Book-To-Movie: H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Colour Out of Space’

Credit: Pixabay

Warning: This review may contain spoilers

It’s the third weekend of the month and so it’s time for another Book-To-Movie! In a Book-To-Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation.

Ever since 1979’s “Alien”, movie fans have been obsessed with body horror. Body horror and cosmic horror are two subgenres that are the hottest in horror trends right now. And Richard Stanley’s “Color Out of Space”, the 2019 movie adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story of only a slightly different name, “The Colour Out of Space” (emphases mine), is one half cosmic horror and one half body horror. Body horror deals with radical, often torturous, body transformations or assault to one’s body by biological causes. Parasitic monsters busting out of their human hosts’ torsos like in the “Alien” films is body horror. The often slow, graphic metamorphosis of a man into a werewolf is body horror. It’s even been argued that Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is body horror because it involves the creation of a person from the grafting together of parts from several different corpses and so the subgenre is not so much new as is the term for it. For a fuller explanation of this subgenre, read “A Brief Intro to Body Horror” at Sci Fi And Scary. 

So then what is cosmic horror? It’s horror fiction that involves the dread of larger or more powerful forces than those of the human race. A lot of science fiction horror is cosmic horror because it involves the overwhelming vastness of space and the dangers that so easily come from it. This is also the case with science fiction horror that’s set in the ocean. Lovecraft’s horror involves both body and cosmic horror. It also falls under the gothic subgenre. His “Colour Out of Space” is exemplary of all three. So, it was no surprise when Stanley’s movie adaptation contained scenes not for the squeamish. However, considering that the plot called for such scenes, the movie exploits the body horror elements, along with other elements, while neglecting many of the gothic conventions of the original story.

‘The Colour Out of Space’ Short Story

Lovecraft’s short story, “The Colour Out of Space”, is set outside of the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts. It involves an occurrence at a farm belonging to an ancient family line by the name of Gardner. The occurrence? A meteor has hit the property releasing a strange alien energy that grotesquely mutates life, including some of the Gardners. Plants and crops grow larger than normal, livestock turns into grotesque monsters, even one of the family members turns into a monster. The soil and water have become contaminated by the alien energy. The energy is described as a colour that is like no other on earth and so cannot be described. As with the monsters in many of Lovecraft’s stories, the “colour” is an unexplainable horror that is so traumatising no one wants to talk about it.

This story, like with most of Lovecraft’s fiction, contains elements of both gothic horror and science fiction. The monster in the story is one that is not as supernatural as it is from another universe with different natural laws than our own and so is nearly impossible for humans to deal with. Thus, the story is a cosmic horror and so a form of science fiction. But because the monster is so mysterious and forbidding of a force and is likened to a curse on the family, causing the family to go insane, the story is also a gothic horror.

The Movie Adaptations: Cosmic Horror and Body Horror Films

A clip from the 1965 cosmic horror/body horror film, 'Die, Monster, Die'.

There have actually been at least three U.S. movie adaptations of “The Colour Out of Space”. In 1965 there was American International Pictures’ (AIP’s) version starring Boris Karloff and retitled “Die Monster, Die!” which was eventually retitled a second time as “Monster of Terror”. Then in 1987 there was an adaptation that was retitled “The Curse”, starring Will Wheaton of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. Finally, toward the end of last year, there was Stanley’s version, starring Nicolas Cage, only slightly retitled (see above), “Color Out of Space”.

Because I was never a big fan of ‘80s horror movies, with few exceptions, I did not even know until recently that “The Curse” existed and so have not seen it, so I really can’t talk about that one. That said, I’ll stick to discussing the 1965 and 2019 movie adaptations of “Colour”. However, if any of you have seen the ‘80s version, then please feel free to talk about it in the comments box. I’m interested to hear how well it was made and what it’s like.

Gothic Conventions and Setting

Both “Die, Monster, Die!” and “Color Out of Space” have some degree of the gothic conventions that Lovecraft’s original story does. However, “Die, Monster” contains more of them, including a more atmospheric setting such as a foggy wood that the estate is in and a much more antiquated looking, more vast interior to the house. “Color”’s haunted house setting, although antiquated and decayed-looking on the outside, is much more modern-looking on the inside by comparison to the one in “Die, Monster”. The cellar in “Die, Monster” is especially more gothic in its vastness but also because it is more occultic in appearance with demonic images painted on the walls. It’s also where the menacing secret kept by the estate’s owner is held. You can tell, in fact, that the cellar had been a dungeon at one time due to its architecture and some of the contraptions lying around.

Credit: Pixabay

The gothic convention of the ancient family line changes from the rustic Gardner family of the original story to the elitist Witley family in “Die, Monster”. Still the ancient family lineage is connected to the ancient house like in the original story. On the contrary, “Color”’s Gardner family is, as in too many horror films of today, one that has relocated from the city to the country where the ancient house sits even though they have no ancestral connection to it. So, a major gothic element has been dropped from the story in this new adaptation. Ancient family lines and the homes they have been tied to give the feeling of a family curse in gothic fiction.

