It didn’t bother me too much though because this production is so well put together. I was a little disappointed, truth be told, that the Necronomicon, the fictitious, extremely rare and demonic tome mentioned in many a Lovecraft tale... and quite a few other tales in both literature and film over the years... was reduced to being a small paperback volume in this. I got over it fairly quickly though. There are also a fair few references, I think, to the previous films of Richard Stanley ‘hidden in plain sight’ on occasion, such as the graffiti scrawled on the eldest son’s bedroom wall stating that... “No Flesh Shall Be Spared”... which is, of course, a reference to Hardware.

The film is... and this really isn’t surprising given as it’s Lovecraft... not entirely faithful to the original Lovecraft short. This is a movie and demands changes to be able to pass into this format, especially in a world where every film pretty much has to strive to be commercially popular now. However, unlike a fair few adaptations of the writer’s works, it is actually quite faithful in its own ways to the spirit and basic plot points of the thing. So yes, there are alpacas and crazy, almost Gigeresque... perhaps I should say Cthulhuesque in this case... monsters but various key points are put in place and faithfully maintained to anchor the film firmly in the source material quite overtly and positively so. In terms of modern adaptation, it holds up quite well. I was surprised when I heard the astonishingly low budget for this film too (around 6 million dollars) since it looks way more expensive, I think, than what it was actually put together for.

Beautiful shot set ups, of course, as you would expect form Stanley and the colours are, absolutely wonderful. There’s some nice purples in there. It probably doesn’t help matters for potential directors that, if memory recalls (it’s been at least ten years since I read this and probably twenty more before that even), the ‘colour’ out of space is an alien colour which has no equivalent on Earth so, given the challenge of an impossible colour palette to work around, I think the director here does pretty amazingly well.

I’m not going to say much about the story beats on this one... the meteor, the well etc... because you know, pretty much (and Mr. Stanley said this himself in his Q&A session, after pointing out the difficulties of adapting Lovecraft for the screen) that as far as human characters go it’s almost always going to end in either madness or death (usually both). There is, in fact, a last person standing moment in the film but I think this is very much in keeping with the original short and the nice ‘absence of colour’ in certain parts of the end sequence was also nicely done and enough to distract me on a visual level anyway.

If I had any criticisms of the film then I think, purely going on this first viewing, that things maybe do get a bit over the top towards the end... not in terms of content but in what they ‘show’ of the content. Of course, you expect that of a Nicolas Cage film now anyway but I was amused to hear Mr. Stanley saying, after the film had finished, that Cage “isn’t nearly as crazy as people think he is”. I always suspected as much but, of course, coming from a director as delightfully crazy as Richard Stanley anyway, I’m not 100% sure that’s a stirling endorsement.

Another slight criticism would be the title, which on the print I saw (even though I saw it in rainy England), was written as Color Out Of Space, in the American spelling. However, I did notice that the spelling was written in the English manner on the credit which read something along the lines of... based on the short story The Colour Out Of Space by H. P. Lovecraft... so that kind of mollified me a little. As did the appearance of Tommy Chong in the movie.

Oh... I almost forgot to mention the score by Colin Stetson, which I thought was pretty good. It does call attention to itself in various scenes but I don’t see anything wrong with that and it does well to help maintain a level of unease and strangeness to the proceedings. It’s a nice scene setter too, with the breathtaking opening shots of the surrounding forest before the meteor crashes down made somehow eerie by Stetson’s, almost ‘new age’ moments within the score. I’d grab this one quickly if only the thing was out on a nice CD.

And that’s me pretty much done with Colour Out Of Space and I can’t wait until this thing comes out on Blu Ray (hopefully sooner rather than later). It was a thrill to see a film I’d been really looking forward to more than most others this year and a very special cherry on top of the icing to actually get to see Richard Stanley ‘in the flesh’, as it were.

And that’s also me done with the London Film Festival this year. I’ve seen some truly remarkable films this time around and I had a great time with all of them. Looking forward, now, to the next festival I have tickets for... which is the mini FrightFest Halloween all dayer event at the start of November. Hopefully my ‘film stamina’ will prove its worth as I try and survive from 10am in the morning until 12.30am the next morning, devouring various new horror movies as they flash before my eyes. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed my coverage of the films I saw at this year’s London Film Festival and normal review service of three a week should resume very shortly, with two new cinema releases up next, fingers crossed. Thanks for reading.

The Endless

Cthulhu Hoops

The Endless
USA 2017
Directed by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead
Arrow Blu Ray Zone 2

Warning: Some spoilers on this one, I guess.

