The Worst of Lovecraft

The cosmic and dread-soaked horror tales of H.P. Lovecraft have inspired many a gorgeous and breathtaking film adaptation.

Listed below are none of them.

Chill (2007)
Directed by: some guy
Starring: Kirsty Hellraiser, some guys, James Russo, some other guys.
Lovecraft story it was ripped off from based on: "Cool Air."

Down-on-his-luck Sam, a former hospital employee and aspiring writer, takes a job in a rundown grocery store in inner city L.A. Actually, he kinda half bullies, half begs his way into the job, despite a less than warm welcome from the dumpy, sour hausfrau behind the register.

Store owner Dr. Munoz, who lives in the refrigerated back room and dresses in hooded robes like Jigsaw, hires Sam on the spot and reveals his preference for lowered temperatures: he suffers from a rare skin condition which requires him to be preserved in sub-zero temperatures. Sam starts work and immediately begins an affair with Ashley Laurence who works in a boutique next door. Poor Ashley’s character, Maria, has zero self-esteem, a stalker ex who is also a cop and a single facial expression no matter the circumstances. Whether she’s having sex with Sam or stumbling into a corpse strewn deep freeze, she constantly looks like a girl suffering from the itchy discomfort of hemorrhoids.

When a couple of prostitutes go missing and a stereotypical pimp comes looking for his “bitches” Sam learns the awful truth: that Dr. Munoz has been dead for twenty years, and keeps a fresh supply of bodies in his freezer to replace his rotting skin. Now he wants Sam to choose: be his new partner or another skin donor.

Quite frankly, I've seen sock drawers that were scarier than this movie.

Beyond Re-Animator (2003)
Directed by: Brian Yuzna
Starring: Jeff Combs, some chick, that guy who was in Titanic and a bunch of other weirdos.
Lovecraft story it was ripped off from based on: Herbert West: Reanimator

H.P. Lovecraft’s name is nowhere to be found in the opening credits of this third installment in the beloved Re-Animator series, and it’s a good indication of the disappointing things to come.

It’s been 14 years since the Miskatonic Massacre, and Dr. Herbert West has spent that time sitting in prison, convicted of murder and abandoned by the medical society. But Herbie’s been keeping himself busy, experimenting on rats in his cell, determined to perfect his reagent. When young doctor Howie Phillips (haha) is assigned to the prison infirmary, he immediately seeks Herbie out and presents him with a gift: a syringe full of glowing green reagent, which young Howie discovered at the crime scene 14 years earlier, after one of Herbie’s reanimated zombies killed his beloved sister. Throw in a sexy lady reporter and a demented prison warden, and you’ve got everything you need for a fun-filled charnel house flick…right?

Well, no. Not really. Beyond Re-Animator has all of the sex, blood and guts you could possibly ask for but it lacks the goofball charm of its two predecessors. Jeffrey Combs can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned, and his Herbert West is still arrogant as ever, if a little tired and unenthusiastic. Dr. Phillip’s motivation is murky and his love interest – the aforementioned sexy reporter – is kind of a dumb bitch who scores little if any sympathy. Plenty of gore but no heart, no soul, no imagination, and no trace of the brilliance that encapsulated the first two Re-Animator flicks.

Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (2006)
Directed by: some guys
Starring: William Sanderson, other people.
Lovecraft story it was ripped off from based on: Beyond the Wall of Sleep

Icky inbred hillbilly clan living in the Catskills worship some weirdass demon they encounter in dreams. Icky inbred patriarch ends up in insane asylum after going on killing spree. Icky non-inbred insane asylum intern is dicking around with interdimensional experiments and telepathic brain stuff. Oops, portal opens, in comes demon, people die, blahblahblah, god this is a mess.

Just ... don't bother. Seriously. See that girl over there with the exposed brain and the permanent expression of a terminal Xanax addict stapled to her face? Yeah, this is much the same way I looked after watching this shitty mess.

The Shuttered Room (1967)
Directed by: David Greene
Starring: Carol Lynley, Gig Young, Oliver Reed and his pickled liver.
Lovecraft story it was ripped off from based on: Okay I'm cheating a bit here. This one is based on a story by August Derleth, but Derleth based his tale on some notes left behind by his late friend Howard Lovecraft.

