H.P. Lovecraft-inspired movies

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Robert M. Price has edited several collections of Mythos stories by Lovecraft imitators, of which I liked "The Necronomicon" best. "Chtulhu 2000", edited by Jim Turner, is also very readable.

http://www.gameslore.com/acatalog/Games ... s_111.html

Few more lovecraft inspired works, this time from the peeps who did the RPG.

CTHULHU 2000? XD HAH! That's like Dracula 2000, except with more tentacles and less Seven of Nine.

I think I'm gonna go with The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.



Edit: Oh, Uzumaki was written by Junji Ito.

You know you can buy plush toys of Cthulhu and the Shoggoths? Here's the shop:

http://www.trollandtoad.com/Yu-Gi-Oh!-&-Other-CCG-Card-Games/1074-482-1102.html

I've seen the plushy gear, and so desperately NEED to get some Cthulhu slippers.

Also try googling "Tales of the Plush Cthulhu" for an amusing strip about said toys.

Another Lovecraft inspired film was "Die, Monster Die!," which was released in 1965. It was based on the story "The Colour Out of Space" and starred Boris Karloff. I'm not sure if it has been released on DVD or VHS but if you can find it, it's worth seeing.

Speaking of which, does Calls for Cthulhu count?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DsgZ4JXXB8[/youtube]

There are a lot of these. XD

I'd like to see Cthulhu host other shows. A Dr Phil/Ricki Lake one? The evening news? Sports? Theres potential for a whole network out there. Anchorman with unspeakable monstrosities from the outer dark.

He reminds me of Morbo in "Futurama".

I've read complaints that HPL's work always gets mistranslated into film, thus preventing any adaptation of a particular story from being good enough to acheive commercial success. Lovecraft stories in non-print media seem to work best when they exist within his extended mythos instead of retelling something he actually wrote. This is the case with a lot of comics and RPGs.

Can anyone think of a TV show or movie that's had such a subtle influence from Lovecraft that you may not have noticed it until long after you'd read a lot of his work?

An example I only recently realized occurs within the mythos of my foremost obsession, Transformers. Flint Dille or one of the artists must have read "In The Mountains of Madness" during pre-production for the animated movie, because the Quintessons seem clearly if loosely based on the Great Old Ones, in that they're egg-shaped and have five-point radial symmetry. The crazy-ass underwater scene on their home planet of Quintessa seems to be a mechanical version of one of HP's fever-dreams, and the later revelation in season 3 of the cartoon that the Quints created the Transformers for use as slave-labor is a lot like when the explorers in ITMOM learn that all life on Earth was created with similar intentions.

The one truly Lovecraftian TF story though, is "The Dweller in the Depths", where some Quintessons trick some TFs into releasing the Transorganics, some grotesque earlier experiments that they had to seal away because they were too dangerous and uncontrollable. The title TO ends up killing its former masters, just like a proper shoggoth.

I know other cartoons like Ghostbusters and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy have made direct references to Lovecraft's work (well, mostly Cthulu, but Billy was once posessed by "Yog"), but can anyone think of any subtler influences, not necessarily homages?

I can think of several occurences of direct reference in a lot of things. (I believe I mentioned some earlier in the thread) but for more obscure inspiration-of-writer/animator I'll have to look a bit closer at some stuff.

Of course some of it will be indirect chance. The concept that alien beings would be older and far in advance of us is a fairly generic one.. the fact that they might be godlike and inscrutable just as much.

It might help to identify what makes a tale "Lovecraftian" in essence.

My first thought on that would be "despair and failure". I cant think of many HP tales that end on a victorious or upbeat note. People lose. go mad, or die at the end.

Second: Inscrutable and vast alien entities so far removed from us they may as well be gods.

Tentacles?

I think the essence of Lovecraft is that the universe is utterly indifferent to us, not just as individuals, but as a race. It's practically the opposite of "Star Trek", where all alien races are humanoid, partly related, have motives, languages, cultures and politics with recognizable human features, and care enough about one another to wage wars and form alliances. With the exception of the scholarly Great Race, Lovecraft's aliens have no recognizable motives and consider us no more than pests.

My class in Animation Production at uni has the task of making "The Music of Erich Zann" in 3D CGI Animation. I wouldn't have chosen that particular story myself, but I was thrilled to find out I'll be involved in making a Lovecraft film.

It should be about 10 minutes long and will be rendered in pencil sketch style.

This is true. All of the plotting and subversiveness in Lovecraft is carried out by the human (or semi-human) followers of the mythos deities. With the exception of "Call Of Cthulhu", old tentacle face actually plays very little direct part in the tales, except as a malign influence in dreams. At best he has one reconisable motive.. to be free of R'lyeh. After that, the closest we can gather is that humanity is destined to be no more than cattle, and probably less.

Though thinking on it, cthulhu isnt actually all that tough. They manage to hurt him by ramming him with a boat, so maybe hanging about in R'lyeh and getting minions to do all the work for him is a crafty way of not copping for any more damage.

I may be mis-remembering, but the only Trek entity that has a mythos-style lack of understandable motive is the builder of the array thing at the start of the Voyager seasons.. the one that hurls them into another quadrant for no readily apparent reason. (If there is a reason or motive, I must have missed it.) Possibly there may have been one or two from the original series that were inscrutably alien and godlike as well.

That leads me to another thought. A series which had a touch of Lovecraft to it: Babylon 5. It contained "old ones", which smacked of an appeal to the elder gods.. and the Pac'mara (sp) even had tentacle-faces.

I'm a great fan of Babylon 5, but I think it was much more heavily inspired by "The Lord of the Rings". The Vorlons are powerful spiritual beings like the Istari, the Minbari are reminiscent of the Elves, the Shadows look like Shelob's brood, there is a romance between a human leader and a Minbari lady, the protagonist falls to his death in a place called Z'ha'dum only to receive a second lease on life (like Gandalf in Khazad-dûm), and there is even a band of human warriors allied to the Minbari who call themselves "Rangers"! Also, episode 2.25 ("The Geometry of Shadows") paraphrases Gildor: "Do not try the patience of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."