Is there any decent movie based on HP Lovecraft's work?

[Kyriakos]

I have seen some Lovecraft-related movies and they all were crap

It seems many of them are spanish too, or just set in Spain. Dagon was a cheap b-movie joke fest in my view. The Valdemar legacy managed to be even more ludicrous, and its form as a movie was a bad idea to say the least (i only saw the first of the series).

Which is a pity since a number of recent Spanish horror films seemed quite good to me, such as Shivers and Rec (the first one only).

In the mouth of madness was ok, hardly based on Lovecraft though.

Please help with eldritch films so that i can feed on the decaying flesh of the fallen elder gods

 

[BvBPL]

Re-Animator is a great movie.

 

[Kyriakos]

Haven't seen it since i haven't read the story either although i do own it in some collection. I have heard bad things about the movie though. As for the story i know that it was published in some cheap magazine (not Weird Tales) early on, and that Lovecraft himself thought very low of its worth.

 

[Thedrin]

I have difficulty imagining a film being made from the excellent The Colour Out of Space which is both faithful to the text and good.

Edit: A lot of the power in Lovecraft's works seems to come from the imperfect descriptions of the visuals that can't be accurately described. Such stories don't seem well suited to the screen at all.

 

[Kyriakos]

I agree there, but then again books very rarely are adapted in any good way to movies anyway :/

Lovecraft almost always wrote on the first person narrative, so a movie would be tricky due to that as well. (not that any Lovecraft movie i have seen used the first person narrative anyway).

 

[El_Machinae]

The concept of "Lovecraftian" expanded after his death. I quite liked Stephen King's Mist and felt it to be lovecraftian. It's been ages, and I was a teen when I saw it, but I thought Relic had a lovecraftian feel too.

The problem with lovecraftian is that it's wicked hard to put onto the screen. We're used to tentacles and it's hard to create distorted sense of reality or create otherworldly vibes.

 

[Leifmk]

There's something called "The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society" which has, among other things, created motion-picture adaptations of the stories "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness". These adaptations are both extremely faithful to their source material and also, in my opinion, very well-made -- however, they are made to look as much as possible as if they were from around the time the stories were written, with effects and acting styles that would have been right at home in the late 1920s or early 1930s. The first of the two is even a silent film.

They've also done a number of dramatic radio adaptations of HPL stories but I have not yet heard any.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Oh probably. You are quite specific aren't you Kyriakos?

 

[Borachio]

Here's a list.

I haven't a clue if any are any good.

And this.

In the end, the only way to tell is to watch them all. I'd start with the ones with actors whose names I recognized. Like Boris Karloff.

 

[Thedrin]

The concept of "Lovecraftian" expanded after his death. I quite liked Stephen King's Mist and felt it to be lovecraftian. It's been ages, and I was a teen when I saw it, but I thought Relic had a lovecraftian feel too.

The problem with lovecraftian is that it's wicked hard to put onto the screen. We're used to tentacles and it's hard to create distorted sense of reality or create otherworldly vibes.

Frank Darabont's 2008 adaption of Stephen King's The Mist is excellent and you're quite right that it would be an example of Lovecraftian horror done well on screen.

I haven't yet seen the director's cut but I really want to (there's no extra material but it's in black and white instead of colour which I strongly suspect would greatly enhance the mood of the piece.)

Kyriakos:
I agree there, but then again books very rarely are adapted in any good way to movies anyway

I disagree strongly, but it's a topic for another thread.

 

[Tarquelne]

Cast a Deadly Spell fits your criteria*, with several qualifiers.

It's clearly "based on HP Lovecraft's work"... but only partially. There's at least as much Hammett or Chandler in the inspiration as Lovecraft.

It's also not at all "Lovecraftian," with the exception of the basic, rather cliche, plot. (Someone wants to Summon someThing.) There are mentions of the Mythos or the works of Lovecraft.

Yet it's "decent": Amusing, a nice premise, and some very good lines. Or at least one great one: "It's not a squid!"

I see Wikipedia lists the move as "horror/detective." I'd call it a "fantasy/comedy" spoofing horror or detective movies.



*I'm exuding "feed on the decaying flesh of the fallen elder gods" for reasons of health and cost.

 

[Chiteng]

Cloverfield was a definate candidate

 

[Kyriakos]

Thank you all for the suggestions

I have seen the Mist, and i did like it as a movie. I had some issues with its characters and the setting (a supermarket) but the creatures looked well-done, and some scenes were indeed of interest.

I heard the ending got very altered in the movie version. Overall i liked this film, although King is not really a favorite for me (i like some of his very short stories though, like Gray Matter)

 

[El_Machinae]

For even more "horror from beyond", I kinda liked the Fourth Kind with Milla Jovovich. The scientist looking at the unexplainable.

 

[Kyriakos]

I thought the Fourth Kind had some good moments, and also a somewhat nice build-up. I did not like its particular form though, both a documentary and a reconstruction of a documentary. Not sure why the director went that way.

 

[Murky]

The movies "From Beyond" and "Reanimator" were descent horror flicks. The Dunwhich Horror wasn't too bad for the size of budget and for the time that it was made.

There were rumors that Guillermo del Toro was going to do At the Mountains of Madness but Riddle Scott's (similar) Prometheus ruined any chance of that.

 

[Kyriakos]

I was really looking forward to At the mountains of Madness

 

[JollyRoger]

Is there any decent HP Lovecraft work to base a movie on?

 

[Murky]

The already tried to base movies on The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Call of Cthulhu. Neither had much of an impact or made much money. Those are the stories he's probably best known for.

If you've read The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the sequence where the guy escapes from the hotel is pretty intense. I think derivative works are more promising than trying to make a movie of his stories. It sort of works well for a game setting like the Call of Cthulhu RPG.

 

[Kyriakos]

I don't think derivative works are a good idea. Look at the recent and horrible "The Raven" movie (personally i did not like it at all).

Also films like Hellboy are supposedly partly "based" on a lovecraftian world- whatever that means. They are just comedy, something which Lovecraft would never write. It is a bit like presenting a movie about sunny beaches as kafkaesque (there is one famous picture of Kafka on a beach, where he is actually smiling ).

To me Lovecraft tried to create a dark mythos, and always was after presenting the sense of dread. Causing horror itself is not easy to achieve, and has about as much relation with the common slasher gore-centered shock, that a barrel has with the Antikythera mechanism (they are both based on turning)