A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Wikimedia Commons I’ve been watching an episode a week for the last three weeks of Guillermo Del Toro’s new Netflix horror anthology series, “Cabinet of Curiosities”. (Yes, you read that right; I only watch an episode a week and so I don’t do binge watching.) So far, the series has been really good. I first started watching the episodes in order (even though the series doesn’t have an over-arcing storyline), but only up to the second episode. That’s because I wanted to see how at least one of the two episodes based on H.P. Lovecraft stories played out. Episode five is based on the short story “Pickman’s Model”, and episode six is based on the short story “The Dreams in the Witch House”. I’ve only seen the first of these two so far and thought it mostly played out really good including the creature effects. However, an article at ScreenRant doesn’t seem to give it as much credit, nor does it give much more to episode six. The article’s author, Padraig Cotter, says the monsters ...

Credit: Pixabay As I said last week , there won't be a Book-To-Movie this month. Again, I apologise. I should have something read by next month and its movie adaptation viewed. But I also said that I would have a movie review this week and so kept my word on that. The movie isn’t an adaptation of a book, but it is a movie about books. In fact, it’s about horror books and itself is a horror film. It's one of many movies inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. It's 1994's "In the Mouth of Madness", directed by John Carpenter ("Halloween", "The Thing").  This film isn't based on a Lovecraft story but it's clearly Lovecraftian horror.  Movie’s Synopsis, Original Theatrical Release and Reception "In the Mouth of Madness" uses many ideas from H.P. Lovecraft’s works while telling its own story. The story is an insurance investigator, John Trent (played by Sam Neill) looks into the disappearance of a bestselling horror author, Sutter Cane, w...

Credit: Wikimedia Commons In this post we have our Book to Movie review which we normally have on the fourth weekend of the month but I had to postpone it as I said last time . In a Book-To-Movie , we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. In the previous Book-To-Movie we reviewed H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, “The Outsider”, and its 1995 movie adaptation. We talked about how this short story was one of his lesser known works and that the movie was missing the cosmic horror element so definitive of Lovecraft’s stories.  In this month’s Book-To-Movie we have just the opposite: a story that is one of Lovecraft’s most well-known ones (at least among Lovecraft fans) and a movie adaptation that catches the cosmic horror. The story is the novella, “The Dunwich Horror”, and the movie the 1970 American International Pictures (AIP) version. This movie actually does more than convey the cosmic horror of Lovecraft’s stories: it captures the weirdness of his “weird” fiction,...

Credit: Pixabay I had said last post that this weekend is our Book-To-Movie review. In most cases we have our Book-To-Movie the fourth weekend of every month. However, and I apologise for this, I'm just not ready to post the review yet and so I'm postponing it to next weekend. I had just barely finished the book yesterday, Friday, when I normally start writing the review. I had also intended to watch the movie adaptation of the book a second time to refresh myself because there was so much going on in it that I couldn't remember enough details to discuss in the post. However, the streaming service it was on was having technical problems so I wasn’t able to watch it. The Book-To-Movie will be on another H.P. Lovecraft story and film.  Speaking about Lovecraftian stories and movies, I do have the latest news in Lovecraftian horror pop culture. The Cthulhu news of the week is two comics and a returning TV series!  Comic: "Army of Darkness" and Re-Animator" Mas...

Credit: Pixabay 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. H.P. Lovecraft is known for his cosmic horror stories. Cosmic horror is a subgenre of horror that concerns itself with the dread of a force that is bigger than humanity and indestructible, or at least nearly, by anything on earth. It often involves monsters that are beyond anything recognizable in our world and because of that they are terrifying beyond description. A lot of sci fi horror contain these elements. The movie “Alien” is an example. So, there's a sense of helplessness in in this kind of horror making it existential. Although not one of his most well-known cosmic horror short stories, Lovecraft’s "The Outsider", is no exception to the subgenre. A movie adaptation of this story was released in the 1990s: "Castle Freak". However, the problem with this movie is that it’s mi...