Returning to the topic of setting, a slight fault that I have with “Die, Monster”, is that the story is relocated from Arkham, Massachusetts to Arkham, England. As much as I love and even prefer British settings in gothic horror, the problem I had with this one was that it takes away the New England roots that runs through much of Lovecraft’s work. “Color” keeps these roots and so leaves the region of Arkham, Massachusetts as the setting.

Body Horror Elements of the Films

Both movies involve body horror as does the short story. While “Die, Monster” involves mutations of humans that would have made audiences cringe in the 1960s, it is not over done. Although “Color” only over does its body horror by one tinge, it’s a very disturbing tinge. The torture of the body horror involves the Gardners’ youngest son who is about 7 years old and because of this it becomes kind of pedicidal. This victimisation could have just as easily been done with one of the older characters and perhaps would have developed the story better if it had been. This scene alone destroyed the movie for me and so made it violence exploitational. I hope this kind of scene isn’t a new trend in horror, because a similar problem occurred in “Doctor Sleep” but at least in that movie the pedicide scene was dependent on the story development. Enough violence happens to young children in reality; we don’t need to make it into entertainment in our movies.

Plot and Clichés 

Both movies stay true to at least the basic plot of the original story. So, any changed details don’t rob from the story itself even if they may omit some of Lovecraft’s original style or atmosphere. What got to me, though, is the clichés that both movies have their share of. I already mentioned the cliché of the new family moving in in “Color”. Another cliché in Stanley’s adaptation is the damn shower/restroom scene showing something disgusting. The Gardners’ daughter, Lavinia, is shown puking up over the toilet bowl. Even though there has been worse and more explicit of this kind of thing in the third season of “Stranger Things”, it wasn’t needed in this movie and so it lost time for other things that could have been developed.

In another scene, the dad, Nathan Gardner (played by Cage), is taking a shower and a creature attacks him from the hair-plugged drain. The creature attacking from the drain I can understand, but a hair plugged drain? Come on! Similar was shown in “It”, it wasn’t needed for this film. This is just a sign of America’s obsession with disgust, and body horror has become the ultimate excuse for this. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with body horror itself. “Alien”, by the way is a favourite sci fi horror of mine and so I think the body horror works well in that one. This kind of horror is an expression of fear in the dark genre like any other kind of fear within it. But like with graphic violence, it has become exploited for the purpose of shocking audiences rather than used to develop story or character.

One of the cliché’s in “Die, Monster” is what I call the disappearing spectre act. A character sees a spectre-like figure, becomes frightened, points it out to her friend but when the friend looks the figure is gone. Very annoying when this is done for no reason other than for familiarity with tropes. Both of these movies also feature a fall of the house in the end, which is one of the biggest cliché’s in horror as well as the oldest. However, I can accept this a little more because Lovecraft’s original story ended that way, which in that respect wasn’t so original because this had already occurred in Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” and even, to an extent, in E.T.A. Hoffman’s gothic story, “The Entail”, that some argue Poe stole from.

Characterisation

Lovecraft was not a writer who emphasised character too much. He emphasised story most. So, there’s not a lot to compare the characterisation in these two movies with the one in the original story. However, between the two movies, “Die, Monster,”’s characters were much more developed, believable, and even likeable than the majority of the characters in “Color”. In “Color”, Cage’s Nathan Gardner was very flat but maybe that’s due more to the acting. I haven’t seen a lot of Cage’s films, but what I remember of his Johnny Blaze in “Ghost Rider”, he did not do a very good job and so the acting was also stale in that one (as much as I liked that movie). Yet, the rest of the characters in “Color” were a bit more developed and likeable though not by much. Some of them were very typical at times.

Everything Else

The special effects, cinematography and soundtrack are all done well for the large part in both movies. The surrealism is also done good in both, although you get more of it in “Color” than in “Die, Monster”. Also, both of these movies carry the occultic element of the original story and that many of Lovecraft’s stories were famous for especially the Cthulhu mythos. However, it’s more present, more atmospheric, and more permeating in “Die, Monster” and is carried out by Karloff who was often really good in playing occult characters. In “Color” it’s carried out by the teenage daughter and so comes across more as a juvenile phase than it does serious occultism, yet it does a good job representing teen rebellion and counterculture and not necessarily in the bad sense of these two; she attempts to use magic for healing.

Trailer for the 2019 cosmic horror/body horror film, 'Color Out of Space'.

Lovecraft often went way out with his horror. That’s because the monsters and menacing forces come from way out, as in way out from other universes that’s laws are far different than those of our universe. So, his “Colour Out of Space” is an example of this absurd horror. It is horror that is both existential and so cosmic horror, and physical and so body horror. So, when movie adaptations like “Die, Monster, Die!” and “Color Out of Space” get extreme compared to most horror films, it should be no surprise. However, the former does it while sticking more to the gothic conventions that the original story grew out of, whereas the latter sacrifices some of those conventions for more modern tropes. Those, unfortunately, include the modern trope of disgust through body horror exploitation when the movie would have done really good if it just would have balanced out the body horror with other elements such as story and character. However, because Lovecraft has a style so much his own and that popularised cosmic horror, neither of these movies do justice to his story they were adapted from.

Have you read Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space” or seen any of the movie adaptations? Which movie do you think does the most justice to the short story?

Until next time . . .