- Lovecraftian Horror Movies -
- films and television shows with Lovecraftian references and themes -
This list of Lovecraftian movies is split into four sections: 1 - those that are direct adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft's fictional works HERE, 2 - those that incorporate elements of his Cthulhu Mythos or other aspects of his fiction and are set within the same fictional world or universe HERE, 3 - those that make reference to Lovecraft or his Yog-Sothothery but aren't set directly within that fictional universe HERE, and finally 4 - a list of documentaries about either the man himself or his wider legacy HERE. NB: As far as this list is concerned the definition of Lovecraftian requires more than just the mere presence of tentacles.
The term Lovecraftian Horror is often used when describing a wider sub-genre of horror better termed Cosmic Horror, that emphasizes puny humanity's helplessness in the face of an unknown (or unknowable) malevolence (or indifference) at a cosmic (or universal) level. Much of Lovecraft's fiction falls into this wider sub-genre and he was very much among it's pioneers. This sub-genre will be explored in our Cosmic Horror section HERE soon. Some of Lovecraft's fiction also falls under the umbrella of the wider Body Horror sub-genre which can soon be explored HERE.
Read our summaries and reviews with confidence - this is a NO SPLOILER zone!
--------------------
- 1: Movie & TV adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft Stories -
A chronological list of films that are direct adaptations of stories written by H. P. Lovecraft.
[The Haunted Palace - lobby card]
1.001: The Haunted Palace (Roger Cormen, USA. 1963)
Tagline: A warlock's home is his castle...Forever!
Although marketed as Edgar Alan Poe's The Haunted Palace this movie, directed by Roger Cormen, is actually based on Lovecraft's short novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward with the screenplay adapted by Charles Beaumont. It's not an entirely faithful adaptation of the short novel but it does have Vincent Price in dual roles as Joseph Curwen and Charles Dexter Ward.
In 1875, Charles Dexter Ward inherits a Gothic castle-like Palace that, about 110 years earlier, had been brought over stone by stone from Europe and re-built overlooking the New England town of Arkham by his great great grandfather, Joseph Curwen. Curwen was effectively burned at the steak by the town's people for being a Necromantic Sorcerer (responsible for the impregnating of local young women by demonic entities) who cursed them all before he died - he vowed to return from death and get revenge on each of those responsible and all their descendants.
Curwen apparently had a back up plan ready to go should an angry mob end up murdering him, using his Necromantic Sorcery he ensured that his disembodied Spirit would remain "vital" within the Palace till he could find a suitable victim to possess and through whom he would be able to exact his revenge. Ignorant of his ancestor's history Ward decides to move to Arkham and into the Palace with his wife Anne, played by Debra Paget... big mistake.
Cue 60s Gothic Horror Movie melodrama hardened by a dark Lovecraftian weirdness. It has a good solid cast, that includes Lon Chaney Jr as Simon Orne - a loyal cultist/servant of Curwen's, and a sumptuous look typical of Roger Cormen's "Poe Cycle" for American International Pictures. The film itself is titled after an Edgar Alan Poe poem and in the closing scenes the final verse of that poem is narrated - '...While, like a ghastly rapid river, through the pale door, a hideous throng rush out forever and laugh - But smile no more'
The Haunted Palace marks the first time actual names of Lovecraftian Monstrosities, such as the Elder Gods Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth, are uttered on celluloid. It is also the first time Lovecraft's legendary black magic book, the Necronomicon, is not only mentioned but also makes its premier appearance in the history of motion-picture tropes as an integral prop and plot-device.
Runtime: 87 min - Colour - English.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 7/10 (Good) - not one of Cormen's best but certainly his most Lovecraftian. Vincent Price's performance is, as ever, a delight to watch.
Buy The Haunted Palace on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.com
Buy The Haunted Palace on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.co.uk
---
[Die, Monster, Die! - lobby card]
1.002: Die, Monster, Die! (Daniel Haller, UK/USA. 1965)
AKA: Monster of Terror (UK) | Colour Out of Space (USA working title) | The House at the End of the World (UK working title)
Tagline: can you face the ULTIMATE in DIABOLISM!... can you face PURE TERROR!
Loosely based on Lovecraft's short story The Colour Out of Space (and possibly conflating some elements of The Dunwich Horror i.e. the Witley family history having similarities to the Whateley's - among some other Lovecraftian tropes) this movie directed by Daniel Haller transposes the action to a small country village named Arkham in contemporary England. Stephen Reinhart (Nick Adams) is an American scientist come to visit his girl-friend Susan Witley (Suzan Farmer) at her family's estate at the invitation of her mother, Letitia (Freda Jackson). On arrival at the village Reinhart is treated with suspicion as soon as it becomes known that he's looking for the Witley Estate, where none of the villagers will go, and is forced to make his own way on foot across the heath to the house.
While on the heath he passes a huge crater surrounded by a large area of scorched earth and the dessicated remains of burnt vegetation. Moving on he comes to the forbidding grounds of the Witley house - liberally posted with "No Trespassing" signs and guarded by at least one man-trap - persevering on he finally gets to the house itself where he is confronted by Susan's father Nahum Witley (Boris Karloff) and bluntly told to leave - but, of course, he doesn't - especially when Susan appears immediately and greets him with welcoming and open arms.
Cue lots of mysterious shenanigans involving weird illnesses, unearthly noises, missing and dying servants, a family history of sorcery, a locked and glowing green-house with mutated plant life leading to a glowing potting shed full of strange mutated creatures of indeterminate origin... and, lets not forget, the large luminescent meteorite in the cellar radiating the purest green.
Lovecraftian trivia; Reinhart finds a book in Witley's library entitled "Cult of the Outer Ones" - a passage from which reads, "Cursed is the ground where the Dark Forces live, new and strangely bodied... he who tampers there will be destroyed..."
Runtime: 80 min - Colour - English.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 5/10 (Mediocre) - for the most part an interesting blend of Gothic and Science Fiction horrors but unfortunately it really gets into the realms of the ridiculous toward the end.
Buy Die, Monster, Die! on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.com
Buy Die, Monster, Die! on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.co.uk
---
[Curse of the Crimson Altar - poster]
1.003: Curse of the Crimson Altar (Vernon Sewell, UK. 1968)
AKA: The Crimson Cult (USA) | The Crimson Altar (USA poster title)
Tagline: What obscene prayer or human sacrifice can satisfy the Devil-God?
Very loosely based on Lovecraft's short story The Dreams in the Witch-House - and we do mean loosely, the only connections we could see are the facts that there are dreams and they are indeed experienced in a witch-house. This was the last film featuring Boris Karloff to be released during his lifetime.
Set in contemporary England an antiques dealer, Mark Eden (Robert Manning), searching for his missing brother is led to a large and Gothic country house occupied by J. D. Morley (Christopher Lee) and Eve (Virginia Wetherell) his niece - descendants of the infamous Black Witch of Greymarsh Lavinia Morley (Barbara Steele) who was burned at the stake by the local villagers three hundred years earlier. The obligatory creepy butler, named Elder, is played very well by the excellently doomy Michael Gough while an elderly Karloff appears as the dour and forbidding wheel-chair bound expert on witchcraft, Professor Marsh.
The drug induced dream sequences have to be seen to be believed - they're both trippy and kitsch and some of the costumes are in turn awesome (the green/blue skinned Lavinia's regalia), sinister (the animal-masked jurors) and sometimes hilarious (the PVC bondage-esque blacksmith/torturer's outfit for example).
Content Warning: There are some brief scenes of mild nudity... and the sight of the middle-aged Eden leching and pawing at the lovely young Eve in the supposed romantic angle of the story is quite literally stomach churning.
Runtime: 89 min - Colour - English.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 6/10 (Pretty Good) - benefits from a strong cast, a terrific setting and a some-what psychedelic sixties vibe but is otherwise pretty lacklustre... especially the rather perfunctory ending.
Buy Curse of the Crimson Altar on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.com
Buy Curse of the Crimson Altar on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.co.uk
---
[The Dunwich Horror (1970) - poster]
1.004: The Dunwich Horror (Daniel Haller, USA. 1970)
Tagline: A few years ago in Dunwich a half-witted girl bore illegitimate twins. One of them was almost human!
