Posts Tagged ‘H.P. Lovecraft’
Monday, February 12th, 2024
SUITABLE FLESH is the latest from Joe Lynch, a director who has a certain credibility in my book because his debut was a DTV sequel. I was mixed-positive on WRONG TURN 2: DEAD END (2007) and wrote some things in the review that I now consider out of line, but I definitely respect its joyful spirit toward sequelizing and in many ways outdoing a studio movie I really wasn’t that into. Since then Lynch has directed a comedy that got taken away from him, the Salma Hayek action vehicle EVERLY, the gory outbreak-in-an-office-building movie MAYHEM (which I liked but apparently didn’t review) and the Frank Grillo/Anthony Mackie car chase buddy movie POINT BLANK. But now he’s returned to horror with a sacred task: to manifest an unfinished project of the late great Stuart Gordon.
I didn’t realize it from the name, but it’s one of those unfulfilled ambitions we read about for years – here’s an example of Gordon talking it up while promoting STUCK in 2008, but using the title of the H.P. Lovecraft story it’s based on, “The Thing on the Doorstep.” The script is by Gordon’s regular collaborator Dennis Paoli (RE-ANIMATOR, FROM BEYOND, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, CASTLE FREAK, DAGON) and it’s produced by RE-ANIMATOR/FROM BEYOND/CASTLE FREAK star Barbara Crampton. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Winter, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Davison, Charles A. Pieper, Chris McKenna, Christian Calloway, DeMorge Brown, Dennis Paoli, Digital Native Dance, Gabriel Bartalos, H.P. Lovecraft, Heather Graham, Jared Logan, Joe Lynch, Johnathon Schaech, Jonah Ray, Josh Forbes, Judah Lewis, Kiran Deol, Kumail Nanjiani, Mike Benner, Pete Ploszek, Randee Heller, Ryan Kattner, Steve Moore, Stuart Gordon, Thomas Lennon
Posted in Reviews, Horror | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, March 25th, 2020
You know how it is: you have these reoccurring nightmares about a sexy mermaid, and then you’re on a yacht trip with your girlfriend and an older couple, and a violent storm hits out of the blue and the boat wrecks and your friend is injured and you try to get help on the nearby island of Iboca but everyone’s weird and people have noticeable gills and tentacles and shit and a homeless guy explains to you that years ago a guy convinced them to give up Christianity and worship the sea god Dagon, who is different than Jesus in that he requires his followers to throw him women to impregnate with immortal monster babies. We’ve all been through it, and H.P. Lovecraft wrote about it in 1931, so Stuart Gordon made a movie about it in 2001.
Gordon is a rightfully designated Master of Horror, but I think deserves more recognition than he receives. Every time I watch or rewatch one of his movies it ends up being better than expected or remembered. In this case it still had the same issue I remembered, but it’s pretty good. Maybe pretty good plus. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Yuzna, Dennis Paoli, Ezra Godden, Francisco Rabal, H.P. Lovecraft, Macarena Gomez, Stuart Gordon
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 20 Comments »
Monday, February 24th, 2020
COLOR OF OUTER SPACE is last year’s comeback film for Richard Stanley, known for not directing THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. Working on a lower budget with the cool production company SpectreVision (MANDY, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT) he was able this time to successfully achieve his weird literary adaptation dreams without ever having to hide out in a rain forest disguised as a dog man.
This one’s based on H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space,” originally published in a 1927 issue of Amazing Stories, and it opens with a young woman in a cape with a white horse performing an occult ritual. Nice trick – I assumed it was a prologue in the faraway past, but it’s the modern day, and she’s just a weirdo. She’s Lavinia Gardner (Madeleine Arthur, BIG EYES), daughter of Nathan (Nic Cage, known for not starring in SUPERMAN LIVES) and Theresa (Joely Richardson, MAGGIE), who have recently moved from “the big city” (as all normal humans call their home town) to an isolated farm in Arkham, Massachusetts. They’re kind of trying to live Off the Grid, so they get their water from a well, don’t have reliable wi-fi, and are raising alpacas, “the animal of the future” according to Dad. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Colin Stetson, Elliot Knight, H.P. Lovecraft, Joely Richardson, Josh C. Waller, Julian Hilliard, Medeleine Arthur, Nicolas Cage, Q'orianka Kilcher, Richard Stanley, Spectrevision, Tommy Chong
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 45 Comments »
Thursday, October 19th, 2017
John Carpenter’s IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS is as much a vibe as it is a story. It’s bewildered paranoia, fear of an impermanent reality, and the mystique of imaginary horror books with language so powerful it alters minds and taps into an ancient evil.
