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Like the Title, the question is about what a good lovecraftian short film would look like. What would you put in it?
I'm done writing my own short film, and the scary monster scenes are separated from the horror that is going on in the story - to the point where you might think the Monster is a halucination.
Lotsa t&a and explosions. Right from the start blow s&&! up oh....sorry, CJ.
You don't loathe me, do you?
You don't loathe me, do you?
Only with ketchup.
You don't loathe me, do you?Only with ketchup.
WA?!?! I brought the fake blood on the cheap!
If I was doing a lovecraftian style film I would have the main charecter be my wealthy socilite Mr. Rhett Butler. Ms. Hamilton didn't write her book Gone with the Wind until later so he is the original.
He was like a southern james bond he loved fast cars faster womken and the thrill of adventure,haveing money was nice too. He sucked at hand to hand but was a crack shot.
Too bad about him in the end though, poor devil was commited after thinking he could cats spells and such, but naturally that was kept quite by his family.
For the villians my favorite is alwaysd Narlatep. he was the first one I fought and the nastiest one to boot.
The setting would be either the darkest jungles of south america or africa by way of egypt since all good lovecraftian stories start or have something to do with egypt.
Poodles.
Poodles.
Poodles? Madness!!
Poodles? Madness!!
The Tomb was originally written in Yappian.
Poodles? Madness!!The Tome was originally written in Yappian.
I've always thought that Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" would adapt well to a short film. Given the way it saps the color and energy out of everything around it, that would be a great venue for a director to work with lighting and color. Finding an old, rundown farm with a well behind the house wouldn't be hard either. Then you just need to work out the light effects for the final scene.
Poodles? Madness!!The Tome was originally written in Yappian.
Dude, run to the sanity well already!
That Lovecraft was a virulent racist, even by the standards of that benighted era, is an unpleasant but ineluctable truth. Racism was an integral aspect of his life and work.
That Lovecraft was a virulent racist, even by the standards of that benighted era, is an unpleasant but ineluctable truth. Racism was an integral aspect of his life and work.
So what you're saying is you think a good Lovecraft film needs blackface?
That Lovecraft was a virulent racist, even by the standards of that benighted era, is an unpleasant but ineluctable truth. Racism was an integral aspect of his life and work.
True, but you certainly wouldn't wish to include that particular aspect, given all the other things available.
Robert E. Howard's work also contained racist overtones, but you don't see that coming into play in movie adaptations of the work.
I am simply saying that racism informed Lovecraft's worldview and figured importantly in much of his work. A consideration of Lovecraft and his work which does not reflect that fact is perforce incomplete. How the auteur might ultimately choose to treat a great lot of material, namely Lovecraft's imaginative oeuvre, with 2 hours of film, is an open question. But, during the early brainstorming and planning stages of a project, when everyone is sitting around throwing out ideas about what makes something, perhaps quintessentially, Lovecraftian, and someone is writing sloppily in big letters on an erasable board, one of the words written should be 'racism.'
I disagree strongly that racism is at the core of Lovecraftian. Frankly, the core of what is Lovecraftian is mind-bending unreality and a dynamic feeling of insignificance to the human race and our accomplishments in the face of a malevolent or apathetic universe of a scope greater than we can even comprehend.
Was he a racist? Obviously. But I do not think it is so integral to his work that it cannot be ignored.
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I would avoid the concept of "scary monsters" altogether.
I would want my viewer left with the feeling that our knowledge as human beings is finite and that an ultimately unknowable universe is capable of producing things so monstrous that they threaten sanity as well as life.
The monsters are just the edges around the gap that is our inability to comprehend Nature.
The monsters are just the edges around the gap that is our inability to comprehend Nature.
You mean like ... poodles?
The monsters are just the edges around the gap that is our inability to comprehend Nature.You mean like ... poodles?
We see you while you're sleeping.
We see you while you're sleeping.The monsters are just the edges around the gap that is our inability to comprehend Nature.You mean like ... poodles?
I see that you believe insanity clause.
I see that you believe insanity clause.
No one can prove they don't exist.
Me, of course!
Two things.
1) I agree subtly is key. Lovecraft's best works were more about, the thing you can't quite understand or even conceive. Much like Alfred Hitchcock, the more gory bits take place 'off-screen' and let your imagination fill in the blanks.
2)Racism? Really? I'm sorry, but it's not that Lovecraft was racist, rather that society as a whole was racist at the time. If you are doing something where historical accuracy is important, then racism has to be accounted for. If your just making an adaptation for the scary bits, you can include as much or as little as makes you feel comfortable.
A modern day author with HPL's or even REH's views would be prime meat for accusations of racism, but at the time they lived and wrote the worst you can accuse them of is not being more 'enlightened' than everyone else.
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I love the whole...What you are being told is an insane distorition of the truth that you would prefer from the terrible reality...version of his work.
HUNGER
Text message from Site B: Send more Food.
Text from Base Camp: What Happened to the Food you had?
Text from Site B: Food ran out.
Text from Base Camp: You have three months supply.
Text from Site B: Send more urgently. Hungry!
Text from base Camp: Who is this?
Text from Site B: Please. You are hurting us. Need Food!
Text from Base Camp: Professor Nealy?
Text from Site B: Professor Nealy here...Send Food Now! Urgent!
Text from Base Camp: Professor Capshaw?
Text from Site B: Professor Capshaw here...Send Food! Hungry!
Text from Basecamp: How is Peter Rabbit Professor Capshaw?
Text from Site B: Peter Rabbit hungry. Need Food Now!
Text from Basecamp: McMurdo. There is a problem at Expedition site B. They are acting weird.
Text From McMurdo: Has Site B found Food? We are out of food.
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When HPL was writing, the religious worldview was collapsing and science was in ascendancy, and people were turning to the ideas of genetics, race, and nationality for meaning. (This would end very badly in one particular country.) Ideas that we would consider blatantly racist today were commonly held.
Even Teddy Roosevelt, one of the US's great progressives, comes off sounding like a bigot in a lot of his writings.
It's fair to look at writers from a contemporary standpoint under the lens of racism or sexism or whatever, but to completely reduce them along those lines is shortsighted.
Agreed. Racism is an important part of Lovecraftian work, but not in the way most people think.
Sure, he's a bigot. So were most people back then. However, there was always an undercurrent of crude respect there, that these "backward" peoples understood more about the world around them than their science-driven superiors, they knew what to avoid, what to pay lip service to, and what to revere. The investigators in most of his tales did not, and so ended up meeting a grisly fate, albeit just ahead of those of other races.
I don't know what creatures would be involved, but it would be about a guy waking up alone on a luxury cruise liner. There would be no power, no people, nothing... The image that's set in my mind is of the main character arriving outside on deck for the first time and witnessing the sea around the ship stand completely still (like a very quiet pond), with absolutely no waves in any direction as far as the eye can see.
Creepy.
Ultradan
(Maybe the man fell between the cracks of time and ended up somewhere in Limbo, or Dreamland, or something...)