Okay... so all I can say is that I’m really glad that I saw these two director’s movie Resolution (which I reviewed right here) before I saw this one. As it turns out, the low key approach that it shares a couple of characters and ideas with that earlier film is like saying The Empire Strikes Back shares some characters and ideas with the original Star Wars (resubtitled Episode IV: A New Hope for modern, post 1977 audiences). The Endless is less a shared universe movie and more a direct sequel to the original. The directors play the main protagonists in this one, who were minor characters in the first, using their own christian names as character names. However, the two main protagonists of the last film are seen in a sizeable sequence towards the end of this film too. This one also, kinda, explains what was happening to these two, how... or at least why... the artefacts that made up that story kept appearing and also, although set ten years or so after the first film, we get director Aaron Moorhead’s character Aaron watching the sequence we saw where Mike first arrives at the cabin in Resolution. Which will make more sense once you see The Endless.

Furthermore, although it’s a direct sequel, it’s a little bit like a rerun or almost a partial remake, in some ways, of the first and one wonders if the two directors are just reworking their ideas in a greater exploration of the Lovecraftian stew they concocted for Resolution. Indeed, The Endless starts right off the bat with a direct quote from writer H. P. Lovecraft, as though the two are instantly stating their alignment with the ideas, or at least style, of that writer for the audience... wearing their influences on their sleeve in pursuit of a more 'up front' movie than the first, perhaps.

The film starts in a very similar manner to the first but, in this instance, after escaping from a weird ‘UFO Death Cult’ ten years or so prior to the events in the film, Justin is sent some video tape footage which forces him to track down some old hardware to play it on at a local boot sale. I actually like the fact that the writing allows for the obsolescence of the technology to require effort to access it in the first place and I saw a similar ode to obsolescence played out in a scene in the combined Ringu/Ju On sequel Sadako VS Kayako a couple of years ago (which desperately needs a subtitled physical release in the UK instead of a stupid, corporate streaming version... my review of the Frightfest screening of the film can be found here). I also liked that buying the technology to access this means that Justin sacrificed the money saved for buying a new car battery and this will have consequences, or at least complicate things for the two characters, further on down the line.

After seeing footage of one of the people at the cult, Justin convinces Aaron to take them back for a visit and so the two go, only to find that all the people they used to know are somehow un-aged over time and with a, mostly, welcoming attitude. And there are some nice sequences in here...

Such as the felt (rather than seen) presence of some large, Cthulhuian monster roaming around the landscape and a tug of war game with, probably, the same creature. And the odd appearance of artefacts utilising what can only be likened to ‘missing time’ in the main characters. Also, it’s hard for our characters not to notice that there are now two moons in the sky in the area they’ve gone to... explained as a naturally occurring, mirage style phenomena by members of the cult. It’s nicely done, though and is possibly the most interesting effect in the whole movie. This is coupled with some cool design transitions every now and again focusing on circular shapes which hints at what is really going on here.

However, when those double moons I mentioned suddenly become three moons, things start to go wrong for our heroes, who have become separated from each other due to an argument and who are now wandering around the local landscape trying to find each other. However, what they find instead is... time loops created by the ‘ancient unspeakable presence’ that we glimpsed (or quite noticeably didn’t glimpse, in actual fact), at the end of the last movie. Loops where people are trying to break their personal cycles... whether they last months, seasons, years or, in one case, literally a few seconds, by killing themselves in various ways. Furthermore, the two central characters from the last movie are more than aware now they must be caught in one of these time loops and Aaron, kindly, doesn’t let Mike know that his wife, played once again by Emily Montague, is actually in the commune a mile or so away and very much in a kind of loop herself, one must assume.

The film has the same stylistic traits of the previous, with small, almost imperceptible hand held camera movement a lot of the time and lots of light contrasting with a slightly subdued colour palette. There is actually a score for this one by Jimmy Lavalle although, a lot of the time, it’s kept quite minimal. The acting is all pretty great and, joining the directors along with Peter Cilella and Vinny Curran from Resolution, we have some good supporting cast such as Callie Hernandez and Tate Ellington doing some nice work here.

And... I don’t really have too much more  to say about it than that. It’s less subtle than the first movie, perhaps a little over the top at times with a run time which could maybe have been cut by 20 minutes or so once all the points have been made. Like the first one, however, it rambles along at its own pace and, although I have nothing against films that take their time, I did find this one dragging just a little towards the end. If you liked Resolution then you’re probably going to really like The Endless because, I think, despite it being a bit more overt with its portrayal of events, it’s a slightly better movie than the first. That being said, I definitely think you’ll have a far richer experience and appreciation of this film if you see Resolution first so, if you’ve not seen that one then I would definitely seek them out in chronological order. Both worth a watch for people who like low budget horror with a strong mystery element in the DNA of the films they are watching.

