Tuesday, March 05, 2002

The Movie I Watched Last Night IX
Sunday: Lurker in the Lobby: The Best of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival Vol. 1
These 10 short independent films ad music videos are all based on or inspired by the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft. While most of them draw on the same BBC-styled production values and the more generic, plodding elements of most Lovecraft-inspired work, there are some bright spots. John Strysik's "The Music of Erich Zann" is perhaps the best work on the tape, aptly casting Zann and featuring an adequately fidgety soundtrack. Aaron Vanek and Andrew Hooks' two attempts to adapt "The Outsider" are cliched and cartoony, as id Ted Purvis' still impressively panoramic "McLaren." About midway, the tape improves. The sloppily overdubbed "From Beyond" features some deadpan dialogue but an interesting concept, paving the way nicely for Anthony Reed's "The Hound," which, while not as well done as Strysik's film, comes closer to capturing the iconography and suspense of Lovecraft's writing. Then the fun begins. The UCLA Enigma Sci-Fi Club offers an amateurish but ably sarcastic look at the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu movement in its "Cthulhu Wore Tennis Shoes." And the Lovecraftian heavy metal band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets throws in two music videos, which end the festival with energy and humor. The videos also show the range of approaches people take to Lovecraftian film. "Worship Me Like a God" incorporates Lovecraft's cultic, savage, and insane side, while "Color Me Green" riffs on the imagery while making fun of the process, a la the fruit loop segment. A fun, if not slightly slow and stilted collection of short films made in the '90s.

What are you watching?

No comments: