Enough cannot be said about The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s adaptation of the gothic American writer’s short story, “The Call of Cthulhu.” Put simply, the just sentiment for the masterpiece would have been the Oscar for Best Short Film. Given my proclivity for verbosity when reviewing, I openly admit that what (doesn’t) follows is, in part, unintentional brevity for the work has, dauntingly, left this critic speechless. If you are not overawed, attempting to lift your jaw from the floor when the final credits roll, you need to check your cinematic pulse, for one would have ample reason to believe you might have otherwise passed away during the viewing of the film.
First time (you read me right) director Andrew Leman and rookie screenwriter Sean Branney’s stroke of genius was not their setting of the film during the time in which the source material establishes, making it the most undeniably faithful adaptation of the writer to the big screen to date, but to shoot it in the cinematographic style of the time, that is, the Silent Era. However, not content to allow this move to be their trick pony, the filmmakers patiently, lovingly cast the tale amid its genre brethren in this respect, German Expressionistic horror, thus appropriately evoking fond memories of Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu while wisely imitating some of D. W. Griffith’s trademark photographic techniques along the way, the epitome of which is represented in an outstanding backlit image during a fog-laden scene set in the New Orleans swamps.
Not only are the cast effigies of the actors of yesteryear, a long-lost celebratory study in tonalities and contrast, replete with white face paint, black eyeliner, and lipstick, as their performances prompt déjà vu of the Silent Era’s Kabuki-esque exaggerations and coincidental character placement to compensate for the ever stationary camera of the time, but the film stock crinkles as wavering hairs knowingly betray the period’s cinematic limitations. With this in mind, the filmmakers refused to cut nary one period corner as they technologically restrain themselves as the monster arrives, quaky in its movements and animation, just as it would have at the turn of the twentieth century. Even period protocol is met by the sparse use of title cards when the story’s contents are unable to convey their intents in any other fashion.
Some might be tempted to cite that the creature’s abode, an isolated island, is all too reminiscent of Merian Cooper’s Skull Island, yet let the reader be reminded that Lovecraft published the tale half a decade prior to the director issuing us his cinematic masterpiece, King Kong. However, I will concur with the sentiment that the photography is perhaps a bit too crisp for 1920’s cinema, it being more analogous to the 1930’s and the camera of John Mescall in particular. Of course, considering the task at hand, a few anachronisms are to be expected as well, for which even Francis Ford Coppola’s period piece, The Godfather, isn’t exempt.
I could go into great detail and at length with Andrew Leman’s The Call of Cthulhu, i.e. the plot proper, yet I have said too much in that form follows function in this regard and that the work deserves to be viewed in as much of a tabula rasa mindset as possible in order to experience and appreciate the work’s joys and rewards. Meticulously researched, painstakingly crafted, and presented with a maternal caress, Leman’s film never wavers or commits one consequential misstep along the way, making Stuart Gordon’s Dagon and Dan O’Bannon’s The Resurrected shrivel in comparison. In this regard, The Call of Cthulhu might well be the Great Old One of Lovecraftian cinema, the author having finally, after almost seventy years and much like his titular character, risen from the page onto the screen in all his belated glory. Though, as I’m sure other Lovecraft aficionados will agree, I warmly welcome the cinematic equivalent of Azathoth to breech the daylight . . .
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
