{"id":580,"date":"2007-07-19T17:27:03","date_gmt":"2007-07-19T17:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/zombielapdance\/2007\/07\/19\/speaking-of-cthulhu\/"},"modified":"2012-08-17T05:25:03","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T05:25:03","slug":"speaking-of-cthulhu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/zombielapdance\/2007\/07\/19\/speaking-of-cthulhu\/","title":{"rendered":"speaking of cthulhu . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

at the last dillocon, rick klaw, in the midst of some pro-bob howard rant, snarled at me, "H.P. Lovecraft is the most over-rated writer in the world," as if that wasn’t somehow the point. fans aren’t enthralled by the shoggoths so much as the shibboleths.<\/p>\n

case in point:
\n
\nThe Call of Cthulhu<\/a><\/span> the silent movie. yet another film that johnny motard tipped me off to. for those of you who are familiar with other films produced exclusively for the HPlovecraft Film Festival<\/a>, such as beyond the wall of sleep<\/span><\/a>, you know that they are likely to be stupid to the point of being totally unwatchable (that being said, the HPlovecraft fest is coming to austin’s alamo drafthouse in the indefinate future and you can bet that i’ll try to be there). <\/p>\n

the call of cthulhu<\/span>, the silent version, translates lovecraft lovingly to a black and white expressionist style. the website lists every single surviving german expressionist film as their influence. the dr.calligari-esqued set design fits the mad geometries and cyclopean architecture of sunken r’lyeh like a twisted claw in a silk glove.<\/p>\n

and cthulhu makes an appearance. in stop motion. i don’t care what those retards say about CGI — stop motion will always be a thousand times cooler. you know that transformers movie? everybody’s raving about the CGI, but from where i was sitting it all looked blurry, spastic, and indistinct (kinda like michael bay’s directing style in general). if transformers had been made with stop-motion transforming models, it would have rocked my world almost as much as the cthulhu movie.<\/p>\n

the only thing that even slightly soured the experience for me, was watching the call of cthulhu<\/span> and thinking how much cooler it would have been had canadian filmmaker guy madden done it. but that’s like wishing you could get michael jordon to win skee ball tickets for you.<\/p>\n

the lovecraft historical society are a buncha fun guys, and we ought to thank them for going to the trouble of making something so cool.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

on the more serious side, at about the same time as i saw the movie, i ran into a comicbookized verion <\/a>of a filmscript about lovecraft’s life. while actually sticking to the general outline of lovecraft’s life, it makes the assumption that ol’HP was literally haunted by specters from arkham. this is a farely common conceit, you see it a lot in lovecraft-inspired anthologies, where not only does HP show up (sometimes interacting with the actual author or an author’s standin), but he reveals that everything he wrote about is actually real. <\/p>\n

i never liked these kinds of stories. they always strike me as fanboy. it’s one thing to write in the cthulhu mythos to show homage to a literary hero, it’s quite another to bring your literary hero into the story so you can play with him like he’s your personal transformers action figure.<\/p>\n

the comicbook also portrayed lovecraft’s brief marriage as a star-crossed romance, his nebbish distractions only occasionally interupting their passionate lovemaking. i don’t know how i feel about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

at the last dillocon, rick klaw, in the midst of some pro-bob howard rant, snarled at me, "H.P. Lovecraft is the most over-rated writer in the world," as if that wasn’t somehow the point. fans aren’t enthralled by the shoggoths … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nspeaking of cthulhu . . . - Zombie Lapdance<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/zombielapdance\/2007\/07\/19\/speaking-of-cthulhu\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"speaking of cthulhu . . . - Zombie Lapdance\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"at the last dillocon, rick klaw, in the midst of some pro-bob howard rant, snarled at me, "H.P. 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