Filming the Unfilmable: The Fiction and Cinema of H.P. Lovecraft (Part Three)
“I shall never permit anything bearing my signature to be banalised and vulgarised into the flat infantile twaddle which passes for ‘horror tales’ amongst radio and cinema audiences” - H.P. Lovecraft, 1933
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the American International Pictures company (AIP) had been experiencing success with their series of Edgar Allan Poe films, but felt that the cycle was coming to a close. In order to keep their success alive, they turned to the next logical source: H.P. Lovecraft. The first H.P. Lovecraft adaptation was a revision of his novella “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” and was called Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace (Migliore 2). As contradictory as that may seem, it is actually an appropriate forefather to the disservices to Lovecraft that followed. The Haunted Palace featured extensive plot revision including a new time period, aging horror stars (Lon Chaney Jr.) and a burning mansion, all of which would become standards in the first wave of Lovecraft adaptation. Legendary “B” movie figure Roger Corman directed The Haunted Palace and also had a hand in two other early attempts at Lovecraft.
Die Monster Die!, released in 1965, has become notable for being one of the final starring roles for horror icon Boris Karloff. He was seventy-seven years old and in ill health, and he died several years later. The film is loosely based on the story “The Colour Out of Space”, and also has touches of another Lovecraft story, “The Dunwich Horror”. There is enough of the source material present in the film to make a solid connection, but the extraneous details added by the filmmakers drag the final product into campy haunted house schlock. American International’s other notable attempt came in 1970 when they made The Dunwich Horror. This time their aging star was character actor Ed Begley in his last role; the film also featured Sandra Dee as a “marquee name” (Migliore 21). While making several noticeable concessions in the plot department, the film does follow the story to a certain extent; Lovecraft’s “elder gods” and strange incantations are left intact.
In the 1980s, filmmakers tried different methods of filming Lovecraft; a sound plan given that the old methods were clearly ineffective. The most notable film from this group is 1985’s Reanimator, directed by Stuart Gordon and featuring the man who would become the quintessential Lovecraftian actor (for what it’s worth), Jeffrey Combs. Instead of trying to maintain the Lovecraftian atmosphere with gothic settings and subtle performances, Reanimator took the completely opposite attack, updating the story into the 1980s and loading on the blood and gore. Strangely, by utilizing the splatter film aesthetic and maintaining Lovecraft’s characterizations in a new era, the film comes closer to capturing the spirit of its source material than any other adaptation.
The main problem with Lovecraft films is the unwillingness of the filmmakers to let the stories stand on their own. The mixing and bolstering of Lovecraft’s plots leads to at best well-intentioned tributes and at worst muddled disasters. To be fair, there isn’t much about a Lovecraft story that makes a popular movie, therefore directors and screenwriters feel pressured to come up with elements that will appeal to the cinema-going public. The most common form of plot augmentation is the love interest. The largely asexual Lovecraft would never had considered a love interest in his own fiction and those in his films work to varying levels of distraction. Another glaring problem in Lovecraft films is no fault of the director or screenwriter, it seems that the films are often burdened with a low budget. Lovecraft’s creatures are so otherworldly that a limited budget could not possibly produce an adequate depiction. His descriptions are sometimes purposefully vague, leaving the better part to imagination. Still, even the imagined conceptions of beings such as Cthulu would be impossible to create on a low budget.
“Chains ... for devils!!!” - Boris Karloff in Die Monster Die!
Testament to the power of Lovecraft’s prose is the utter failure of the film Die Monster Die! to capture a single ounce of the cosmic terror contained in “The Colour Out of Space”. The acting is second rate, the special effects are laughably cheap, and the added plot elements only drag the narrative down. The tale of a cosmic force wreaking havoc on a defenseless family is transformed into haunted house schlock.
Karloff contemplates Nick Adams.
Screenwriter Jerry Sohl took many liberties with the source material, altering both major and minor details. Most noticeably the town of Arkham has been moved from Massachusetts to England, and there are several new characters introduced. The Gardner family has had their name changed to Witley, a variation of Whateley from “The Dunwich Horror”. They’ve also been rearranged: instead of three sons, Nahum now has a single daughter, Susan. Nahum’s wife Nabby has been renamed Laetitia and his butler Merwyn takes the name of the youngest Gardner boy. A completely new character is introduced in Steven Reinhart, an American science student who has come to visit Susan.
The meteor is still present, but the motivations surrounding it have changed. It is not a physical force, but simply a rock with strange properties. The writers invoke Lovecraft when Nahum explains that he believes the rock was sent to punish his father Corbin for trying to invoke the “Outer Ones”, a take on Lovecraft’s god-like creatures. Like the story, the rock causes strange reactions in plants, animals, and people, but it isn’t trying to gain energy from its victims. As Reinhart deducts, it’s simply radioactive. The effected plants and animals from the story can be found in Nahum’s greenhouse, which contains “plants of incredible size and unwonted gloss” and a strange menagerie summed up by Reinhart in the film’s immortal line: “It’s like a zoo in Hell”.
The cast was probably the best that the filmmakers could afford, but when a wheelchair-bound old man in ill health delivers the best performance, it’s not a good sign. The old man in question is horror movie legend Boris Karloff, whose best days were far behind him. Despite his condition, he manages to lend his role an air of dignity, one of the few positive aspects of this film.
