H.P. Lovecraft influencing a new generation of movie makers, capturing new fans

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

By Michael Knox, mknox@modernfilmzine.com

The cackling screams of agony and carnage that ripple across the speakers

when the “H.P. Lovecraft Radio Hour” plays is a
highlight for the show's narrator, Ryan Haggerty.

H.P. Lovecraft lived from August 20, 1890–March 15, 1937. He was an

American writer who created Cthulhu in 1926. He created stories using

Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, as well as stories that have been adapted into

films, such as the Stuart Gordon movie “The Re-Animator.”

Haggerty is the narrator and one of the producers on the CD, which takes

the classic Lovecraft horror stories and adds sound effects and music to

create an old fashioned radio show-style format. But the CD also has comic

interludes, taking characters from the Lovecraft universe and adding a

humorous twist.

For instance, one scene includes those cackling screams of agony that rise

up from the audience when Cthulhu's rock band decides to devour the

audience after an interview on the show. It's one of Haggerty's favorite

scenes and one he enjoyed recording with the production crew.

“Cthulhu having a band, that just made me giggle the first time I heard

it,” Haggerty said. “He's a cult leader. Of course he'd make a great rock

star.”

Haggerty said he enjoyed recording that moment because of the producer's

surprise.

“Having a producer tell us to let loose, and being scared when we did,” he

said. “Four people standing around a microphone screaming and shouting and

throwing chairs to simulate an audience of theater people being eaten.”

The creation of the “H.P. Lovecraft Radio Hour” CD is just one more piece

in the growing Lovecraft memorabilia, as Lovecraft's popularity continues

to grow.

Authors Neil Gaiman and Stephen King have been noted as fans of

Lovecraft's writings, and at one point director Guillermo del Toro was

attached to direct, “At the Mountain of Madness.” Plush toys, card games,

action figures, video games, comic books and movies have all come from

characters created by Lovecraft.

Haggerty said he's seen Lovecraft's popularity grow, and the fans of the

monsters in Lovecraft's world are as rabid as any other pop culture

following (i.e. "Star Wars" of "Star Trek").

“Once you come to appreciate the world that's been created, anything that

can be added to expand the world, fans are going to appreciate it,”

Haggerty said. “I think people are really looking for content in the world

of Lovecraft.”

Haggerty said he thinks one of the main reasons that Lovecraft's

popularity is growing is because of the Internet.

“People have been busy stoking the fires and the Internet has just built

on that with people finding each other,” he said. “It just made it easier

for people to discover Lovecraft.”

Haggerty said the Internet will help unite Lovecraft fans who can supply

stories for the CD, plus it will help promote the “H.P. Lovecraft Radio

Hour.” For instance he's already seen the show downloaded off of iTunes

by a fan in Japan.

“The audience is all of a sudden a lot larger than if it was just a CD in

a store in town,” he said.

Paul Blake, works with ToyVault, a company that designs Cthulhu plush

dolls as well as other H.P. Lovecraft related games and toys. He said that

there is bound to be more Lovecraft related merchandise popping up, just

like the “H.P. Lovecraft Radio Hour.” Part of the reason more merchandise

looks to surface is just because of the time period Lovecraft wrote,

making the stories old enough to be public domain.

“Lovecraft's writing is completely free to reprint and distribute,

without restriction,” Blake said. “This also opens up fertile territory

for authors to further explore the Cthulhu Mythos world with new

stories, which has been especially appealing to gaming companies - see

Chaosium Inc's Call of Cthulhu RPG, or Fantasy Flight Games'

Cthulhu-based games.  Both companies have had tremendous success with these

products and published numerous expansions for each of them.”

Blake also said Lovecraft's writing was, in many ways, ahead of its time.