A contemporary and not entirely faithful adaptation of Lovecraft's short story of the same name with some 70s counter-culture and Crowley-esque occult-ness added for good measure.
The enigmatic young warlock Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell) is twin to a monstrous entity locked in the attic of his family's Dunwich farm house. The pair were born to Lavinia Whateley (Joanne Moore Jordan) who was driven insane by the trauma of the birth and (presumably) by their conceiving - since the father of the "brothers" was Yog Sothoth, an Outer God summoned briefly by Lavinia's own father Old Whateley (Sam Jaffe) twenty five years earlier.
Wilbur wants to get his hands on a copy of the Necronomicon and a virgin so he can perform a ritual to open the trans-dimensional door that will let the Old Ones, heralded by Yog Sothoth himself, through to this world and bring about their dominion over humanity. At the Miskatonic University in Arkham he finds both the eldritch tome he's looking for and a suitable young virgin, Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee). He successfully ensnares Nancy but the book proves to be a bigger problem as a suspicious Dr. Henry Armitage (Ed Begley) refuses to "lend" it to him.
After getting Nancy ensconced, drugged and mesmerised at his Dunwich home Wilbur sets out to steal the Necronomicon. Meanwhile, Dr Armitage sets out to rescue Nancy from the warlock's influence and then slowly realises it will fall to him to prevent any magical skulduggery from coming to fruition.
Pedagogic nit-picking - everyone in this movie pronounces the town's name as "Dun-witch" when in fact it should be pronounced "Dun-itch".
Content Warning: some nudity, sexual situations and orgiastic scenes.
Runtime: 90 min - Colour - English.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 7/10 (Good) - an underrated (by most) minor classic of Lovecraftian cinema that is very entertaining, even if the ending is a bit rushed.
Buy The Dunwich Horror (1970) on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.com
Buy The Dunwich Horror (1970) on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.co.uk
---
1.005: Pickman's Model (Jack Laird, USA. 1971)
Segment 1, Episode 11, Season 2 of Rod Serling's Nignt Gallery TV series.
1.006: Cool Air (Jeannot Szwarc, USA. 1971)
Segment 1, Episode 12, Season 2 of Rod Serling's Nignt Gallery TV series.
1.007: H.P. Lovecraft: Schatten aus der Zeit (George Moorse, West Germany. 1975)
A 50 minute TV movie based on The Shadow Out of Time.
1.008: The Music of Erich Zann (John Strysik, USA. 1980)
A faithful adaptation of Lovecraft's short story of the same name.
Runtime: 17 min - Colour - English.
1.009: Pickman's Model (Cathy Welch, USA. 1981)
Based on Lovecraft's short story of the same name.
Runtime: 32 min - B&W - English.
1.010: La chiave d'argento (Ciriaco Tiso, Italy. 1982)
A 1 hour 15 minute TV movie based on The Silver Key short story.
1.011: La cosa sulla soglia (????, Italy. 1982)
An episode in the Il fascino dell'insolito TV series, based on The Thing on the Door Step.
---
[Re-Animator - poster]
1.012: Re-Animator (Stuart Gordon, USA. 1985)
Tagline: Herbert West Has A Very Good Head On His Shoulders... And Another One In A Dish On His Desk
An adaptation of (the first two parts of) Lovecraft's short story Herbert West - Reanimator but updated to a more contemporary setting and infused throughout with some very campy and decidedly black humour. All the actors involved play it entirely straight and the dry jokes are delivered so dead-pan that it just makes this movie even funnier.
Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a very intense, dedicated and some-what weird medical student who comes to the Miskatonic University in New England in order to further his studies after an unfortunate incident at the University of Zurich's Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, resulting in a(n un)dead professor, caused him to leave there rather unceremoniously.
West rents a room and basement space (for his experiments) from fellow student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbot) who eagerly takes him in for the extra income and despite his girl-friend Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton)'s reservations that West is too "creepy" for a house-mate. Soon after, Dan's pet cat Rufus goes missing so he and Megan search the house top to bottom and finally find its corpse in West's refrigerator... along with some mysterious vials of strangely glowing green liquid. Dan later confronts West about the dead cat and West explains that the cat was already dead when he found it but didn't want Dan or Megan finding it in such a condition so he refrigerated it till he could break the bad news to them gently.
Dan then asks West to explain the green liquid and West tells him that it is the result of his ongoing experiments to find a cure for death itself. Dan, of course, is sceptical so West proves the efficacy of his "reagent" by injecting it into the dead cat. Rufus is reanimated and immediately goes crazy - attacking them both - so they kill the cat a second time. Both shocked and exited by this event Dan agrees to assist West in his experiments and the pair decide to try to perfect the reagent by experimenting on corpses stored in the University's morgue. The chaos resulting from this experiment causes the medical school's Dean Halsey (Robert Sampson), Megan's father, to stumble into the pair in the morgue but the Dean is killed by a reanimated corpse - which West re-kills with a bone-saw.
Realising the Dean's corpse is the freshest they're likely to get, West injects it with the reagent and it too is reanimated... but it too behaves violently toward them. When police and security officers arrive and subdue Halsey, West and Dan - to explain the scene of carnage - claim that the Dean simply went crazy and attacked both them and the corpses in the morgue. The reanimated Dean is strapped into a straight-jacket and taken away - put into the care of his brain specialist colleague Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale). After lobotomising Halsey, Dr. Hill soon realises that the Dean is in fact dead and reanimated. Realising that West must be onto something with his research, which the doctor had earlier scoffed at, Hill determines to get West's secrets for himself.
Little does Hill realise quite how unhinged Herbert West was becoming with each increasingly disastrous and chaotic experiment. Hill tries to blackmail West into handing over his secrets, West plays along just long enough to decapitate Hill with a shovel... and then West wonders how his reagent will work with body parts...
Content Warning: be prepared for very dark humour with very gruesome and bloody scenes... also some nudity and a particularly controversial depiction of a sexual assault (that gives new meaning to the phrase "giving head").
Runtime: 86 min (unrated) / 95 min (R-rated) / 106 min (extended cut) - Colour - English.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 9/10 (Extremely Good) - this might be schlock, but it is schlock of the highest order - a very funny and gory horror comedy. Jeffrey Combs' performance is particularly brilliant and it cements in place the foundation for his (as well as director Stuart Gordon's and producer Brian Yuzna's) prominent position in Lovecraftian cinema history.
Buy Re-Animator on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.com
Buy Re-Animator on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.co.uk
---
1.013: From Beyond (Stuart Gordon, USA. 1986)
Fresh from his triumphant Re-Animator this higher budget horror comedy adaptation by Stuart Gordon of another Lovecraft story is a bit of a let down.
Content Warning: quite a gruesome body-horror with some nudity and sexual situations.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 5/10 (Mediocre) - with some very ropey SFX (admittedly mixed in with some quite good ones) and being mostly humourless (for a comedy) it fails to rise above its exploitative elements and is, in essence, just another 80s gore-fest.
1.014: The Curse (David Keith, USA. 1987)
AKA: The Farm | The Well (original script title)
Tagline: From the darkest part of the heavens, terror has arrived.
An adaptation of Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space set in contemporary Tellico Plains, Tennessee. Starring Will Wheaton and featuring his sister Amy as Zack and Alice, the step children to bible-thumping farmer Nathan Crane (Claude Akins). A strange meteorite crash-lands into Crane's farmland. It starts out as a large glowing ball of indeterminate material but soon melts away into the ground and, unbeknownst to the Crane family, infects the farm's water supply.
Content Warning: some gross-out moments and some sexual scenes... there's also a particularly gross and offensive display of thick male chest, back, shoulder and upper arm hair during a sex scene.
Runtime: 92 min - Colour - English.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 3/10 (Bad) - this movie is so inept you'll find yourself wondering if it's been made purposefully so for the laughs... but there aren't any laughs.
1.015: The Testimony of Randolph Carter (Andrew Leman, USA. 1987)
A 50 minute micro-budget indie/amateur adaptation of The Statement of Randolph Carter.