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 o...

Credit: Pixabay I apologise for missing last week. I was busy editing much of the newsletter for this month on the day of its release. This month’s issue features a free short story, so if you haven't yet subscribed to my newsletter, “Night Creatures' Call”, you can do so here . In this and future issues of the newsletter you’ll find things such as news about my upcoming book and future Book-To-Movie reviews.  A couple of productions by Guillermo del Toro, producer of dark fantastic films such as “Pan's Labyrinth” and “The Orphanage”, are coming up. One is a movie and the other a TV anthology series. Both will feature adaptations of stories by authors such as H.P. Lovecraft and others.  Del Toro’s movie, entitled, “Nightmare Alley”, is based on a 40s noir novel by William Lindsay Gresham. A remake of an earlier adaptation from 1947, the movie is about a traveling carnival in which one of its employees who is ambitious and manipulative becomes involved in a relationship wit...

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 Colo u r 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 bod...

Credit: Pixabay.com As you may know from an earlier post , I have been ready for Richard Stanley’s movie “Color Out of Space” for over two months. I was checking Fandango since Wednesday to see the showtimes for this movie adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, which goes by the slightly longer title of “The Colour Out of Space”, for my area. Well, it was only showing at two theaters here in Sacramento in which both only had evening showings and were too far for me to drive especially that late on a Wednesday (two days before the official release date). After Wednesday, it played nowhere in the Sacramento area. By then, the theatre that it was playing at closest to my area was in Berkeley which is about an hour away by car and an hour and a half by train. I don’t drive long distance and I wasn’t about to head out on a train for a movie that doesn’t even run two hours long. So “Color Out of Space” is one of those movies that play only in select areas and so may not be coming...

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get together a bigger story for this week’s post like I had hoped . So here are some more lightning news flashes, or lightning flash non-fiction, with links to the full stories. These stories cover race issues in sci fi and fantasy pop culture, and the world-building behind The Circle . Then comes news of the blogger’s current projects. Star Trek  Licence Plate Removed Due to Racist Connotation   During the week, a man in Canada was forced by policy to turn in his Star Trek - themed license plate due to “politically incorrect” language. The message on the licence plate unintentionally conveyed reference to a racist method of assimilating the indigenous population of Canada to white culture. However, it was actually referring to Star Trek (post-original series) episodes involving the alien and villainous Borgs’ attempts to assimilate other races. ReplacingLovecraft’s Image in the World Fantasy Award   The World Fantasy A...

Credit: Pixabay.com Somewhere between Christmas Day and the New Year’s Day, I get that dark feeling as if nothing will be on the other side of the threshold between the old year and the new. It’s almost as if all hell will break loose once we step through that threshold. In fact, this concern caused me to write a short story the day after Christmas for my writers’ critique group’s holiday party, a kind of time travel story you can say. I’ve only written the rough draft though, and because it’s holiday themed, particularly New Year’s, you probably won’t see it until the end of the year. But even though for some of us the other side of the portal to 2017 maybe seemed like a black nothingness, here we are; we are alive and that’s all that counts. I thought I would look at my writing accomplishments from last year and my goals (or resolutions) for this new year of 2017. But first let me talk about how Christmas went. It went by great. Nothing that spectacularly different ...

I've been trying to dedicate the weekend to finishing revising my current short story because I plan to include it in my upcoming book of fiction, The Hidden . And can you believe I haven’t even touched the story in all day and it’s already past 10 in the evening? That’s because life in this country is run by an institution that has little concern for the artist as much as he/she is trying to make money off of their work. The institution: the economy. So I’ve been trying to meet that institution’s inevitable demands. And because I’m trying to squeese dedication to my short story into this weekend, I decided to take it a little easy with this week's post and give you some . . . Far Out Fantastic Finds 1)       “ io9 Newsstand: Speculative Fiction Is All AboutKeeping It Real (and Sometimes Surreal) "   2)          Boise Public Library's Comic Con A public library in Boise, Idaho had their annual comic book ...