On a remote island off the coast of New England lies the Whately Mill, abandoned for some twenty years and left to rot in the sun and salt air. No one goes near it, and no one dares enter it, for it’s rumored to be cursed by evil and inhabited by demons. So when young Susannah Whately shows up with her husband Mike and the key to the spooky old house, the islanders aren’t exactly thrilled. Neither is Susannah, quite frankly. She and Mike originally thought that the mill would make a terrific summer house, but Susannah just knows that something is waiting for her in the mill, and that a dark secret lurks in her forgotten childhood. Also in a grumpy mood is Susannah’s cousin Ethan, a brutish pig who thought that Whately Mill would eventually would be his. His bitter resentment for his cousin is quickly replaced by lust: Susannah is hot, and Ethan is bored with the brainless, big boobed island idiot he’s been banging. Ethan wants to make both Susannah and the mill his own, but there’s something lurking in the Mill’s Shuttered Room that doesn’t want any of them there, and will kill anyone who gets too close.

Watching The Shuttered Room is a lot like watching a PG version of Straw Dogs that Lovecraft may have briefly breathed on. Mixing elements from The Dunwich Horror & The Lurking Fear, The Shuttered Room is surprisingly dull. Not much happens: it takes about an hour for the first death to occur, and the time leading up to that mostly bloodless moment is tedious to say the least. We get to watch Oliver Reed munch on every frame of film he inhabits, reveling in his role as a filthy, lecherous slob. We get to see Carol Lynley (the leggy hippie chick from the original Poseiden Adventure) strip down to her white granny panties and wander around looking vaguely afraid. Flora Robson as island matriarch Aunt Agatha is magnificently regal, but her screen time is sadly limited. Watching her throw boiling water into Oliver Reed’s face is hugely therapeutic, however!

And quite frankly, I just didn’t “get” this movie. The revelation of the Shuttered Room’s secret is…well, kinda dumb, really. There’s no explanation for it, and nothing supernatural to warrant its isolation, so wtf? It doesn’t even have tentacles.


The Unnameable (1988)
Directed by: Jean-Paul Ouellette
Starring: Charles Klausmeyer, Mark Stephenson, Alexandra Durrell, Laura Albert and Katrin Alexandre.
Lovecraft story it was ripped off from based on: The Unnameable.

Okay so, a hunnert and fuckseventy years ago, some pious Pilgrimmy couple had a daughter who was so monstrous and hideous and gross and shit that they refused to give her a name and locked her in the attic forever and ever the end. Until... Fast forward to the late 80s and a group of vacuous horny teenagers decide to go party at the local abandoned haunted house and have sex and stuff, but they all end up getting slaughtered by the Unnameable ugly monster who is still locked in the attic.

After the runaway success of 1985's Re-Animator, filmmakers rushed to cash in, grabbing Lovecraft stories at random and hurriedly turning them into accessible splatter films. It was like watching Michael Meyers jerk off into a supernova: the result, a slightly cosmic slasher film. Yawn.

Except for the Unnameable Herself. As portrayed by dancer Katrin Alexandre, the monster girl (whose name turns out to be Alyda - pronounced Ah-LYE-dah) is the best part of this otherwise shallow horror kiddie pool. She's cool! Look at her! This film is worth watching just for the ultimate reveal of her character - covered in shaggy white hair, sporting cloven hooves and wailing like a banshee in an echo chamber, Alyda could kick the ass of any one dimensional 80s masked slasher villain with no more effort or concern than the average joe would have for an accidentally trod-upon carpenter ant.


Cthulhu Mansion (1992)
Directed by: Juan Simon
Starring: William Shatner's daughter and a bunch of foreign people.
Lovecraft story it was ripped off from based on: I have no fucking clue. I think they just took the word "Cthulhu" and slapped it onto the title, hoping to cash in on the post Re-Animator thing.

A bunch of leather jacketed punks wander into the 1990s directly from the 1950s, fail to realize that they look ridiculous and are about as intimidating as soggy toast, and break into some sideshow magicians mansion for some reason. I think they're druggies looking for stuff to steal. I don't know, I watched this movie when it first came out on video and don't remember very much of it because it was fucking abysmally awful. Anyway, shit happens, dimensions overlap, Melanie Shatner's brother spends the entire film in bed, some stupid bitch gets killed by a demonic refrigerator (I shit you not) and eventually it ends. Oh, and Melanie Shatner gets eaten by an ivy vine. The end.