Deep Rising

Rise Guys

Deep Rising
1998 USA
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Entertainment In Video 
DVD Region 2

This film had pretty much been off my radar up until a month or two ago. I'm almost afraid to admit, once again, that my route into this one was through the music but... what happened was that Intrada released a limited number of an expanded edition of the score and it was a Jerry Goldsmith score I didn't already have. Now I've always loved the music of Jerry Goldsmith (even as a kid when I hummed his stuff before I knew who wrote it) and I was lucky enough to see him in concert maybe six or seven times in his lifetime. I don't buy all his scores but I have a good deal of them and so, once I'd listened to the sound samples, I decided I'd have to get that one soonest as it's a fine score from his late period.

This, of course, meant I wanted to find out about the movie and, when I saw two specific things about this film, I ordered a cheap DVD copy off amazon for a couple of quid. So, the two things which had, more or less, decided me on an instant purchase, asides from Jerry's marvellous action score? They were the words "sea monsters" and "Stephen Sommers".

Now, before this, I'd only seen four Stephen Sommers Movies in my life but three of those I hold in very high regard and the fourth one, GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, was at least enjoyable enough, if somewhat silly. I really loved this director, though, for the three movies I'd seen him do which, in all respects, were basically fun, retro B-movies but made with fairly large budgets - The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and the much maligned but equally groovy Van Helsing.

So, as I started watching, I was pleased to notice that this starts off in B-movie territory right from the outset, with a bunch of heroes for hire, providing a boat and cargo shipping and headed up by Treat Williams. They have been retained by a crew of villainous hijackers (including Jason Flemyng and loads of modern character actors) and their target is a cruise ship captained by another villain who is working in cahoots with the hijackers. A villain who has just caught a cat burglar type lady, played by the always lovely Famke Janssen, trying to rip off his own haul.

This already sounds like a collision course for a boys own adventure, of course, but remember that other word I said made me want to take a look at this movie? The two ships/boats (whatever) are both completely crippled by... oh yeah... sea monsters.

Great, many tentacled sea monsters resembling, somewhat, a cthuhuian elder race best spoken of in hushed tones in an old H. P. Lovecraft story. And so the film goes all The Poseidon Adventure for a little while and then you're left with two or three quarreling factions constantly at each others throats while everybody is trying to find their best chance of escape while avoiding being swallowed and slowly digested by the "tentacle of the week", so to speak.

And the best thing about this movie... apart from pretty much everything I've mentioned up until now?

Benny is in it.

That is to say, the wonderful modern character actor Kevin J. O Connor, who payed the weaselly Benny in The Mummy and the weaselly Igor in Van Helsing... plays the weaselly grease monkey on the side of the good guys (for once) named Joey. And, as I predicted, Sommers gives him some of the best lines of the movie. My favourite being a moment when the good guys, bad guys and the lovely femme fatale are stuck inside an elevator playing "canned music". Suddenly, a sinister and ominous sound is heard from outside the lift. "What is it?" asks Treat Williams' character John Finnegan. "The Girl From Ipanema" says Joey, referring to the elevator music. I think I chuckled just a little too gleefully at that one... even though I kinda knew he was going to say it.

Actually, one of the strengths of the writing of the movie is the way Sommers uses stereotype characters who don't need a lot of explaining. He hits the ground running and gives you just enough quick character info so that you can work out the dynamics of the relationships without feeling, at any time, shortchanged by the fact that there’s no real character development in the movie. It's formulaic writing but it does its job well and it does it quick... this is the essence of pulp writing and this is essentially a pulp movie we have here... and that's not meant to be in any way a derogatory comment.

Deep Rising is beautifully filmed with lots of long, slow swooping camera shots and appropriately placed dutch angles. A lot of it is set in dark or dimly lit, claustrophobic spaces but you never really fail to notice everything in shot and, luckily, the editing is anything but confusing too, although I think there were a couple of little "sequential errors" with the continuity.

Unlike the aforementioned Sommers' Universal Monster reboots, this has a higher BBFC classification and so the director is able to play the horror elements a little more edgier than I was used to seeing him do... backing up some of the suspense scenes with a few well timed pieces of goriness thrown into the mix. The CGI work on the tentacle monsters themselves is pretty good but the few smatterings of assorted nastiness also has some great effects work, with the walking, groaning, half digested former crewman being a particularly interesting achievement... if you're into that kind of thing.

