Necronomicon (1993)

(aka, Necronomicon: Book of Dead)

Honorable Mention

It helps if you remember that several filmmakers tried to make Lovecraft films before the Eighties.

Despite the fact that Lovecraft wrote his stories back in the Twenties and Thirties, it wasn’t until the Sixties that his works finally reached the general audience. While there had been an attempt to film some of his stories in the late-Sixties and Seventies (most notably The Haunted Palace; Die, Monster, Die; and The Dunwich Horror) it wasn’t until the Eighties and Re-Animator that HPL really took off in the movies.

Not that Stuart Gordon’s wild little splatter comedy had that much to do with the original stories.

It did, however, lead to a lot of other new Lovecraftian films revolving around gore, icky effects and gross-out moments.

While Stuart Gordon usually gets the credit for Re-Animator’s success, a lot of the credit should go to his producer, Brian Yuzna, who would produce Gordon’s next few films as well — the ones everyone thinks are his best — before going on to a solid writing and directing career of his own.

He’d already worked on quite a few films before he produced Necronomicon, an anthology film based on several of Lovecraft’s stories. Each of the three main stories had a separate director, with Brian Yuzna directing both the wraparound introduction (“The Library”) featuring H.P. Lovecraft himself, and the final story.

It starts with Lovecraft, played by Re-Animator’s Jeffrey Combs, visiting a small specialist library to get his hands on the Necronomicon. He finds his way into its secret hiding place, and starts reading. The three main stories are supposed to be the tales he finds, although, ironically, they all take place at a far later date!

Christophe Gans, who would go on to direct such extravagant films as Crying Freeman and The Brotherhood of the Wolf, directed the first segment, “The Drowned.” It involves a man who lost his wife who inherits a decrepit old hotel with an unhealthy reputation.  In its library, he finds a tale about a previous owner of the house who brought his wife and child back to life. This story does not appear to be based directly on any Lovecraft story although some of the themes and ideas are familiar. Despite the common theme of bringing people back from the dead, the two parts of the story take the idea in such different directions that I suspect Gans combined two separate stories (and I’ll confess that the two do seem vaguely familiar, but I’m not familiar enough with the Lovecraft canon to identify them). It is by far the best-looking sequence in the film, with a great set of locations and a lot of interesting camera work.

And it has the most outrageous and best realized monster in the entire film.

Shûsuke Kaneko, who would go on to direct the incredible Heisei era Gamera Trilogy, took the reins for the second story, “The Cold.” It adapts one of Lovecraft’s lesser known short stories, “Cool Air,” although the film adds a rather curious romantic subplot: A young woman takes up residence in the house of a mysterious doctor played by David Warner, where a huge, old air conditioner runs constantly and occasionally leaks ammonia. However, she starts getting very curious about some of the strange things she sees and hears…

Unfortunately, Albert Pyun’s take on the story was far better, although I realize that I like his film more than most critics have. The settings here are not particularly interesting, and to me, the story doesn’t seem as well realized. The main part of this segment’s story supposedly took place decades before its framing story, but the world — not even the fashions or vehicles, or one of the major characters — does not appear to have changed in that time.

However, it does end with the most outrageous effects sequence in the entire film, which is extremely gross and yet absolutely amazing.

Yuzna helms the final segment, “Whispers,” which I eventually recognized as based on the story “Whisperer in Darkness,” although it has been changed almost beyond recognition. A young policewoman and her partner (with whom she is romantically involved) chase a notorious serial killer to an old building, but when they crash, he drags her partner away. She descends into the depths of the building to find him, with the help of a very suspicious resident, but she is not ready for what she finds…

Other critics have called “Whispers” the strongest story in the film, but on the whole I wasn’t impressed. The massive changes they made in the story don’t help, nor does it help that it can’t stand a comparison with the far cheaper (but more heartfelt) version created by the HPLHS in 2011. The idea of combining a serial killer and police chase in a story which was originally all about the sense of isolation, dread and uncertainty surrounding its events just doesn’t work. Nor does the big finale — which probably was one of the most expensive sequences in the entire film. It is set in a chamber deep underground with subdued lighting and the creatures hardly stand out against the dull, earthy set of colors of its wall. One is very aware of the fact that the creatures just don’t look very good, they don’t have much personality, nor do they look all that convincing when they do fly.
And that clear plastic dome just looks silly.

Yuzna seems to have had an eye for talent as both Gans and Shûsuke Kaneko would go on to make notable works not long afterwards, although at that point Gans had only directed a single short film, while Kaneko had moved into the mainstream film industry in 1988 after making quite a few films in Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno erotic series less than a decade before. While several of his films had been well received in Japan, he was virtually unknown here.

The project (like a lot of these more ambitious low budget films of the era) got off to a bumpy start, with the

French and Japanese companies funding the production selling the film in their territories but no international distribution. However, New Line Cinema picked the film up, but decided in the end not to release it into the cinemas. Instead, it went straight to video where it did attract a small fan audience.

Both Tom Savini and Screaming Mad George had a hand in the effects and for the most part they are remarkably good. Most of these are clearly practical, and I doubt if there is any CGI (although it isn’t entirely impossible as Prototype X29A pioneered the use of CGI in low budget film just the year before)

Mind you, the flying creatures in the climax of “Whisper” look so bad that I have to wonder whether they were composited in digitally.

Like most Anthology films, the whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts. Ironically, for a dedicated science fiction review site, I have to say that even though it is the only segment which is entirely supernatural (the other two involve aliens and mad science) “The Drowned” is by far the best segment. “The Cold” is a reasonably good if unexciting version of “Cool Air,” while the decision to change “Whispers” into a violent action film is at odds with the creepy payoff.

However, there is one very strange element which leaves me very puzzled: a pregnancy plays a major part in two of the stories, albeit in rather odd ways. What makes this strange is that in neither case do you find the post-Alien, post-Rosemary’s Baby trope of the unborn child as monstrous creature.

Or do you? I honestly don’t know how to read this, nor am I certain exactly what message we’re meant to walk away with.

Very strange.

While I might be inclined to grumble that there is too much splash and spectacle and not enough content (particularly in both “Whispers” and the climax of the wraparound story), on the whole this is a nice piece of Eighties horror which came out a few years too late. Even if it never comes together as a whole, it has a few great moments and some impressive effects. It is a fun little film, which is quite entertaining if you don’t ask too much of it.

And it is better than most of the Lovecraftian horror out there.

Which, yeah, I know isn’t really saying a lot…

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