Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn. --HP Lovecraft
A couple of years ago, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society scraped together $50,000 and set out to film THE CALL OF CTHULHU, an inherently unfilmable story and a central tale in Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos. The movie, made to look like a poorly preserved print of a 1920s silent picture, is wildly, wonderfully, weirdly successful. I loved, loved, loved THE CALL OF CTHULHU.
Here's the setup: a lunatic hands a bundle of papers to his psychiatrist, pleading with the doctor to burn these files on Cthulu. Why is this patient insane? What is Cthulu? Strap yourselves in for a great forty minutes of finding out, gang, because THE CALL OF CTHULHU is imaginative, audacious, and scary fun.
The movie overcomes its budgetary limitations by embracing them. Can't afford to fly the crew out to an island to shoot a key scene? Build a cardboard island that looks like something out of the THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. Can't afford a CGI monster? Nothing's scarier than papier mache and stop-motion, if executed with confidence. Need a ship for your climax at sea? Hey, a cheap model and some painted sheets will do just fine - it is black and white, after all, and sometimes graininess can be an asset.
Speaking of graininess, the movie is created in something called mythoscope. It's a just-plain-great idea, and it makes the picture really look like something that's been sitting in a warehouse for 80 years. There are hairs in projection frame, spotting and strobing, and the kind of inconsistencies in print quality that are familiar to any silent film aficionado. The process gives the whole thing a wonderful sense of antiquity and lends immediacy to the proceedings onscreen.
$50,000, a warehouse, and audacity. Apparently, that's all it takes to make a terrific picture these days. Good for the folks at HPLHS!
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