Book-To-Movie: H.P. Lovecraft's 'Dagon'

Credit: Pixabay

Warning: This review may contain spoilers.

It's the fourth weekend of the month and so time for another Book-To-Movie review! In a Book-To- Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. Tonight, we are reviewing H.P. Lovecraft's short story, "Dagon", and its movie adaptation. (That's right, Dagon-it!) 

Like Poe, Lovecraft has become a pop literary icon for Halloween. When Halloween comes around as it is now, avid horror readers start recommending reads fitting for the season and many of Lovecraft's books and stories end up on the recommendation lists. Even Lovecraft himself published a Halloween poem that he wrote called "Hallowe'en in a Suburb". Like Poe, his stories contained gothic settings such as secluded mansions and towns. Unlike a lot of Poe’s horror stories, the horror in Lovecraft’s was often from natural causes yet monstrously alien and so he combined science fiction elements with gothic horror ones. This combination resulted in the subgenre cosmic horror which deals with the fear of threatening monstrosities that are more powerful than the human race. His short story "Dagon", is no exception to this, but its 2001 movie adaptation is.

'Dagon' the Short Story

The 1939 short story, 'Dagon', is about the narrator, a sailor, who jumps ship and gets stranded on a strange mass of land. When he goes off to explore the region, he comes across a dark, chasm of water with an alien-looking monolith towering on the other side. The stone has images of people who are part human and part fish carved into it. Soon he witnesses a gargantuan monster rising from the water and grabbing for the monolith. Terrified, the sailor runs off and soon goes unconscious. Long after a ship has rescued him, he is so traumatised that he hallucinates seeing the monster everywhere. He even believes that the creature's entire race will take over the world. 

This story is darkly prophetic ending in a self-fulfilling prophecy. It ends in annihilation for the individual protagonist and--although questionably because he’s an unreliable, drug addict of a narrator--the whole human race. The story is well-structured to build up to the terrifying climax and so is progressively suspenseful.

'Dagon', the Movie

The Spanish-produced “Dagon”, directed by Stuart Gordon, like many of Spain’s horror films, has the gothic elements that Lovecraft often put in his stories. But totally unlike his stories, a lot of the cosmic horror and resulting trauma is missing. In addition to that, the movie swerves too far from the plot of the original story. That's because it was much more an adaptation of Lovecraft's other tale, his novella, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", than it was his “Dagon”. The most the movie comes to being an adaptation of the latter is toward the end when the giant monster rises from an abysmal well to claim its victims. The plot to this one is a young couple, Paul and Barbara, become stranded in a secluded fishing village in Spain and find out that its residents are not fully human. They also discover that the whole town consists of an evil cult that worships the monster as the god Dagon. 

The cosmic horror in this film was neglected giving too much emphasis to the physical horror to the point of shock exploitation, also known as “shocksploitation”. The movie overdoes the gore and tormenting violence. Not even that latter one seems to traumatise Paul and his wife. 

The gothic elements of Lovecraft were done well in this movie. Village is portrayed as dark, ancient and decaying. Also like many gothic stories, including Lovecraft’s, the villagers are inbreeders. The special effects are mostly good except when it came to a scene where the tenacles that shoot out from a mermaid's mouth look superimposed on her. However, this is when CGI was just getting started in cinema and so it hadn't been enhanced yet. The acting, however, was very poor, in some cases even to the point of being comic, and the characterisation was no better; none of the characters were likeable or believable. But my real problem with the movie was that it sacrificed the cosmic and psychological horror for shocking gore and violence. Not only were these shocking but totally disturbing. 

"Dagon" the movie is Lovecraft in every way except cosmic and psychological horror. It has the physical appearance of a Lovecraftian setting and ambience. It even makes reference to Miskatonic University, the educational institution often seen in many of Lovecraft’s stories: Paul wear's a sweater bearing the college's name (which is probably his alma mater; I envy him. Yet, I don’t envy what he probably majored in; the guy's a stockbroker.). But the gore and violence don't leave any room for the sensation of bigger-than-life horror or for the insanity caused by such horror and so it's more a movie of disgust than cosmic fear. It’s a good movie if you’re into shocksploitation, but that’s just not my thing. 

Next weekend I'm going to skip posting and just enjoy the Halloween weekend. However, the author's newsletter is coming up this week and will be a special Halloween edition! It's going to offer a treat of a free book! So if you haven't subscribed to my newsletter, "Night Creatures' Call", then do so now here so you can get this special edition and the free book it offers. You'll also get more details about my upcoming book of short fiction, "Bad Apps", including behind-the-scenes. Then the Wednesday after Halloween will be the post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop! 

Have you read H.P. Lovecraft's short story, "Dagon" or seen its film adaptation? If so, what did you think?

Until next time . . .

Credit: Pixabay.com

Credit: Pixabay