1.016: The Unnamable (Jean-Paul Ouellette, USA. 1988)
AKA: H. P. Lovecraft's The Unnamable | The White Monster
Content Warning: some bloody violence and brief scenes of a sexual nature.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 6/10 (Pretty Good) -
1.017: Pulse Pounders (Charles Band, Italy. 1988)
A portmanteau of three stories, one of which is an adaptation of The Evil Clergyman featuring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton.
1.018: Epikindyni Zoni (Nikos Grammatikos, Greek. 1988)
AKA: Danger Zone (English translation?)
1.019: Dark Heritage (David McCormick, USA. 1989)
AKA: Dark Heritage: The Final Descendant (UK)
An uncredited low budget adaptation of the story The Lurking Fear. Reporter Clint Harrison is sent to investigate a massacre at a Louisiana campground and finds that it may be linked to the Dansen clan an old local family thought to have died out years ago.
1.020: Bride of Re-Animator (Brian Yuzna, USA. 1989)
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 8/10 (Very Good) - not quite as good as the first Re-Animator movie but still very entertaining.
1.021: The Resurrected (Dan O'Bannon, USA. 1991)
Movie based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward with John Terry and Chris Sarandon. Charles Dexter Ward's wife enlists the help of a private detective to find out what her husband is up to in a remote cabin owned by his family for centuries.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 7/10 (Good) - well made but a little lifeless and lacking suspense.
1.022: Insumasu o ouu Kage (Chaiki Konaka, Japan. 1992)
A 1 hour TV movie adaptation of Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth that is transposed to the coast of modern-day Japan.
1.023: Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter (Jean-Paul Ouellette, USA. 1993)
AKA: The Unnamable Returns (UK)
Continuing directly from Ouellette's The Unamable (see 1.013 above) this movie incorporates a loose adaptation of Lovecraft's short story The Statement of Randolph Carter - the events of which, in Lovecraft's fictional chronology, probably occurs before those in his The Unnamable short story.
Content Warning: some bloody violence and nudity.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 6/10 (Pretty Good) -
1.024: Necronomicon (Brian Yuzna, Christophe Gans & Shusuke Kaneko, USA. 1993)
AKA: H.P. Lovecraft's: Necronomicon | Necronomicon: Book of the Dead | Necronomicon: To Hell and Back.
Portmanteau movie of three stories, each based on a Lovecraft short story: "The Drowned" is based on The Rats in the Walls; "The Cold" is based on Cool Air; and "Whispers" is based on The Whisperer in Darkness. The wraparound framing story features Lovecraft finding the titular book in a monastery library. Jeffrey Combs plays Howard Philips with a prosthetic chin that makes him look uncannily like Bruce Campbell.
Content Warning: some mild nudity and scenes of a sexual nature.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 5/10 (Mediocre) - a bit of a mixed bag. Some good, some bad.
1.025: The Outsider (Andrew Hooks, USA. 1993)
A 9 minute short film adapting the story of the same name.
1.026: Lurking Fear (C. Courtney Joyner, USA. 1994)
A very loose bargain-basement B-movie adaptation of the HP Lovecraft story. Worth seeing, but a decent cast (featuring Jeffrey Combs) is let down by a weak script and bad production, which is a shame for there is potential here. The dwellers underground are quite effective.
1.027: The Outsider (Aaron Vanek, USA. 1994)
An 8 minute short film adapting the story of the same name.
1.028: Castle Freak (Stuart Gordon, USA. 1995)
Lovecraft's short story The Outsider gets the full feature length treatment here, though its a fairly loose retelling and was released direct-to-video. Stars Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. Be prepared for graphic violence and gore.
1.029: Bleeders (Peter Svatek, Canada. 1997)
AKA: Hemoglobin
Loosely based on The Lurking Fear, this feature length adaptation has Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett among its writers. A man travels to an island with his girlfriend in search of his relatives, but he finds maybe more than what he wanted to know. Rutger Hauer gets top billing, but is in a relatively minor role. It's slow, the two leads are pretty nondescript and the direction is hackneyed at best. I'd say it's missable.
1.030: The Hound (Anthony Penta, USA. 1997)
An 18 minute short based on the story of the same name. Two grave-robbers enter an old cemetery on an island and break into one of the tombs. They steal a mysterious amulet, thus, activating a centuries old curse.
1.031: From Beyond (Ken Avenoso & Andrew Migliore, USA. 1997)
A short 11 minute adaptation of the Lovecraft story.
1.032: The Outsider (John Allen, USA. 1998)
An animated short film, based on the story of the same name.
1.033: The House on Dame Street (Ruairi Robinson, Ireland. 1999)
A 5 minute short based very loosely on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. An investigator looking into the disappearance of a colleague runs into a spot of bother involving things that are not quite dead.
1.034: Return to Innsmouth (Aaron Vanek, USA. 1999)
1.035: Cool Air (Bryan Moore, USA. 1999)
1.036: Cthulhu (Damian Heffernan, Australia. 2000)
mostly based on The Thing on the Doorstep and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
1.037: Chilean Gothic (Ricardo Harrington, Chile. 2000)
based on Pickman's Model
1.038: Le Peuple Ancien (Christian Matzke, France. 2001)
based on The Very Old Folk
1.039: Nyarlathotep (Christian Matzke, USA. 2001)
1.040: The Terrible Old Man: H.P. Lovecraft (Bob Fugger, Canada. 2001)
1.041: Dagon (Stuart Gordon, Spain. 2001)
based on The Shadow over Innsmouth.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 8/10 (Very Good) -
1.042: The Music of Erica Zann (Jeremy Hechler, USA. 2002)
based on The Music of Erich Zann.
1.043: The Evil Clergymen (Bill Kelley, USA. 2002)
1.044: The Picture in the House (Gant Haverstick, USA. 2003)
1.045: An Imperfect Solution: A Tale of the Re-Animator (Christian Matzke, USA. 2003)
1.046: The Thing on the Doorstep (Eric Morgret, USA. 2003)
1.047: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (Edward Martin III, USA. 2003)
1.048: The Statement of Randolph Carter (Jane Rose, USA. 2003)
1.049: Pickman's Model (Rick Tillman, USA. 2003)
1.050: The Shunned House (Ivan Zuccon, Italy. 2003)
1.051: 13:de mars 1941 (Robert P. Olsson, Sweden. 2004)
AKA: March the 13th, 1941 (USA) | The Hole (UK)
based on Lovecraft's The Statement of Randolph Carter
1.052: Strange Aeons: The Thing on the Doorstep (Eric Morgret, USA. 2005)
1.053: The Statement of Randolph Carter (Edward Martin III, USA. 2005)
1.054: The Call of Cthulhu (Andrew Leman, USA. 2005)
A faithful adaptation by The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society of one of Lovecraft's best, and most famous, short stories that imitates the type of movie that would have been made at about the time of the tale's writing.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 6/10 (Pretty Good) - suffers somewhat from the silent-movie format but a sterling effort to bring an accurate depiction of Lovecraft's fiction to the screen.
1.055: Die Musik des Erich Zann (Anna Gawrilow, Germany. 2005)
1.056: H. P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House (Stuart Gordon, USA. 2005)
Episode 2 in Season 1 of The Master's of Horror TV series.
1.057: Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Barrett J. Leigh & Thom Maurer, USA. 2006)
1.058: From Beyond (Michael Granberry, USA. 2006)
1.059: The Rats in the Walls (Tim Uren, USA. 2006)
1.060: Cool Air (Albert Pyun, USA. 2006/2013)
1.061: The Other Gods (Peter Rhodes, USA. 2006)
1.062: The Terrible Old Tran (Armando Muñoz, USA. 2006)
kinky parody of The Terrible Old Man
1.063: Dunwich (Christian Matzke & Sarah Tarling, USA. 2006)
1.064: Chill (Serge Rodnunsky, USA. 2007)
based on Cool Air
1.065: Cthulhu (Dan Gildark, USA. 2007)
loosely based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
1.066: Nyarlathotep (???, USA. 2007)
1.067: H.P. Lovecraft's Dunwich Horror and Other Stories (Ryo Shinagawa, Japan. 2007)
portmanteau of three animated Lovecraft tales: The Picture in the House, The Dunwich Horror and The Festival.