The other main roles are stereotyped, and the actors aren’t good enough to overcome the limitations. “B” movie stalwart Nick Adams, called “the poor man’s James Dean” by Leonard Maltin, fills the part of Steven. His career began promisingly but took a left turn for Japan where he starred in films such as Godzilla vs. Monster Zero and Frankenstein Conquers the World. His role in this film is the same as in his Japanese work: a loud, abrasive, sometimes angry American who wants to “get to the bottom of things”. Suzan Farmer plays the role of Nahum’s daughter Susan; judging by Internet criticism of the film her most important contributions are her impossibly tight sweaters. To be fair, she isn’t given much to do other than look cute and scream, and she does both ably. The remainder of the cast, which is even less remarkable than the leads, is made up mostly of British character actors, two of which would later appear in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
Despite not having to create any intergalactic demigods, the special effects of Die Monster Die! are shabby at best. Some are just added for a cheap scare, such as the skeleton and rubber bats that attack Reinhart in the Witley cellar. Laetitia’s melting scene is achieved using several clearly different mannequin heads with obvious cut editing. The most painful example is the final transformation of Nahum. In the story, Lovecraft describes the decaying Nahum as “a grey brittleness ... that parody of a face”. In the film, the stunt actor appears to have been simply wrapped in tin foil, a cross between Frankenstein’s monster and the Silver Surfer.
The horrible fate of Nahum Gardner.
“He didn’t have the right girl.” - Dean Stockwell in The Dunwich Horror
The Dunwich Horror falls somewhere between Die Monster Die! and Reanimator in doing justice to its source text. Updated into the 1960s, the town of Dunwich seems like it hasn’t progressed much from the time of Lovecraft’s story. Wilbur Whateley’s quest for the Necronomicon is still intact, as are several Lovecraftian scenes of incantations and rituals designed to awake the slumbering Elder One, Yog Sothoth. There are deviations; for example, the character of Wilbur Whateley couldn’t be more different from the source and his ulterior motive could not be further from the Lovecraftian tradition.
Wilbur Whateley is played by Dean Stockwell; to say that Stockwell’s performance is understated is like saying a comatose person is just taking a nap. Despite this his portrayal of Wilbur is still effective, coming across as coldly focused on the task ahead. His angle is seduction, and he seems just the type of cool, cryptic, slightly older college guy that a “bubble-headed co-ed” (as Herbert West would call her) like Nancy Wagner would be enthralled by. The seduction angle most likely came about as result of the complete impossibility of creating a Wilbur Whateley that would fit Lovecraft’s half-human creature. Here is Lovecraft’s description of the dead Wilbur Whateley:
The thing that lay half-bent on its side in a foetid pool of greenish yellow ichor and tarry stickiness was almost nine feet tall ... The thing itself, however, crowded out all other images at the time. It was partly human, beyond a doubt, with very manlike hands and head, and the goatish, chinless face had the stamp of the Whateleys upon it ... Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest ... had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist though, it was the worst ... The skin was thickly covered with coarse, black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply. On each of the hips ... was what seemed to be a kind of rudimentary eye, whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings ... with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat.
It’s safe to say that the chances of Lovecraft’s Wilbur seducing anything are slim and none.
Romance, Yog-Sothoth style.
The film is full of as much sexuality as it could get away with in 1970, a mood embellished by lounge jazz legend Les Baxter’s score. Needless to say it’s all very un-Lovecraftian. The ritual scenes are overtly sexual with Wilbur fondling Nancy in the first and propping the Necronomicon between her legs in the second. In the Whateley house Nancy dreams of strange orgies, and Wilbur’s monstrous brother strips Nancy’s friend Elizabeth before engulfing her. While this atmosphere works in the revised plot of the film, it is inconsistent with the source text.
There are a few very Lovecraftian elements of the story that were surprisingly left intact. While Die Monster Die! was content to let a strange book entitled The Cult of the Outer Ones make a brief appearance, the Necronomicon is prominent here. Wilbur makes reference to an “earlier race, superior to man” and uses the name Yog Sothoth in his incantations. Also, the whippoorwills can be heard chirping and hooting at the deaths of Lavinia and Old Whateley. It is perhaps due to the time period in which the movie was made that outlandish details such as these were left alone. Various elements contribute to a slightly psychedelic feel; Nancy’s seduction by Wilbur could be interpreted as a straight-laced college girl’s sexual liberation and brings to mind a “Summer of Love” motif, albeit twisted. The painted, cavorting, mostly naked revelers that Nancy dreams about resemble nothing more than exaggerations of mud covered hippies at Woodstock. Perhaps with this kind of psychedelia present, the filmmakers figured that Yog Sothoth wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
There are comparisons to be made to Die Monster Die! which damage the effectiveness of The Dunwich Horror. The special effects budget was obviously limited, as hinted at before when noting the revision of Wilbur Whateley. Wilbur’s brother undergoes similar treatment but remains closer to Lovecraft’s depiction. The thing is described after its destruction:
“...that haff face on top of it ... with the red eyes an’ crinkly albino hair, an’ no chin, like the Whateleys ... it was an octopus, centipede, spider kind o’ thing, but hey was a haff-shaped man’s face on top of it, an’ it looked like Wizard Whateley’s, only it was yards an’ yards acrost...”
If you squint really hard, there's a monster in there.
In its first few appearances, the monster is shown only in brief flashes and clusters of tentacles. When it moves about outside in Dunwich it becomes invisible, as in the text. When we get a good look at it as it hovers above Nancy before going poof in red smoke, its limitations are apparent. There is also an embarrassing lack of attention to detail in the film’s conclusion that damns it. The scenes are all supposed to be taking place at night, but the light shifts from darkness, to dusk, and in some instances to broad daylight. Finally, the insistence of AIP on having a burning house in the climax of their films cheapens the overall effect. Some of the Whateley house set was previously used in Die Monster Die! and there seems to be some kind of hex attached to it, for it can’t quite break free from the hokiness of the early Lovecraft films.
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