So... a great ensemble cast of actors, glorious B-movie writing with some cool one liners, good camerawork coupled with more than competent editing, some nice effects work and, also, a pace that never really lets up. The cherry on top of the cake is, of course, that late period Jerry Goldsmith score which captures his style of writing from films like The Mummy, The Thirteenth Warrior, LA Confidential, Star Trek: First Contact and dozens of others of his later works which shared the same kind of building, rhythmic drives and sweeping, melodic invention. In other words, one of the great composers giving a larger than life B-movie action/horror score for a work that celebrates that kind of stylistic influence and which is wholly relevant to the proceedings (not to mention being a darned good listen away from the movie too).

If you like old, pulpy B-movies with cliched but likeable characters and a predictable but enjoyable storyline, not to mention a wet bike being chased through the decks of a flooded ship by a giant sea monster thingy... then you should probably put Deep Rising on your "to watch" pile. I'm really glad I did.

A Wordsworth to the Wise

Thought this might be an opportunity to give my readers a quick pointer to Wordsworth Editions. People may remember this publisher, who introduced us to the idea of the £1 classic back in the early nineties.

Well, they’re still going strong and their editions are still exceptionally "value for money" (ok cheap, then) ranging at prices from £1.99 to £2.99 which, when compared to the cost of many modern paperbacks and given the extraordinary array of books available from Wordsworth Editions, is truly staggering. They’ve recently released my favourite Jules Verne novel, Mysterious Island, as part of their range and I’d urge any interested parties to pick this up as soon as they can - I remember waiting ages for a special order of this novel only a few years ago and when it finally came through it cost about a tenner! Wish I’d waited until now.

Of special interest is their “Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural” series of classic reprints. There are some great “value for money” editions of some absolutely terrific titles lurking beneath the covers of these distinctive black and charcoal grey editions (with their odd embossed and spot varnished blood and skulls), many of which I might never have been aware of if it wasn’t for the existence of this company.

Richard Marsh’s truly amazing tale of The Beetle for instance, which outsold publication of its nearest rival Dracula (also available in an excellent Wordsworth Edition) by a significant margin, is on their listings... and once you’ve read it you’ll see why it outsold the Stoker classic - it’s fantastic. This was apparently the source novel for a silent film of the same title, so if anyone can get ahold of a copy or give me any information as to its status as either a lost film or something from which the footage still survives... please contact me.

If you’re a fan of recurring characters, they have some complete collections of some very interesting ones... for instance, “The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder” by W.H. Hodgson or “The Right Hand of Doom and other tales of Solomon Kane” by the legendary Robert E. Howard. Plus lots of stalwarts of the genre such as Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft and Arthur Conan Doyle (and not just his Holmes stories, although these are obviously all covered... my first read of the Professor Challenger stories was via a Wordsworth Edition called “The Lost World and other stories”).

Contemporary writers are also on board with this label, such as David Stuart Davies and his remarkable tales of Sherlock Holmes adventures “previously unwritten” (like The Tangled Skein, which pits Holmes and Watson against Dracula).

And for all you people who like to know where your movies and TV shows have grown from, an interesting batch of short stories await you from this sterling publisher... an M.R. James collection, for example, which includes his “Casting The Runes” most famously adapted as Night of the Demon (or Curse of the Demon depending on which version you know)... an Ambrose Bierce collection which features “The Damned Thing” (most recently made into a Master’s Of Horror episode)... Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (which was the basis for many vampire films based on tales of the Karnsteins - including Hammer’s three movies kicking off with The Vampire Lovers)...Lafcadio Hearn’s “Oriental Ghost Stories” (which includes the tales which were the basis of Masaki Kobayashi's masterpiece Kwaidan... or Kaidan, depending again on which edition you have)... the list goes on. Do some research because I think you’ll find it’s worth it.

I should probably stop gushing now... suffice it to say that I owe Wordsworth Editions an enormous debt when it comes to exposure to a lot of great tales which I might not otherwise have read. From D’Artagnan to Dr Nikola and from Robinson Crusoe to Rouletabille, these editions are not to be missed and I personally consider this particular publisher to be providing, frankly, a wonderful and much needed (in these jaded times) public service rather than running a business... although they seem to be managing to do both quite well.

For details of all their editions go here... www.wordsworth-editions.com