1.068: H.P. Lovecraft's The Terrible Old Man (Sean Kearney & Doug Simon, USA. 2007)
1.069: The Statement (Kurt Dudley, UK. 2007)
adaptation of The Statement of Randolph Carter
1.070: The Whisperer in Darkness (Matt Hundley, USA. 2007)
1.071: Pickman's Model (Gary Fierro, USA. 2008)
1.072: The Book (James Raynor, UK. 2008)
based on the short stories "The Book" and "The Descendant"
1.073: Colour from the Dark (Ivan Zuccon, Italy. 2008)
adaptation of The Colour Out of Space
1.074: The Statement of Randolph Carter (John Morehead, USA. 2008)
1.075: A Lovecraft Dream (Michele Botticelli & Leonardo Manna, Italy? 2008)
In this animated short H.P.Lovecraft has nightmares featuring excerpts of The Crawling Chaos, Nyrlathotep, The Call of Cthluhu, The Shadow Out of Time, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Azathoth.
1.076: The Statement of Randolph Carter (Michael Sparks, USA. 2009)
1.077: The Statement of Randolph Carter (Kyle Aldrich, USA. 2009)
1.078: Lovecraft Paragraphs (Reber Clark, USA. 2009)
A unique presentation of selected paragraphs from Lovecraft's work.
1.079: The Picture in the House (Christopher James Jordan & Gary Lobstein, USA. 2009)
1.080: Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Nathan Fisher, USA. 2009)
1.081: Dagon (Nathalie Magri, USA. 2009)
1.082: The Music of Erich Zann (???, USA. 2009)
1.083: The Music of Erich Zann (Jared Skolnick, USA. 2009)
1.084: The Dunwich Horror (Leigh Scott, USA. 2009)
SyFy Channel TV movie
1.085: Ex Oblivione (Jack Feldstein, Australia. 2009)
animated adaptation of Lovecraft's poem of the same name
1.086: The Silver Key (Gary Fierro & Conor Timmis, USA. 2010)
1.087: Vigor Mortis (Kristof Mateusen, Belgium. 2010)
1.088: Pickman's Muse (Robert Cappelletto, USA. 2010)
based on Haunter of the Dark
1.089: The Picture in the House (Miles Finlayson, Canada. 2010)
1.090: The Color Out of Space (Huan Vu, Germany. 2010)
AKA: Die Farbe (German original)
1.091: Nekromania (Aksel Dalili, Sweden. 2010)
1.092: Innsbay (Sylvain Brunerie, France. 2010)
loosely based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth
1.093: Mr. Noyes (Gary Fierro, USA. 2010)
a short adaptation of just one scene from The Whisperer in Darkness
1.094: The Music of Erich Zann (Kyle McCloskey, USA. 2010)
1.095: The Music of Erich Zann (Michael Chase, Canada. 2010)
1.096: The Call of C'Thulhu (Michael Chase, Canada. 2010)
1.097: The Dunwich Horror (Michael Chase, Canada. 2010)
1.098: Dagon (Michael Chase, Canada. 2010)
1.099: The Rats in the Walls (Alastair Macleod, Canada. 2010)
1.100: The Whisperer in Darkness (Andrew Leman, USA. 2011)
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 8/10 (Very Good) - well made with good performances and some clever visual effects.
1.101: The Curse of Yig (Paul von Stoetzel, USA. 2011)
1.102: Shadow of the Unnamable (Sascha Renninger, Germany. 2011)
adaptation of The Unnamable
1.103: Shadow Beyond Time (John Tzouvelekis, Greece. 2011)
based on The Shadow Out of Time and The Shadow Over Innsmouth
1.104: H.P. Lovecraft's The Silver Key (Philip Tolin, USA. 2011)
1.105: The Music of Erich Zann (Victoria Zika, USA. 2011)
1.106: The Evil Clergyman (Anita Meinken & John Meinken, USA. 2011)
1.107: Nightgaunts (Richard Svensson, Sweden. 2011)
Short animation based on Lovecraft's poem Night-Gaunts.
1.108: Cthulhu (Lindy Lou, Australia. 2011)
according to the IMDB this short is based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth?
1.109: The Terrible Old Man (Stuart Linver, USA. 2012)
1.110: The Shadow Out of Time (Daniel Lenneér & Richard Svensson, Sweden. 2012)
1.111: The Music of Jo Hyeja (Jihyun Park, South Korea. 2012)
based on The Music of Erich Zann
1.112: Muerte Cerebral (Nicolás Biscardi, Argentina. 2012)
AKA: Brain Dead (English translation)
loosely based on Herbert West: Re-Animator
1.113: Pickman's Model (Mark Philip Lichtenstein, UK. 2012)
1.114: The Statement of Randi Carter (Michael Alan Fitzgerald, USA. 2012)
1.115: The Dark Sleep (Brett Piper, USA. 2012)
loosely based on The Dreams in the Witch House
1.116: The Statement of Randolph Carter (Max Hannam, USA. 2012)
1.117: Picture in the House (Sean Quillen, USA. 2012)
1.118: Pickman (Colin Fong, Australia. 2013)
a re-imagining of HP Lovecraft's story Pickman's Model, with an all-puppet cast
1.119: The Picture in the House (R. Clay Ayers, USA. 2013)
1.120: Banshee Chapter (Blair Erickson, USA. 2013)
This horror movie, loosely based on From Beyond, starts off well - it involves an investigative journalist trying to find out what happened to a friend who has mysteriously disappeared after trying a new rare and illicit drug. Real world phenomena like the CIA's experiments with MK-Ultra and the mysterious short-wave radio broadcasts from unidentified so-called Number Stations are successfully interwoven with Lovecraft's story about broadening perception through stimulation of the pineal gland allowing a person to "see"... BEYOND.
There are some moderately effective (though kind of predictable) scares to be had, unfortunately they rely a little too heavily on sudden and very load noises to shock the audience rather than building fear and delivering truly scary moments.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 6/10 (Pretty Good) - a good set-up is ultimately let down by too many puzzling and unexplained occurrences - chief of which, what was the thing in the tank supposed to be and why had it been left in the deserted CIA testing facility?
1.121: Transcendent (Mars Homeworld, USA. 2013)
very loosely based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth
1.122: Re-Animator (Matthew Kalan, USA. 2013)
1.123: Dreams in the Witch House (Jerry Williams, USA. 2013)
1.124: El modelo de Pickman (Pablo Ángeles Zuman, Mexico. 2014)
short animation based on Pickman's Model
1.125: Memory (Andrew Robinson, UK. 2014)
short animation based on Lovecraft's poem of the same name
1.126: From Beyond (Andrew Robinson, UK. 2014)
short animation based on Lovecraft's short story of the same name
1.127: From Beyond (Darren Way, USA. 2014)
short adaptation using intricately carved wooden puppets and stop motion animation.
1.128: The Music of Erich Zann (Erick Wofford, USA. 2014)
1.129: The Terrible Old Man (Ryan Smith, USA. 2014)
1.130: Innsmouth (Martin Constable, Singapore. 2014)
A short animation loosely based on The Shadow over Innsmouth.
1.131: The Thing on the Doorstep (Tom Gliserman, USA. 2014)
Slow and punderous low budget psychological horror film based on the short story of the same name.
1.132: Strange Aeons (James Latter, USA. 2014-15)
A short four part web-series based on The Shadow over Innsmouth... start watching on vimeo.com HERE.
1.133: The Haunter of the Dark (Dmitriy Khmelyov, Russia. 2015)
1.134: Azathoth (Ivan Yakovidish, Russia. 2016)
An 8 min short.
1.135: H.P. Lovecraft's the Beast in the Cave (Cameron McCasland, USA. 2016)
Short
1.136: At the Mountains of Madness (Ethan Miller, USA. 2016)
Animated Short
1.137: The Music of Erich Zann (Reuben Baron, USA. 2016)
Short
1.138: The Haunter of the Dark 2 (Dmitriy Khmelyov, Russia. 2017)
1.139: The Book by H.P. Lovecraft (Michael Treder, USA. 2017)
Episode 7, Season 1 of The Fantasmagori TV Series.
A dramatized reading, by Alex Goldrich, of H.P. Lovecraft's short story 'The Book'.
1.140: The Colour Out of Space (Patrick Müller, Germany. 2017)
A very short interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft's short story.
