Hey Cthulhu!

I've been some what familiar with the Cthulhu mythos for awhile and have two collections of Lovecraft's short stories. Embarrassingly, I've only read one and a half of them (Dagon and At the Mountains of Madness). So I took the easy way out I decided to watch, not read, Lovecraft's most iconic work, The Call of Cthulhu. I saw it at Amazon for a scant fifteen dollars with a five star rating and immediately picked it up.

Made by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, it's more like a short only totaling 47 minutes because well it's based off of a short story. There's no need to take some classic and draw it out a la King Kong (seriously nearly three and a half hours, come on). But what's really neat is that this lovely crafted short (sorry) is all silent. Yes, a silent film made in 2005. I did a double take when I first read that myself. Silent films are great, but it's just not common to see it now, what with sound being invented since then.

Many of the techniques used do try to give an old feel to it. You've got stop motion animation, cardboard sets, grainy video quality, the works. Only in a few times can you tell this movie is actually new. Sometimes it's clear the filmmakers used a green screen in certain scenes and the actors' movements are a bit too smooth for an older film. These are only minor complaints and to its credit the movie claims it uses mythoscope, a combination of new and old methods.

Still this movie was a treat to watch. All of the actors here give very sincere performances; again it is a silent film so that's pretty crucial. Coupled with the eerie score, the mood just feels like Lovecraft tale. That seems to be the general opinion on rottentomatoes.

Still for 47 spectacular minutes it would seem that The Call of Cthulhu is over-priced, but that's not taking into account the extras. It has the standard movie trailer (see below) and deleted material, yet the real deal is in the half hour behind-the-scenes documentary, nearly as long as the film. It has interviews from the actors, producers, and the director. Most interesting is the labor that went into some of the special effects. The swamp scene for instance was meticulously created as a miniature model. The colors themselves were off but the end result is very convincing. And for courtesy of all of the Lovecraft fans the DVD comes in 24 different languages for the intertitles. Good to know the Polish aren't forgotten this time.

Be sure to check out the awesome Cthulhu Lives site for more info. Also the Wikipedia entry is a good read for those who don't know their Lovecraft (thanks for reading anyway).