“His work flows smoothly, and his stories are both imaginative and

engaging.  More to the point, however, Lovecraft's work pioneered a genre

of fiction, and challenged the entire threefold

narrative struggles of Man Vs. Man, Man Vs. Self, Man Vs. Nature, and

even the concept of Good Vs. Evil," Blake said. “None of these

established molds of  storytelling quite fit the Cthulhu mythos, although

Man Vs. Nature comes closest - but part of the idea behind the Great Old

Ones is that their Nature is not our Nature, and is not something which can be understood.

Similarly, Good Vs. Evil falls short, as only Nyarlathotep seems to have

a specific agenda with regard to humanity.”

LOVECRAFT SPOKE OF DESPAIR DURING HIS TIME PERIOD

Lovecraft's popularity has grown over the years, but when his writings

first appeared it had already garnered an audience.

“It can hardly be disputed that Lovecraft's writing is bleak and

depressing, and much of his work first appeared just before and during the Great
Depression,” Blake said.

“While some forms of entertainment gained their popularity through

idealized escapism (i.e. the board game 'Monopoly' the initial

popularity of which is often attributed to depression victims living out

the fantasy of owning property and holding large sums of money); Lovecraft's

work confronts the matter head-on by saying that forces beyond your

control or comprehension can devastate your life without hesitation.”

With so many themes and characters to play off of, there is room for more

Lovecraft lore to be created.

“The H.P. Lovecraft Radio Hour” CD is just the first in a series of

volumes that Changing Elevations, Inc. plans to produce. Ryan Haggerty

said he's already looking forward to writing more comedic interludes for the second album.

“I get psyched about stuff like that because of the lack of it being wide

spread like 'Friday the 13th,'” Haggerty said, “which is not on the level

of Lovecraft's characters. [Lovecraft] plays on your fears on a different

level, and not all horror does that for people.”

Haggerty said Lovecraft's stories have even preyed on his thoughts before,

which is why he enjoys Lovecraft's lore.

He was first introduced to Lovecraft when he was in college and a roommate

had him read “The Color From Outer Space.”

“It's classic Lovecraft with people being pawns before some great alien

force sucks the life out of everyone,” Haggerty said.

But the story that really got Haggerty to appreciate Lovecraft was

“Dreams in the Witch House.” In the story, the witch has a pet rat that has

her face. Haggerty said when he was reading the story he also

had dreams about the story.

“I had to put that down for a while. It started to mess with my head,” he

said. “It digs deep into your brain and brings fourth fears you haven't

even imagined yet.”

Haggerty said part of that stems from how vague Lovecraft's descriptions

are, which allows the reader's imagination to go wild and create something

far worse than the most descriptive beast of Hell.

He said the vagueness of Lovecraft's stories allow for readers to create

their own interpretations. He's already coming up with ideas for comedic

interludes for the next album, including one skit with an elder god having

to go to the Employment Security Commission and another sketch with an

elder god having to deal with a cable television operator.

“We poke fun at characters who weren't really given a personality,” he

said. “Why not give them a bit of personality? They should be meant to

suffer with us.”

With so many people adding to the Lovecraft mythos, Haggerty plans to

organize a contest for fans to contribute comedic interludes to use in a

future album of the “H.P. Lovecraft Radio Hour.”

“I am a fan too and I want to see other people's perspectives on it,” he

said. He added that he would like to see how other cultures influences

people's interpretations of the story. For instance, Haggerty wonders how

a Russian might right Cthulhu.

“Is he wanting to dominante the world for its vodka supply? Is he angry

because he's out in the cold in Siberia?” Haggerty asks. “What do people

have to say about that?”

HORRORS THAT STILL EXIST TODAY

The world of H.P. Lovecraft and the stories he told may be more than 80

years old, but are still relevant today, as far as some fans are

concerned.

Dan Gildark, the director of the 2007 movie "Cthulhu," said the themes and

emotions that Lovecraft touched on later influenced his film, which featured

Tori Spelling.