1.141: Herbert West: Re-Animator (Ivan Zuccon, Italy. 2017)
Another adaptation of Lovecraft's famous tale of reanimaating the dead, but straight and serious this time.
1.142: The Transition of Juan Romero (Whitney Ellis, USA. 2017)
Very brief adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's short story of the same name.
1.143: H.P. Lovecraft's the Terrible Old Man (Sheridan Sinclair, UK. 2017)
Short film version of the H.P. tale. Two petty criminals ask their unemployed friend if he would like to make some easy money by robbing a mysterious old man. Despite the warnings of an old family friend, he agrees.
1.144: At the Mountains of Madness (Matthew Jarjosa, USA. 2018)
Short film adaptation of Lovecraft's famous cosmic horror novel set in Antarctica.
1.145: The Terrible Old Man (Tyler McAlister, USA. 2019)
Another short film adaptation of Lovecraft's tale about thieves plotting to rob a well-healed old man with a storied history.
1.146: The Statement of Randolph Carter (Tyler McAlister, USA. 2019)
A short film based on the short novel of the same name. Two detectives in search of a missing man, must get the story from the last person who saw him.
1.147: The Terror at Blue John Gap (Ross K. Foad, UK. 2019)
Short film based in part on a premise by Lovecraft.
1.148: Color Out of Space (Richard Stanley, Malaysia/Portugal/USA. 2019)
Big budget stab at possibly Lovecraft's most oft filmed short story with Nicolas Cage and Joely Richardson. It's entertaining enough.
1.149: Psychopompos (Lucie Gukkertová, Czech Republic. 2019)
Short based on a dramatic poem by Lovecraft.
1.150: The Music of Erich Zann (Jesse Keller, USA. 2019)
A short updated take on the classic Lovecraft story.
1.151: The Backwoods (Ryan Mackfall, UK. 2019)
Based on H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Picture in the House". A scholar drifts from his path and finds himself in a house he takes for deserted.
1.152: Innsmouth X (David Banta-Garcia/Paul DeSimone, USA. 2019)
A short film. A traveller finds himself on a dark, strange journey in the town of Innsmouth, MA.
1.153: The Outsider (Ludvig Gür, Sweden. 2019/20)
A short film interpretation of Lovecraft's story.
1.154: Castle Freak (Tate Steinsiek, Albania/USA. 2020)
A remake of Stuart Gordon's 1995 film which was based on Lovecraft's The Outsider.
1.155: The Black Tome of Alsophocus (Nicolas Leandro Montes/Alan Slavutzky, Argentina. 2020)
Very short film based on Lovecraft's short story of the same name.
1.156: At the Mountains of Madness (Matthew Cooper, UK. 2021)
A group of scientists studying climate change discover untold horrors on a disastrous expedition to the Antarctic in September 1992. Based on the H.P. Lovecraft tale.
1.157: Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Marc Goldbach, Germany. 2021)
Based on the story of the same name, this short movie follows a young doctor who believes he can uncover the mystery of dreams and wishes to break the wall that separates people from this unreal world. He finds way more than he hoped for.
1.158: At the Mountains of Madness (Francesco Tedde, Italy. 2022)
This short adaptation details the events of the disastrous expedition to Antarctica in September 1930, and what is found there by a group of explorers led by Professor William Dyer of Miskatonic University.
----
- 2: Movies & TV inspired by Lovecraft & the Cthulhu Mythos -
A chronological list of films and television shows that reference or are inspired
by H. P. Lovecraft's work (and the wider Cthulhu Mythos) and are set, or could be set, within his fictional universe.
[Dark Intruder - poster]
2.001: Dark Intruder (Harvey Hart, USA. 1965)
Tagline: He killed with the power of demons a million years old!
Initially the pilot for a failed television series called The Black Cloak it was (apparently?) deemed too scary and violent for mid-sixties television so was released theatrically as a B-Movie creature-feature for drive-ins. It was written by Barré Lyndon and produced by Jack Laird (who would later write, direct or produce more Lovecraftian shows in the television series Rod Serling's Night Gallery - see 1.05 and 1.06 above and 2.03 below).
Set in San-Francisco in 1890 it stars Leslie Nielsen as Brett Kingsford, an independently wealthy expert on the occult who gets called in by the police to help them solve a series of brutal and ritualistic murders carried out by a clawed and bestial black-cloaked cultist. Kingsford investigates with the aid of his dwarf assistant Nikola (Charles Boldender) and an old Chinese curio dealer, Chi Zang (Peter Brocco).
Though its an ancient Sumerian demon cult that seems to be involved in the murder plot - comparison is made to the cult-like worship of the old gods Dagon and Azathoth (both Lovecraft creations), and later - towards the end - the old-one Nyogtha (one of the additions to the Cthulhu Mythos made by Lovecraft's colleague Henry Kuttner) is invoked by the sorcerous villain.
Runtime: 59 min - B&W - English.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 5/10 (Mediocre) - typically cheesy 60s TV-Show genre mystery piece that's just entertaining enough to be watchable.
Buy Dark Intruder on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.com
Buy Dark Intruder on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.co.uk
2.002: The Shuttered Room (David Greene, UK. 1967)
AKA: Blood Island
On the small island of Dunwich off the coast of Massachusetts, a series of horrific murders within the isolated community there seems to be connected to someone, or something, that inhabits an old mill house. A moderatley effective British movie with Oliver Reed, Gig Young and Carol Lynley. Based on a short story of the same name by August Derleth, one of his so-called "posthumous collaborations" with H. P. Lovecraft.
2.003: Professor Peabody's Last Lecture (Jerrold Freedman, USA. 1971)
Segment 4, Episode 8, Season 2 of Rod Serling's Nignt Gallery TV series.
A humorous short telecast written and produced by Jack Laird in which the good professor (Carl Reiner), after lecturing his students about the folly of ancient religious cults - including Cthulhu and other "Old Ones", unwisely decides to read a-loud a passage from the Necronomicon. Possibly the first time Cthulhu's name appeared on national (USA) television.
The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, USA. 1981)
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 8/10 (Very Good) -
Gramma (Bradford May, USA. 1985)
Segment 1, Episode 18, Season 1 of The Twilight Zone (1985 Revival) TV series - based on the short story of the same name by Stephen King that is heavily indebted to H. P. Lovecraft's story The Thing on the Doorstep.
Forever Evil (Roger Evans, USA. 1987)
The Evil Dead II (Sam Raimi, USA. 1987)
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 9/10 (Extremely Good) - massively entertaining and scary
Army of Darkness (Sam Raimi, USA. 1992)
AKA: Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness | Army of Darkness: The Medieval Dead
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 8/10 (Very Good) -
Cthulhu Wore Tennis Shoes (Lesley Matheson, USA. 1996)
A five minute short in which, at a meeting of a college society, a student is lured by the offer of free pizza into becoming a human sacrifice to the Great Old Ones.
Out of Mind: The Stories of H.P. Lovecraft (Raymond Saint-Jean, Canada. 1998)
A 56 minute TV movie in which, haunted by disturbing dreams from an inherited book, a young man becomes interested in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Incorporates a few of Lovecraft's characters, storylines, and Lovecraft himself - played wonderfully by Christopher Heyerdahl. Recommended.
Between the Stars (Djie Han Thung, Netherlands. 1998)
Short film inspired by a fragment from an incomplete H. P. Lovecraft story.
Mystery of the Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (Yoshitaka Makino & Hideki Takayama, Japan. 1999)
AKA: Kuro no dansho
hentai animation
Rough Magik (Jamie Payne, UK. 2000)
The Hapless Antiquarian (Anthony Penta, USA. 2001)
Unknown Beyond (Ivan Zuccon, Italy. 2001)
AKA: Maelstrom - Il figlio dell'altrove
Corpse-O-Rama (Vince D'Amato, Canada. 2001)
the third story of four, Six Shots at Dawn, in this portmanteau features Herbert West, Re-Animator.
