The Call of Cthulhu

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!

The Innocents

THE INNOCENTS rises or falls on Deborah Kerr's performance. Her role requires earnestness, thoughtfulness, conviction, courage, and perhaps a touch of madness. If she can pull it off, the movie is a winner. Unfortunately, she can't.

Kerr harrumphs, goggles, and screams her way through the picture. She so distanced me from the action that my greatest fear was that she'd tire of chewing the scenery, chew her way through my screen, and go for my throat. The movie looks great; its children are perfect; it sounds wonderful; and it has a snappy script. If only they'd hired a better actress, they could've had a classic on their hands.

Wilde

WILDE is a well done movie, but it's painful to watch.

Have you ever had a friend who fell in love with the worst possible person in the world? Have you seen that friend's life spiral downward and downward, while all you can do is sit on the sidelines and lament? WILDE is like that. The movie follows Oscar Wilde from a time shortly before he realizes his homosexuality through the apogee of his fame and into his precipitous decline. It's a sad, desperate story, made all the more so because the Oscar Wilde we see here is so damn likeable, in spite of his neglect for his family and his poor choice in lovers.
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A question: I have a co-worker who wrote her thesis on Oscar Wilde. Is this movie accurate enough for me to engage her in semi-informed manner on her area of interest?
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Oscar Wilde note #1: Back when I was substitute teaching in a college English Department, I covered a freshman class whose assignment had been _The Importance of Being Earnest_. When I asked them what they thought of the play, I got all these answers about its commentary on the social and political issues of its day. My response: "Yeah ... but did you think it was funny?" The students were dumbfounded.

Oscar Wilde note #2: I read "The Selfish Giant," which is referenced in the film, to my boy a couple of months ago. When I finished, he asked me why I was crying. "It's just so beautiful," I replied. What a perfect little story.

Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms

HELLBOY ANIMATED: SWORD OF STORMS is much better than I thought it would be. I only rented the thing out of loyalty to the characters, and I expected a cheap, direct-to-DVD knockoff. What a pleasant surprise to find an involving story, solid animation, excellent voice acting, and an all-around great experience.

If you're already a Hellboy fan, read no further and be assured that you'll enjoy a film that hews to the style of the comics. If you aren't familiar with the character, here's a bit of background. In the waning days of WWII, Hitler's occult advisor tries the last-ditch tactic of summonig a demon from Hell to aid in the fight. When American forces break through at the culmination of the ceremony, they find cutest li'l baby demon you ever did see. They name him Hellboy, raise him to be a good guy, and put him to work in the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, or BPRD (Motto: Things really do go bump in the night. We're the ones who bump back.). Hellboy's a gruff manchild, still living in the equivalent of his parents' basement, and his solution to most problems involves significant amounts of blunt force trauma. He's a great character. He's nearly indestructible, so he can face the most horrific of creatures with little more than a deadpan, "Oh, crap." He carries his massive upper torso and Fist of Clobberin' around on spindly little goat legs and delicate hooves, making him simultaneously imposing and amusing. And he hangs out with a gill man and a firestarter. What's not to like?

In HASS, the BPRD sends Hellboy to Japan to investigate the theft of a legendary sword. Before he knows it, the demon gets sucked into the Japanese equivalent of Faerie, where he must undertake a quest that gives him and us, the audience, a tour through some of the scarier tales of Japanese folklore. As Hellboy uses the amazing power of blunt force trauma to survive in this world, his pals in the BPRD must deal with the real-world repercussions of his actions and figure a way to get him back.

It's a solid setup, and one that goes right for a variety of reasons. First, HASS, as do the comics, boasts a love for folklore and an ability to introduce the audience to new legends with a light and entertaining touch. Second, the animation style resembles Hellboy creator Mike Mignola's comics, creating a continuity with the printed page and inviting us into the greater world of the character. Third, the voice acting (largely by the cast of the not-as-good live action HELLBOY movie) sells the picture. Genre stalwart Ron Perlman voices Hellboy as I always imagined the character; Selma Blair does fine, if necessarily whiny, work as Liz the firestarter; and Doug Jones gives Abe Sapien, the gill man, a different and successful spin than did live-action voice actor David Hyde Pierce.

HASS is fun. It's funny, scary, and thoroughly entertaining, and it provides a wonderful introduction to the world of Japanese folklore. What more could you want?

Stranger Than Fiction

STRANGER THAN FICTION is like a cream puff. It looks like there's some food there, but once you sink your teeth in, you find little to chew on.

The movie begins promisingly. Will Ferrell begins his day to the charming narration of Emma Thompson's voice and with attractive computer graphics surrounding him and illustrating his mind and world. The hook comes early, as Ferrell hears the narrator's voice and, appropriately, freaks out.

The rest of the movie concerns Ferrell's growing realization that he's a character in a story and his reactions to that realization. STRANGER THAN FICTION handles the concept as well as did Neil Gaiman's 1602 and better than Stephen King's last "Gunslinger" novel, helping us believe in a world in which a character can both believe he is in a story and interact with his creator in a meaningful way. It's by turns comic and tragic, and it achieves a compelling sense of sadness and grace. STRANGER THAN FICTION captured my imagination and touched my heart. While watching it, I loved it.

But you know how some movies get better with time? This is not one of them. STRANGER THAN FICTION's resolution is unsatisfying and its lessons trite. Its love story feels unnatural and its people heightened to unreality. It just plain breaks down upon further analysis.

It's too bad, really. That was one delicious-looking cream puff.

Mad Monster Party

MAD MONSTER PARTY (1967) is a stop-motion picture picture with a vaudevillian's philosophy: if you don't like the current joke, don't worry - there's another coming right on its heels.

Here's the setup: Dr. Frankenstein is having all the best monsters (Dracula, the Wolf Man, Phyllis Diller) over to the castle for a bash. Like any good party, this one is a hotbed of machiavellian maneuvering, cynical doublecrossing, and animated-skeleton rock bands ripping off the Beatles.

It's cute, it's inventive, & my kid loves it as much as I did when I was five. What more could you ask for?