“The inception of this film occurred during the opening days of the Iraq

war,” Gildark said. “I was living in a roach-infested tenement in

Portland, Oregon, attending film school and slinging coffee. A close

friend, Grant Cogswell, had just lost a run for city council in Seattle

and had broken up with his longtime girlfriend and was camped out on my

floor. The despair was palpable while we watched the bombs rain down on

Baghdad as the country hurtled itself into an Orwellian reality.”

He said the political climate generated from the Iraq War, following the

September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks made him feel a type of terror that

led to his movie's creation, with him and Cogswell developing the story in

March 2003.

“What Grant’s mind turned to was a book he read on a cross-country trip a

few years before, the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft,” Gildark said.

“The feelings we were experiencing now were the same ones that [Cogswell]

had experienced while reading those stories: the idea that there are

powers at work in this universe far beyond our control and understanding.”

Gildark said those same themes played into the script for “Cthulhu.”

“We knew to make a film from this material, it would have to be a story

everyone could relate to,” he said.

“The story that jumped out to us was the 'Shadow Over Innsmouth,' a coming home again

tale that reflected the experience of many of our friends that were gay or artists or both, and

who had left home as soon as they could.  Not fitting into their

surroundings, they fled to big cities and found like-minded people and

formed new families and alliances. Eventually they got called home when

someone in the family died or got married or fell ill and had to return to

all they thought they left behind. The return home for many people who feel

different from their families can be a bit intimidating," Gildark said.

Gildark said it is Lovecraft's writings about the inevitable horror of heredity that can be
truly frightening.

 “Not being able to escape who you are and what is in your blood,” Gildark said.
“So, this film is set in a world about to come

apart; the true terror stems from not having control over who we truly

are. While our political situation is inseparable from the art, the film

at its core remains a coming home again story. Lovecraft is, if anything,

more timely and relevant than ever. We wanted to make a piece of

political art that reflected our anxieties about the times. So many of

the concerns about war and the environment that were written into the

original script as science fiction have already come true – instead of

toning them down, we actually had to turn them up.”

Gildark, like others, is seeing how Lovecraft translates to screen. Ron

Howard looks to make “The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft” and

Guillermo del Toro has been reported to be attached to adapting “At the

Mountain of Madness.” And more and more filmmakers are being exposed to

Lovecraft.

In fact, Lovecraft has become so popular there is an H.P. Lovecraft Film

Festival held in Portland, Oregon.  According to the con's Web site the

festival was founded in 1995 by Andrew Migliore, in the hope that H.P. Lovecraft

would be rightly recognized as a master of gothic horror and his work more

faithfully adapted to film and television.

Now, that more and more movies are being developed on Lovecraft's work,

Ryan Haggerty said he can see how the  “H.P. Lovecraft Radio Hour” crew

can eventually make the jump from the CD format to films as well.

He said the one story he would like to make a feature film out of is “The

Color From Outer Space.” And like typical Lovecraft, the story isn't at

first what it appears to be.

“That story starts out like a sci-fi story and then crops start growing to

outrageous sizes and glow in the dark and it slowly drips its way into

horror,” Haggerty said. “You put people at ease and then you drag them

kicking and screaming into a horror movie.”

“Cthulhu” director, Gildark, said Lovecraft fans are spreading the word to

new recruits, which will only secure the writer's work in modern lore.

“There is still an element about Lovecraft that feels like a secret club

and when you buy his books or even a plushy or t-shirt you are also saying

‘I get what this is.’ Even the jokey stuff, I think, has an air of

seriousness to it. It is like: 'Ha-ha-ha this is little plushy Cthulhu and

he represents this elder god who lies sleeping at the bottom of the ocean

and when the stars are right will rise up and destroy everything we love

–isn’t that funny and cute?'” Gildark said. “I believe that there is a

part of everyone who buys one of these things that is secretly horrified

that it could be true and in a way the object becomes a talisman of sorts

against our own secret horror.  That said I can see Lovecraft mania

becoming like 'Hello Kitty' in another 10 years.”