The Attic Expeditions (Jeremy Kasten, USA. 2001)
AKA: Horror in the Attic
Content Warning: features full frontal nudity and sex scenes, some brutal bloody violence, gore and drug use.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 7/10 (Good) -
The Yellow Sign (Aaron Vanek, USA. 2001)
based on the short story by Robert W. Chambers
Beyond Re-Animator (Brian Yuzna, Spain. 2003)
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 6/10 (Pretty Good) -
Ryleh (Mikael Genachte-Le Bail & Gaetan Boutet, France. 2003)
3D animated short
Marebito (Takashi Shimizu, Japan. 2004)
Angry and Moist: An Undead Chronicle (James Raynor, UK. 2004)
Necronomicon (Ulas Bozkurt, Turkey. 2004)
Innsmouth Legacy (Edward Martin III, USA. 2004)
H.P. Lovecraft - Ipotesi di un viaggio in Italia (Federico Greco & Roberto Leggio, Italy. 2004)
AKA: H.P. Lovecraft's Road to L. | H.P. Lovecraft - Possibility of a trip to Italy (English translation)
a mockumentary
The Cthulhu Chronicles: The Ropes (Jayson Argento, USA. 2004)
Read Me a Story (Bret Mix & Craig Mullins, USA. 2005)
ReCreation (Edward Martin III, USA. 2005)
Experiment 17 (Christian Matzke, USA. 2005)
The Dead Inside (Brian Clement, Canada. 2005)
Call of Tutu (Aaron Vanek, USA. 2006)
The Horror of H.P. Lovecraft (Various (11), USA. 2006)
AKA: LovecraCked! The Movie (original title)
Tagline: The truth is out there... we're just not entirely sure where.
The Miskatonic Acid Test (Rob Mackenzie, USA. 2006)
Kammaren (Robert P. Olsson, Sweden. 2007)
AKA: A Legend Told (USA)
Come to Us (Edward Martin III, USA. 2007)
Dark Paradox (Brian Clement, Canada. 2007)
Primevil (Mike Turner, USA. 2007)
Re-Animator: 1942 (Gary Fierro & Justin Tacchi, USA. 2008)
Beyond the Dunwich Horror (Richard Griffin, USA. 2008)
Tomb with a View (Craig Mullins, USA. 2008)
Dirt Dauber (Steve Daniels, USA. 2009)
The Necronomicon (Joseph Nanni, Canada. 2009)
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu (Henry Saine, USA. 2009)
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 5/10 (Mediocre) -
The Seventh Shadow (Brian Clement, Canada. 2009)
Elder Sign (Joseph Nanni, Canada. 2009)
The Last Battleground (Sonny Fernandez, USA. 2010)
Three Shadows (Ansel Faraj, USA. 2010)
a portmanteau of three stories - the final of which is an adaptation of Derleth's The Shuttered Room
The Valdemar Legacy (José Luis Alemán, Spain. 2010)
AKA: La Herencia Valdemar
Fyren (Robert P. Olsson, Sweden. 2010)
The Valdemar Legacy II: The Forbidden Shadow (José Luis Alemán, Spain. 2010)
AKA: La Herencia Valdemar II: La Sombra Prohibida (Spain)
The Island (Nathan Fisher, USA. 2010)
Tähdet Ovat Väärin (Tapio Ranta-Aho, Finland. 2010)
AKA: The Stars Are Not Right (literal translation)
A Fish Called Martha or: Who's Really Afraid of H. P. Lovecraft Anyway? (Debora Roventini, USA. 2010)
Waiting Fear (Jason Janes, USA. 2010)
A Dead Girl's Toys (Jim D. Fuller, USA. 2010)
Hunters of the Dark (Ansel Faraj, USA. 2011)
Call of Nature (Rick Tillman, USA. 2011)
AKA: H. P. Lovecraft's Call of Nature
Ethereal Chrysalis (Syl Disjonk, Canada. 2011)
Black Goat (Joseph Nanni, Canada. 2011)
Demon's Play (Jim D. Fuller, USA. 2011)
A Cosmic Kiss Goodnight (Jim D. Fuller, USA. 2012)
In Between (José Luis Martínez Díaz, Spain. 2012)
Night Gaunts (Daniel Ferguson & Matthew Ferguson, UK. 2012)
Subb Niggurath (Roberto Julio Alamo & Guillermo García Insa, Spain. 2013)
The Deep Ones (Simo Paulakoski, Sweden. 2013)
The Night-Gaunts (Domiziano Cristopharo & Adam Rehmeier, USA/Italy. 2013)
Invectum (Adam-Gabriel Belley-Cote & Francis Fortin, Canada. 2013)
Cthulhu's Witnesses (John Hidalgo, USA. 2013)
Short comedy horror mockumentary following three evangelicals as they spread the word about the slumbering Great Old One.
Footage Found, Arabi (Mike Lyddon, USA. 2013)
Curse of the Necronomicon (Sam Pearson, Australia. 2013)
Miskatonic University (James Bentley, USA. 2014)
Call Girl of Cthulhu (Chris LaMartina, USA. 2014)
Content Warning: dark humour and over the top bloody violence, some nudity and sexual scenes - includes a giant mutated penis so... be ready for that.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 3/10 (Bad) - hackneyed writing, bad acting and some atrocious special effects... still kinda fun though.
The Deep End (Daniel Johansson, Sweden. 2014)
Arkham Sanitarium: Soul Eater (Julian Grant, USA. 2014)
Callgirl of Cthulhu (Emily Schooley, Canada. 2014)
Escape from Midwich Valley (Pierre-Henri Debies, France. 2014)
Short film concerned with a home-coming to Innsmouth.
Naming the Unnameable (Edward Martin III, USA. 2014)
Short film in which two cultists realise that to bring their plans to fruition they must first name the unnameable.
NightScape (Leonel Ortega-Valdez, USA. 2015)
The Last Case of August T. Harrison (Ansel Faraj, USA. 2015)
Innsmouth (Izzy Lee, USA. 2015)
An 11 min short inspired by various tales by Lovecraft.
The Stranger Who Came from the Deep (Rubén Arnaiz, Spain. 2015)
A 15 min short.
Sandra Munt's Adventure (Rubén Arnaiz, Spain. 2016)
AKA: Weird Stories | Sandra Munt
A short half hour TV Movie. Spain, 1934. Sandra Munt and her friend Elsa travel the world in search of a mysterious and mystical book. But the two friends will face the Nazis, a secret society and a Mysterious Stranger, emerging from her past.
[The Void Poster]
The Void (Steven Kostanski & Jeremy Gillespie, Canada. 2016/2017)
Taglines: A New Dimension in Evil | There is a Hell. This is worse
Originally crowd-funded on Indiegogo this horror, mystery, sci-fi homage to classic pre-CGI creature features, especially those of John Carpenter, has loads of allusions to various Lovecraft tropes including strange cultists, reanimated dead, alien evils older than time and weird portals to regions beyond the stars. First shown at the 2016 Fantastic Fest and then later at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. It was given a wider theatrical release in 2017.
James (Evan Stern) flees from an isolated farmhouse and escapes into the woods. A screaming woman tries to follow James, but she is shot and callously set on fire by Vincent (Daniel Fathers) and his mute son Simon (Mik Byskov), both of whom also came out of the farmhouse. A short time later Deputy Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) comes across a bloody and incoherent James crawling down a rural road and delivers him to the nearest medical facility; a half-burned-out, understaffed hospital which is soon to close - and also happens to be where the good Deputy's estranged wife Allison (Kathleen Munroe) works as a nurse. The only other staff at the hospital are Doctor Powell (Kenneth Welsh), Nurse Beverly (Stephanie Belding) and intern Kim (Ellen Wong). In the waiting room is an old man, Ben (James Millington), with his heavily pregnant granddaughter Maggie (Grace Munro) and, in one of the rooms, there is a young patient called Cliff (Matt Kennedy).
The hospital descends rapidly into chaos as Beverly seemingly goes crazy, pealing her own skin off and killing Cliff, forcing Deputy Carter to shoot her dead. A State Trooper (Art Hindle) then arrives, investigating an apparent occult mass murder back at the farmhouse, looking for James. Strange, otherworldly horns then sound ominously and the hospital is surrounded by hooded, knife wielding, cultists seemingly intent on making sure that no one leaves alive - just as Vincent and Simon burst into the hospital, also on the hunt for James.
