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When I found out this week that a film adaptation of Color Out of Space will be premiering in September, I thought, “Finally, a film based on one of Lovecraft’s horror novels is coming to the big screen!” And I was right! Only it was the big screen at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). A little far for me, a Northern Californian, to go to see a sci fi horror flick! Still, the movie will star big name actor Nicolas Cage and is directed by Richard Stanley. Hopefully the fact that a famous actor such as Cage being in the movie will help it get the praise that film adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories have been lacking. So what if Cage’s Ghost Rider flopped at the box office? (I actually thought that often overlooked Marvel film was really good.)
Lovecraft’s work deserves film adaptations of critical praise because he has had a big influence on horror fiction as we know it today. His work is credited as starting the sub-genre that has been fairly recently coined as “cosmic horror”. Cosmic horror, sometimes called Lovecraftian horror or Lovecraftian fiction, is sci fi horror that conveys a dread of realising that we humans are not as significant or as powerful of a species as we think and that there is a bigger, more powerful intelligent species in the universe.
Cosmic horror influenced speculative pulp fiction authors in the 1930s and ‘40s, such as John Campbell, and would later influence more contemporary horror fiction authors such as Stephen King and Charles Stross. In fact, Stross’s work often makes direct references to Lovecraft’s “Mythos” (fictional world) especially in his Laundry Files series of novels which cleverly mix espionage with sci fi horror. In turn, the cosmic horror of pulp fiction led to the sci fi horror films of the 1950s. Many of these movies featured gargantuan monsters that result from the mutatational effects of the atom bomb while others speculated the potential dangers of the unknown reaches of space.
There have been plenty of obscure, indie films based on Lovecraft’s ‘Mythos’ but none that have been awarded even nationwide fame. Only a few movies based on his work made it to momentary popularity and they were at the b-rated level. One in 1963 starred Vincent Price and Lon Chaney Jr., an adaptation of “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” but was mis-titled The Haunted Palace which was a poem by Edgar Allen Poe. Another movie came along about two years later called Die Monster Die, starring Boris Karloff, and was actually based on Color Out of Space.
These movies, however, did not get the acclaim that others based on other classic works such as Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula did. More recently, Guillermo Del Toro had a film adaptation of Lovecraft’s novella, The Mountains of Madness, in the plans for several years but it has not yet followed through.
Hopefully, Stanley’s Color Out of Space will get the acclaim that it needs at the TIFF to distribute to major movie theaters. If that happens, it may finally bring another monster to Hollywood (or “Horrorwood”) fame like Universal did with Frankenstein and Dracula.
If you haven’t visited the latest Insecure Writers Support Group post here at the Fantastic Site please do so, especially if you’re a writer looking for tips and advice.
Do you think Hollywood has traditionally under-rated H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and characters unlike with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or Bram Stoker’s Dracula? Please feel free to leave your answers or other comments in the box below.
Until next time . . .
Most of the movie adaptations have been small films and not very good. The Resurrected was a decent on though - Chris Sarandon played Charles Dexter Ward. One big budget film was In the Mouth of Madness with Sam Neill - had promise then fell apart. And Color Our of Space was adapted into a movie - it was called The Curse and starred Wil Wheaton. Also not very good. So it will be interesting to see how the upcoming movie handles the story.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it will be interesting. However, since it's one being presented at a film festival that I believe mostly screens indie films I have a big feeling it won't get the praise it needs in order to make it to movie theatres at least nationwide. But who really knows? If I remember correctly, Pan's Labyrinth started as an indie film and then made it big enough to be shown in theatres all over and several years before that Halloween was in a similar scenario. There are a lot of great indie films out there it's just that many are ones that Hollywood isn't willing to buy but ones that I would watch way over certain blockbusters. So there's really no certainty where a movie will go in terms of acceptance. I've heard of The Resurrected but didn't know it was based on a Lovecraft story when it came out. I'll have to check out that one for sure. Thanks!
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