It starts in an insane asylum, where insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill, DAYBREAKERS) swears he’s been brought by mistake. He’s not crazy, he says. Later in the movie (and earlier in time) the idea is introduced that reality could change for everyone else, but not you, and then all the sudden you’d be crazy without having had to go crazy. Seems like just some bullshit philosophizing when he hears it, but we’ve seen into the future.
He tells a psychiatrist (David Warner, MONEY TALKS) his story. It all began when he was hired to find the missing author Sutter Cane. Cane is a giant Harry Potter sized phenomenon, described as “bigger than Stephen King” (who he shares a font with) but his stories sound more like H.P. Lovecraft with their unleashings of indescribable evils and what not. This all takes place during a rash of riots and mental health incidents across the country, one of which Trent happened to be a victim of. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bernie Casey, Charlton Heston, David Warner, H.P. Lovecraft, John Carpenter, Julie Carmen, Jurgen Prochnow, Michael De Luca, Sam Neill
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 28 Comments »
Tuesday, November 12th, 2013
RE-ANIMATOR holds up as a timeless classic, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR never was one and hasn’t gotten any better. This time Stuart Gordon was not involved (if a man wants to spend 1989 doing ROBOT JOX that is his right), and the directational reins were handed over to producer Brian Yuzna. I guess I’m comparing a shitty non-anamorphic DVD to a nice blu-ray, but this one seems cheaper and more obvious than the first one in every regard, from the broader acting to the shitty Richard Band keyboard score that, when it’s not ripping off the PSYCHO theme again, sounds exactly like every score he did for any Full Moon movie in that era.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Yuzna, Bruce Abbott, Claude Earl Jones, David Gale, H.P. Lovecraft, Jeffrey Combs, Mel Stewart
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 17 Comments »
Thursday, October 31st, 2013
Damn, talk about a movie that surpasses my memory of it being pretty good. Stuart Gordon’s FROM BEYOND is a minor horror classic with the elegant simplicity and tone of RE-ANIMATOR and the body transmogrifying ambition of John Carpenter’s THE THING. It’s all about an incident when another dimension bonks heads with ours, and you can guess which one of us gets a bloody nose.
Jeffrey Combs stars in this one too, this time as Crawford, the more reasonable assistant to his groundbreaking professor at Miskatonic, Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel, NETWORK, BASKET CASE 2), whose invention “The Resonator” uses a bunch of analog computers and Tesla-tech hooked to a row of tuning forks to create a vibration that stimulates our pineal glands, causing us to see beings that have been around us, unseen, all along. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barbara Crampton, H.P. Lovecraft, Jeffrey Combs, Ken Foree, Stuart Gordon, Ted Sorel
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 28 Comments »
Tuesday, October 29th, 2013
RE-ANIMATOR is one of those good old ’80s college buddy movies, you know? You got the tall, blandly handsome star student Dan (Bruce Abbott), he’s fucking the dean’s daughter Megan (Barbara Crampton), there’s an uptight professor, Dr. Hill (David Gale – the one from SAVAGE WEEKEND, who I still don’t think is the same one THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE is about), who disapproves of the relationship. Then a new student comes to Miskatonic U., the socially inept but brilliant Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), who maybe got kicked out of his school in Switzerland, or maybe had to flee. A troublemaker! Double secret probation!
Dan seems like a jock, Herbert like a nerd. Dan is a normal person, Herbert a creepy weirdo. And they become roommates! It would be fun if it was about Dan trying to loosen him up, bringing him to parties and stuff, or to pledge at a fraternity, but maybe that’s in the sequels.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barbara Crampton, Bruce Abbott, David Gale, H.P. Lovecraft, Jeffrey Combs, Stuart Gordon, zombies
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 37 Comments »
Wednesday, July 24th, 2002
Well here we are with another slightly above average horror picture from Stuart Gordon, the guy who did REANIMATOR and a couple other halfway decent movies, but who seems to live next door to Full Moon Video or something. By this I do not mean that he only makes movies about little bastards like ghoulies, demonic toys, subspecieses, dollmen, shrunken heads, puppet masters, and etceteras. All I mean is that he seems to share alot of stylistic choices, collaborators and straight to video horror blood with those guys. But this is one of his movies that seems a little better. A little.
I know this one got a small amount of theatrical play here in seattle and that alone is an amazing accomplishment for Stuart these days. In case you are wondering it is not about dragons. If you look closely there is no R. In fact it is about a village of fish people, which could only mean that it is based on stories by Howard P. Lovecraft. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: H.P. Lovecraft, Stuart Gordon
Posted in Horror, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