Things just get stranger, more weird and more violent from there on in, so prepare yourself for a gruesome roller-coaster ride to a place far worse than hell itself as Deputy Carter tries to make sense of what is happening. All while sorting the good guys from the bad, dealing with in-fighting, more murders, unusual visions, the dead that will not lay and the sanity defying appearances of hideous slithering entities and other cosmic horrors... oh, and don't forget the cultists.
Content Warning: very violent, with plenty of blood and gore - enough even for the most ardent fan of grotesque body-horror.
Runtime: 90 min - Colour - English.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 7.5/10 (Good to Very Good) - a great attempt at a good old-fashioned (80s) style practical-effects driven action packed horror. A bit weak regards characters and dialogue but a very entertaining and bloody slice of creepy and intense Lovecraftian shenanigans none the less.
Buy The Void on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.com
Buy The Void on DVD or Blu-ray at Amazon.co.uk
---
Sound of the Deep (Joonas Allonen/Antti Laakso, Finland. 2017)
Short movie inspired by the stories of Lovecraft and set aboard an Arctic research vessel that picks up a strange underwater sound.
Skuggan över Innfyr (Simo Paulakoski, Sweden. 2017)
Short movie inspired by the stories of Lovecraft. AKA Into the Town of Madness.
Markham (Matthew Cooper, UK. 2020)
Low budget indie movie inspired by The Shadow Over Innsmouth and others. A man struggles to survive a night filled with strange and deadly occurrences in a small fishing village in the north of England.
Underwater (William Eubank, USA. 2020)
Big budget claustrophobic sci-fi action survival horror movie that follows a group of workers on a drilling facility at the bottom of the ocean who encounter hostile creatures after an earthquake destroys the facility. The unnamed antagonistic creatures are inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos, featuring what appear to be Deep Ones and what might actually be Cthulhu.
The Deep Ones (Chad Ferrin, USA. 2020)
Another indie movie inspired by The Shadow Over Innsmouth and others. A married couple rents a beach side AirBNB only to be surrounded by peculiar neighbors and occurrences, and are soon in the grips of a mysterious cult and an ancient sea god.
----
3: Movies & TV influenced by Lovecraft & the Cthulhu Mythos
A chronological list of film and television shows that depict or reference H. P. Lovecraft and/or his creations, but aren't set within his fictional universe.
Dark Shadows, Episodes 886-990 (???, USA. 1969/70)
This long-running day-time TV Gothic horror soap-opera, largely about vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), incorporated a storyline commonly known as "The Leviathans" which was inspired by various elements of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Equinox (Dennis Muren & Jack Woods, USA. 1970)
A (supposedly) Lovecraft influenced schlock-fest about four teens getting more than they bargained for while going for a picnic in the woods. They encounter in turn; a gibbering old man in a cave who gives them an ancient tome full of evil knowledge only ever referred to as The Book, a professor driven mad by his occult dabbling carried out after reading The Book, and a demonic ranger called Asmodeus (Jack Woods) who's determined to get possession of The Book with the aid of a succession of hideous monsters he's either conjured into being or transformed himself into.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 1/10 (Extremely Bad) - inept story, awful acting and terrible dialogue - but it does have some surprisingly sophisticated stop-motion creature effects considering how bad everything else was.
The Island of the Fishmen (Sergio Martino, Italy. 1979)
AKA: L'isola degli uomini pesce (Italy) | Island of Mutations (UK) | Screamers
Apparently inspired by The Shadow Over Innsmouth among others this ropey exploitation genre flick has an heroic doctor shipwrecked on a volcanic island with escaped convicts, a mad scientist, a despicable English bad-guy, voodoo practising natives, a beautiful damsel in distress and (of course) a bunch of mutated fish-men... add to that a hoard of sunken treasure and the lost city of Atlantis - and you pretty much have a genre fan's very guilty pleasure.
Content Warning: as well as general violence there is some animal abuse depicted... and I don't mean just against the fishmen.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 6/10 (Pretty Good) - its not a good movie by any stretch but it is an enjoyable one and Richard Johnson's unabashed relish at playing the villain of the piece alone raises it above and beyond its ropey B-movie standards.
City of the Living Dead (Lucio Fulci, Italy. 1980)
A reporter and a psychic race to close the Gates of Hell in the town of Dunwich after the suicide of a clergyman caused them to open, allowing the dead to rise from their graves. Taking only a vague inspiration from Lovecraft. The Lovecraftian's Rating: 3/10 (Bad) - A weakly plotted and directed gore-fest that at least manages some atmosphere.
The Beyond (Lucio Fulci, Italy. 1981)
A young woman inherits an old hotel in Louisiana where, following a series of supernatural "accidents", she learns that the building was built over one of the entrances to Hell. Although uncredited, the IMDB claims the film is inspired by Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. The Lovecraftian's Rating: 4/10 (Pretty Bad) - probably the best of Fulci's three supposedly Lovecraftian inspired movies.
The House by the Cemetery (Lucio Fulci, Italy. 1981)
A New England home is the focus for a series of murders. Unbeknownst to the latest occupants, there's a gruesome secret hiding in the basement. Another Fulci movie alleged to be influenced by Lovecraft's fiction. The Lovecraftian's Rating: 3/10 (Bad) - eventually delivers plenty of gore but is lacking everywhere else.
The Collect Call of Cthulhu (Dan Aykroyd & Harold Ramis, USA. 1987)
Episode 32, Season 2 of the animated TV series The Real Ghost Busters. It references the Necronomicon and features an attempt to revive the so-called "Cathulhu," described as one of the "Great Old Ones". Lovecraft is also mentioned by name.
Cast a Deadly Spell (Martin Campbell, USA. 1991)
A TV Movie set in Los Angeles 1948 this film-noir style detective story takes place in an alternate reality where magic is real and it's practise is becoming commonplace. H Philip Lovecraft (Fred Ward) is a private investigator who refuses to use magic in a world increasingly over run with it. He's hired by the rich and powerful Amos Hackshaw (David Warren) to track down the Necronomicon that was stolen from him by a young chauffeur he fired for having carnal desires for his virginal 16 year-old daughter - or so he feared.
Content Warning: has some sexual references and a few bloody scenes.
Runtime: 96 min - Colour - English
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 5/10 (Mediocre) - nice idea that's quite fun but has too little meat on its bones to raise it above the pedestrian. Could be made a lot more fun with the use of a drinking game while watching - down a shot (of your choice) with every Lovecraft reference made (warning - there are quite a few so you should be pretty merry by the end).
Buy Cast a Deadly Spell on DVD or VHS at Amazon.com
Buy Cast a Deadly Spell on DVD or VHS at Amazon.co.uk
Cthulhu Mansion (Juan Piquer Simón, Spain/UK. 1992)
AKA: La mansión de los Cthulhu (SPA). A group of drug dealing petty criminals fleeing from the police take a magician and his daughter hostage; but once they reach his mansion, all hell breaks loose. Supposedly inspired by the works of Lovecraft, but any link to his work is tenuous at best.
Dark Waters (Mariano Baino, Russia/Italy/UK. 1993)
AKA: Dead Waters (USA) | Temnye vody/Темные воды (Russia)
Witch Hunt (Paul Schrader, USA. 1994)
Tagline: It's a new kind of evil, as old as time.
TV movie follow-up to Cast a Deadly Spell (see above) with a bigger budget and a bigger star - Dennis Hopper takes over the reins as a magic averse Private Detective, H Philip Lovecraft, in a world where magic has become commonplace. Set in 1950s Hollywood this murder mystery tale is lost among a load of heavy handed substituting of the McCarthy era anti-communism scare with an anti-magic-user scare leading to a more literal kind of witch-hunt... hence the title.
Content Warning: has a nude scene... and a particularly bad attempt at an Irish (we're guessing - it could be Jamaican!?) accent by Julian Sands that just might make your ears bleed.
Runtime: 100 min - Colour - English
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 3/10 (Bad) - even Dennis Hopper and Julian Sands can't save this lame sequel. It has even less meat on the bone than (and is no where near as fun as) the first one. The bigger budget must have been spent on the stars for it certainly wasn't spent on the script or the special effects. Employing the drinking game suggested for Cast a Deadly Spell might make this one a bit more palatable... but not sure even that would save it.
