RE-ANIMATOR, CHUCKY, PENNYWISE, and More!
In this Issue:
- Horror History: Re-Animating Lovecraft
- Image of the Week: Cosplayers Float, Too
- Tiny Bites – This Week’s Best Horror Headlines
- The States of Horror: California + Colorado
- Things We Love: Pop Go the Killers
HORROR HISTORY: RE-ANIMATING LOVECRAFT
Thirty-three years ago, Stuart Gordon’s (literally) eye-popping splatter-fest Re-Animator was released, ushering in an era of H.P. Lovecraft adaptations that’s still going strong. In celebration, we turn our Three-Lobed, Burning Eye to some eldritch cinematic tomes of forbidden filmic lore.
1963’s The Haunted Palace, directed by Roger Corman, mixes the best of Corman’s Poe adaptations with Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Tremendous fun, with a screenplay by Charles Beaumont, brought to life by Vincent Price using his trademark diction to describe extra-dimensional blasphemies amid overstuffed sets and lush costumes.
Corman produced 1970’s The Dunwich Horror, directed by Daniel Haller (with a screenplay by L. A. Confidential‘s Curtis Hanson!?), a bonkers psychedelic hippie take on HPL, with Sandra Dee targeted for Yog-Sothoth-y impregnation by Dean Stockwell, who plays Lovecraft’s mutant Wilbur Whateley as a studly Marlborough Man. Freaky 2001-inspired opticals abound, accompanied by a great score by Lex Baxter.
While not based on one Lovecraft story, kudos must be given to Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead from 1980, part of his HPL-themed trilogy that includes The Beyondand House by the Cemetery. The suicide of a priest opens a doorway allowing for Non-Euclidian nasties to surge forth. There are great set pieces too good to spoil, and Christopher George is stalwart as only he can be.
Puritanical Lovecraft would have hated Gordon’s return to his material with 1986’s From Beyond, which abounds with sexual deviation and kink. A scientist’s quest for a better orgasm leads to him getting eaten by a Shoggoth. And that’s just the first five minutes.
Andrew Leman’s 2005 gem The Call of Cthulhu brilliantly presents itself as a silent film made in the 1920s, contemporary with the HPL story of the same name. A global quest to unravel the mystery of the ancient Cthulhu cult, all done on a low-budget, using 1920s filming techniques, in 47 minutes. A concentrated dose of Lovecraftian madness mainlined to the medulla that should, under no circumstances, be missed.
IMAGE OF THE WEEK
Cosplayers Float, Too
Cosplayers mobbed the recent New York Comic Con, where one of our favorite horror icons was embodied by Lucy-Ann Parris, who attended as a creepy (but somehow also cool) Pennywise.
TINY BITES
GEORGE ROMERO’S LEGACY, CHUCKY’s NEW FRIENDS & MORE
George Romero’s widow says the Night of the Living Dead writer/director left behind more than 40 unused scripts when he died, and promises that “a lot of it is very good.”
The first trailer for the remake of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary is finally here. Meow.
Speaking of cemetaries, here’s a travel guide to where your favorite horror icons are buried.
Go behind the scenes with Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter for an oral history on the creation of the original Halloween‘s Laurie Strode and “what was so beautiful about the first movie.”
Boris Karloff’s daughter shares rare color home movies from the set of 1938’s Son of Frankenstein.
Elle (yes, that Elle) put together this great list of the 24 best horror movies of all time.
Writer-director Panos Cosmatos says what madeMandy so perfect was its imperfection.
Esquire explains why Beetlejuice is “truly something we have never seen before — and likely will never see again.”
The character Henry Sturges from the book and movie Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will appear in a new NBC series called The Last American Vampire.
The New York Times recommends 13 books you should read before watching The Haunting of Hill House series.
Horror host Joe Bob Briggs talks about how and whyhe decided to return to TV for Shudder.
Chucky designer David Kirschner teases the new characters we’ll meet in the upcoming Chucky TV series.
Students who take Latin have a better chance of summoning demon later in life.
THE STATES OF HORROR: CALIFORNIA + COLORADO
Our locales this time lend themselves to two double features, this time from the minds of macabre masters like Alfred Hitchcock, John Carpenter and Stephen King.
California: The Birds and The Fog
Hollywood is our film capital, but that distinctly chilly, misty vibe of Northern California is what captured the imaginations of Hitchcock and Carpenter for their eerie gems The Birds and The Fog. The former, a tense vision of birds viciously turning on us, takes place in the very real Bodega Bay, north of San Francisco. The Fog, meanwhile, finds a shuddery tale of ghostly revenge in the fictional Antonio Bay, likely thought to be in the same general area. Both films arrived shortly after each filmmaker introduced iconic, human killers (Norman Bates and Michael Myers) in more confined, less seaside towns like Haddonfield, Illinois. Here, the open, aquatic air makes a terrifying companion to the more supernatural threats.
Colorado: The Shining and Misery
Two of Stephen King’s most iconic — and that’s saying something — stories find themselves in the confines of Colorado. And confined, snowy and scary these are. Directors Stanley Kubrick and Rob Reiner used wintry, delirious isolation to chilling heights in the haunted and haunting The Shining and the psychological and human Misery. Funny enough, neither film production really found their way to Colorado, but as with gifts, it’s the thought that counts.
THINGS WE LOVE: POP GO THE KILLERS
Is there anything more disappointing than cranking the handle on a jack-in-the-box and having nothing more pop up than a not-very-frightening clown? For those people (ahem … us) who want a real jump scare, Mezco makes Burst-a-Box, featuring either Scarred Chucky or Jason Voorhees. We’ll take one of each.