Lovecraft movie

[Kyriakos]

Which story by H.P.Lovecraft would you most like to see become a movie?
Currently At the mountains of madness is still in production (at least i hope so), and therefore i did not include it in the poll

I think that i would like to see The Dunwich horror, for its first part is my favourite HPL story. The shadow over Innsmouth has sort of been already made, in the movie "Dagon", but that film was rather bad in my view.

 

[Richard Cribb]

I actually found Dagon to be quite good one of the better Lovecraft adaptions. Not that that says much, the competition is not too stiff.
I would have liked to see adaptions of all those on your list, but my first choice would be The Shadow Out of Time.

 

[sophie]

You and the Dark One Cthulhu.

 

[Racsoviale]

At the Mountains of Madness. It seems to be the best chance of getting a Lovecraft story into 2-3 hours. The scriptwriter does have to expand on the pasing and characters though, since those two parts are the worst parts of that story, and Lovecraft in general. Pasingwise it is as boring as the Fellowship of the Ring in that regard. And his characters usually are quite flat.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, the pace is quite bad, i had to give up reading it due to that, and also the fact that the sole translation that i know of in Greek is quite horrible.
So i am too anticipating the At the Mountains of Madness movie.
I also agree that Lovecraft's characters suffer a bit from the same plague that the RL Stevenson characters i know of also have: they seem to be there usually mostly so that they can be destroyed or go mad.
Some notable exceptions though incluce in my view Wilbour Whitley and the protagonist in The Outsider. Still not on the level of really great characters, but they fit the story. Also the narrator from The music of Erich Zahn, and to some extent even Zahn himself, also apply i think.

 

[Terrapin]

Mts. of Madness. I found Dreams in Witch House and Rats in the Walls to be the scariest of HPL's stories. But I cannot see a good movie adaption of either. Innsmouth and Colour Out of Space are fascinating, but also quite hard to adapt. Frankly, I think that it will require a very special screen writer and director (maybe the same person) to adapt any of HPL's works. Of course, I would have said the same about adapting Philip K. Dick and that has been done successfully on many occasions.

 

[GoodGame]

IDK which one lends itself the most to CGI? :LOL:

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Any of those would be good as long as they make it in 3D

 

[RJMooreII]

None. Without the bizarre ambience and incoherence and archaic/weird style of Lovecraft it just doesn't work. Media is not capable of producing Cthulu or a Dark Young without making it look ******** and totally lose the scariness of it. Lol, how about 'Haunter in the Dark' or 'Dreams in the Witch House'?

 

[Racsoviale]

None. Without the bizarre ambience and incoherence and archaic/weird style of Lovecraft it just doesn't work. Media is not capable of producing Cthulu or a Dark Young without making it look ******** and totally lose the scariness of it. Lol, how about 'Haunter in the Dark' or 'Dreams in the Witch House'?

SPOILERS:


But you must admit it would be very entertaining to see the climax of a movie adaption of Call of Cthulhu to be a steamboat ramming poor Cthulhu in the stomach
Oh yeah and it would be tricky to do Cthulhu justice on screen since it is both described as undescribable as well as being described in great detail

 

[RJMooreII]

But you must admit it would be very entertaining to see the climax of a movie adaption of Call of Cthulhu to be a steamboat ramming poor Cthulhu in the stomach

The part I really liked in the story was the spatial distortion in Rlyeh. The best part about Cthulhu himself is his shifting and spatially distorted self. An octopus-dragon-man is only the most trivial part of Cthulu's awesomeness.

 

[Kyriakos]

They still would need to have some interesting architecture for the city in At the mountains of madness.

But from what i recall from the call of Cthulhu, R'lyeh is not that greatly described. It seems the stone buildings shift position, suddenly, since they are not to be fully understood in three dimensions, but Lovecraft did not go into great detail as to how things there actually looked.

And personally i hated the part where the ship rams Cthulhu, i felt it was almost a comedic moment.

I also disliked the similar in spirit part in the Dunwich Horror where the people are fighting against the son of Yog-Sothoth. In my mind those stories would have been better if there was no actual physical contant with the deities/old ones.

 

[Leifmk]

Oh yeah and it would be tricky to do Cthulhu justice on screen since it is both described as undescribable as well as being described in great detail

You may not be aware that a movie adaptation of "The Call of Cthulhu" exists: It's about 45 minutes long, and was released in 2005 -- the twist is that it was created as if it were made circa 1928, so it's a black-and-white silent movie (well, it comes with a recorded score) with special effects that would have been considered very good in a world where nobody had yet seen King Kong. It is, in fact, a very faithful adaptation of the original story, and I found it a rather nice piece in its own right.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478988/

 

[Racsoviale]

Uh sounds interesting. I actually vaguely remember someone once mentioning that one

 

[illram]

To do Lovecraft right I think it would take a talented director/writer who could adapt the basics of the story to a modern audience and make it fit for a screen. His stories are obviously impossible to simply copy straight from the book. (As are most.)

An example would be what Kubric did with The Shining. Took a ton of liberties with the story but it was a great film. So with that said I think whichever one it is about the pod things with the guy in the cabin, and the one about the creepy deserted town (Innsmouth?) would be two good ones to start with.

 

[Left]

Shadow Over Innsmouth really does lend itself best to film. The problem with adapting Lovecraft is that so much of what is good about it is the incomprehensible/unseeable bits.