Buy Witch Hunt on VHS at Amazon.com
Buy Witch Hunt on VHS at Amazon.co.uk
In the Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter, USA. 1995)
Content Warning: watching this movie may remove your grasp on reality and blow your mind entirely... oh, and there's quite a lot of bloody and gruesome violence too.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 9/10 (Extremely Good) - as close to a Lovecraftian's wet dream as you're probably going to get.
Calls for Cthulhu (Brand Gamblin, USA. 1996)
Ten minute video short. While awaiting the time when the stars are right, Cthulhu takes your calls. Features Tori Spelling, of all people.
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (Maxwell Atoms, USA. 2003-2007)
An animated TY series from the Cartoon Network. The season 1 episode Big Trouble in Billy's Basement featured Yog-Sothoth and the season 5 episode Prank Call of Cthulhu featured, you guessed it Cthulhu.
Shadows in the Garden (Wayne Spitzer, USA. 2002)
Justice League (Butch Lukic & Dan Riba, USA. 2001-2004)
An animated TY series in which Cthulhu/Old Ones are referenced in 2 episodes from Season 2 in 2003.
The Halfway House (Kenneth J. Hall, USA. 2004)
Hellboy (Guillermo del Toro, USA. 2004)
As with Mike Mignola's comic books from which the movie was adapted, this big-budget special-effects extravaganza was (in part) inspired by the writings of Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. It features a version of the Great Old Ones - many eyed and tentacled demonic cyclopean entities - called the "Ogdru Jahad" which slumber in a trans-dimensional cosmic hell/prison waiting to return and claim dominion of the Earth. There is a reference to the Cthulhu Mythos grimoire De Vermis Mysteriis that describes the Ogdru Jahad in a quote supposedly from the 87th page; "In the coldest regions of space, the monstrous entities Ogdru Jahad - the Seven Gods of Chaos - slumber in their crystal prison, waiting to reclaim Earth... and burn the heavens." In its trivia section for this movie the IMDB reports that the Sammael creatures have characteristics reminiscent of both Nyarlathotep and Cthulhu but does not elaborate.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 9/10 (Extremely Good) -
The Strange Case of H.P. Lovecraft (Mad Martian, USA. 2004)
Late Bloomer (Craig William Macneill, USA. 2004)
The Mountains of Madness (Danielle de Picciotto & Alexander Hacke, USA. 2006)
Lovecraft's Pillow (Mark Steensland, USA. 2006)
Beyond Lovesauce (Colin Burrowes & Heidi Burrowes, Canada. 2007)
The Tomb (Ulli Lommel, USA. 2007)
Casting Call of Cthulhu (Joseph Nanni, Canada. 2008)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Guillermo del Toro, USA. 2008)
Not nearly as Lovecraftian as the first Hellboy movie but it does have cameo appearances by some Elder Things in the Bureau for Paranormal Research & Defense Headquarters and in the Troll Market.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 9/10 (Extremely Good) -
The Sea Beast (Paul Ziller, USA. 2008)
AKA: Troglodyte (original title)
The Sea Beasts in this TV-Movie are based on the Deep Ones created by Lovecraft.
Eye See Food (Mars Homeworld, USA. 2009)
The Lovecraft Chronicles Volume 1 (John Johnson, USA. 2010)
South Park: Season 14 (Trey Parker, USA. 2010)
Episodes 11, 12 and 13 feature Cthulhu as a character and along with the sunken city of R'lyeh many references to the Cthulhu Mythos are made.
Living with Lovecraft (Todd Doldersum, Canada. 2011)
Let it Bleed (John F. Showalter, USA. 2011)
This Episode (#21 in Season 6) of the TV series Supernatural posits that H. P. Lovecraft (Peter Ciuffa) and six others performed a ritual to pierce the veil between worlds, opening a door into "Purgatory" on March 10, 1937, causing a creature to come through which would go on to kill Lovecraft five days later. In season 7, it becomes clear that the "Old Ones" of the Cthulhu Mythos are in fact Leviathans - the first beings created by God - which He locked into Purgatory so that they would not be a threat to his later creations.
Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard, USA. 2011)
In amongst the countless horror and wierd fiction cliches, tropes and rip-offs present in this derivative post-modern meta-fest there are numerous Lovecraft inspired references. Written by Joss Whedon, this movie is no where near as clever as he thinks it is. I can't really recommend it.
An Evil Within (John F. Showalter, USA. 2012)
This Episode (#2 in Season 4) of the TV series Warehouse 13 involves the hunt for the artefact H. P. Lovecraft's Silver Key - Anyone who touches the key will be seen as a horrific, Lovecraftian monster by anyone who looks upon them within the next few moments.
Dirigible Days (James Bragado, USA. 2012)
A TV mini-series depicting a steampunk adventure involving the Cult of Cthulhu and set in an alternate reality nearly 1,000 years after a catastrophe transformed the surface of Earth and raised floating sky lands.
Nyaruko: Crawling with Love (????, Japan. 2012-2013)
Comedy anime television series based on the light novels by Manta Aisora.
True Detective - Season One (Cary Joji Fukunaga, USA. 2014)
The TV series makes various references to The Yellow King, the cult of Hastur, the mysterious city of Carcosa and has (debatable) manifestations of The Yellow Sign - especially early on, when the promise of Lovecraftian shenanigans was high, but this promise soon dissipated as the over long tale disappointingly descended into a rather typical TV-detectives-hunting-a-serial-killer affair.
The Lovecraftian's Rating: 6/10 (Pretty Good) -
The Untamed (Amat Escalante, Mexico. 2016)
This is a film that features an explicit tentacle sex monster, so be warned. It wears its various Lovecraftian influences on its stylish and well filmed sleeve.
Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom (Sean Patrick O'Reilly, USA. 2016)
Children's animated feature about the young Lovecraft being transported into an unspeakable other-realm full of unpronouncable terrors.
Lovecraft Country (Misha Green, USA. 2020)
Dissapointing HBO TV series based on Matt Ruff's excelent book of the same name. Full of references to Lovecraft and his fiction, aswell as alluding to the idea that some of his literary creations might have their origins in fact.
----
- 4: Documentaries about Lovecraft and his Works -
A chronological list of documentaries about H. P. Lovecraft - his life, his work and his influence.
Favourite Haunts: A Journey Thro’ H.P. Lovecraft’s Providence (William K. Desjardins, USA. 1990)
I Am Providence: A Story of H.P. Lovecraft and His City (Agnieszka Taborska and Marcin Giżycki, Poland. 1997)
The Case of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (Patrick Mario Bernard, USA. 1998)
The Eldritch Influence: The Life, Vision and Phenomenon of H.P. Lovecraft (Shawn Owens, USA. 2004)
Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (Frank H. Woodward, USA. 2009)
Skräckministeriet: Det inre monstret (???, Sweden. 2009)
AKA: Ministry of Horror: The Inner Monster (English translation)
The Shadows Out of Time (???, Poland. 2012)
a TV movie (documentary?) tribute to the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft
--------------------
- The Lovecraftian -
The Lovecraftian: purveyor of all the latest news, updates, chatter and trends from the field of Lovecraft lore - the man, his works and his weird worlds of Yog-Sothothery.
Stay up-to-date by following The Lovecraftian on Twitter!
Also: Check out The Lovecraftian Herald, an online newspaper concerning all things Lovecraftian. Published daily - please subscribe to stay updated.
The Adventures of The Lovecraftian:
The Lovecraftian often takes his studies into the field... join his adventurous expeditions into the world of Lovecraft by following him on Twitter where fact and fiction become entwined!
He is currently exploring the fabled city of R'lyeh aboard his Deep-Sea Bathysphere "Nemo" in the depths of the South Pacific.
--------------------
The Lovecraftian is published free online by the 451 ePublishing Haus.
If you have enjoyed this website, or found it useful, please consider making a Donation. It will be gratefully recieved and very much appreciated.
--------------------
The Lovecraftian on Twitter
--------------------
You can stay up to date with all Harbinger451 online projects and digital products by subscribing to the Blog, following us on Twitter or just 'Like' our Facebook Page.
Please read our Privacy Policy
Link to us!
--------------------
|