DAGON

“Dagon” is mostly based on another of Lovecraft’s short stories, being about 65% “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” The remainder is 5% “Dagon” and 30% miscellaneous ideas (mostly mutant fish person incest).

Review Snippet:
Personally, I’d have taken one look at the locals and decided they were either inbreds, fish mutants, or both (inbred fish mutants). In addition to being spooky in the conversation department, the people of Imboca have pale, clammy-looking skin, bizarre webbing between their fingers, and they never blink. Weirdo freakos, man. Them not blinking is a rather nice touch, even if it looks like the effect was accomplished by the actors wearing uncomfortable contact inserts. The villagers also tend to wander around with rusty knives and farming implements. The only place I have ever been that is scarier than Imboca is West Virginia.

Ah, West Virginia, where the people outnumber the teeth.

Lesson Learned:
Fish got nards.

Well, somebody has to post the lamest article of the roundtable–and ‘somebody’ is usually me, so I might as well embrace it. It’s a poor workman who blames his tools, but crimminy, I can only hope I end up with something a bit meatier next time than Full Moon’s epically mediocre Lurking Fear. It’s not doing Lovecraft any favors either, believe me.

DIE, MONSTER, DIE! (1965)

In which Howard Phillips Lovecraft receives full screen credit for the very first time…and really wishes he hadn’t.

Stephen Reinhart, an American, travels to Arkham, England, at the invitation of his girlfriend’s mother. He arrives to finds Susan’s family in the grip of a strange force, which has blighted the surrounding countryside and brought illness and death to the Witley household.

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Could this force be:

(a) Radiation?
(b) Unspeakable evil from beyond?
(c) The family chickens coming home to roost?
(d) All of the above?

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YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE:  Unfortunately, due to some organisational issues, the screeners for The Whisperer In The Darkness have not reached the relevant parties in time for this Roundtable. However, when they do arrive, the film will be reviewed, and you will be notified here as usual. So, as they say, please watch this space.

Here’s a blast from the past that still holds up.  RAWR!!!

Dragonslayer (1981)

Yeah, my roundtable contribution this time around is, shall we say, a marginal example.

Cabiria (1914), in which you never can tell which aspect of a movie is going to give rise to a major pop-culture phenomenon…

Evilution (2007), in which we see that when zombies are involved, good old-fashioned overkill might occasionally be better than the more nuanced approaches favored by modern militaries…

100 Monsters (1968), in which a singularly peculiar attempt at gentrification faces a singularly peculiar form of neighborhood activism…

The Shuttered Room (1967), in which David Greene and D. B. Ledrov appropriately treat their “collaboration” with August Derleth about the same way that Derleth treated his “collaborations” with H. P. Lovecraft…

and…

Transatlantic Tunnel (1935), in which some people apparently can’t tell when a job is more than difficult enough already.
 
 
 

THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963)

In which the first ever adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story goes out into the cinematic world disguised as something else: faux-Poe.

In the village of Arkham, Joseph Curwen, suspected of trying bring the Elder Gods back into this universe by mating them with human females, is dragged out of his house and burned to death by an enraged mob. He dies cursing the village and all those who have had a hand in his death.

One hundred and ten years later, Curwen’s great-great-grandson, Charles Dexter Ward, arrives with his wife, Ann, to look over the Arkham property he has just inherited. In rapid succession, he ignores (1) a frightened coachman, (2) hostile townspeople, and (3) a mutated girl.

I think it’s fair to say he deserves what he gets…