Back in 1977, East Anglia TV ran a strange and sinister little documentary, detailing their investigation into the disappearance of a number of important scientists. Their search led them deeper and deeper into what looked like a sinister government conspiracy, complete with similar disappearances around the world, hints of connections to NASA, the moonflights, and […]
Read more "Alternative 3 (1977)"Honorable Mention “There are some things man was not meant to adapt to musical theatre…” The finest H.P. Lovecraft adaptation ever made was the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s silent black and white version of The Call of Cthulhu. No questions asked. It took an enormously complex story line, with a series of flashbacks nested one […]
Read more "A Shoggoth on the Roof (2000)"Honorable Mention Over the weekend, I watched two films based on H.P. Lovecraft’s tale, “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” It is, of course, not only one of his best-known tales but also one of his most highly regarded. But of all his stories, it is also quite probably the one which has been adapted most often. […]
Read more "Markham (2020)"(aka, Two Year Vacation) Honorable Mention Of all the wacky and inventive comedies made by Czech master animator, Karel Zeman, I think The Stolen Airship may have been his wackiest and most inventive. And that is saying a lot. Zeman is perhaps best remembered for his film The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, where he […]
Read more "Ukradená vzducholod [The Stolen Airship] 1967"Honorable Mention I once suggested that the Strugatsky Brothers — Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, perhaps the most famous Soviet era science fiction and fantasy writers — might be the most adapted science fiction writers in the world. The truth is that Ray Bradbury probably wins because of all the episodes of his Ray Bradbury Theater […]
Read more "Ponedelnik nachinaetsya v subbotu [Monday Begins on Saturday] (1965)"Honorable Mention It seems to me that Wes Anderson’s films tend to have some element added to them that distances the audience from what is taking place on stage. Framing stories, historical accounts, television reports, narration… The list is long, and it varies from film to film how much it is used. I suppose it […]
Read more "Asteroid City (2023)"(aka Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat; Demons 6: De Profundis) Honorable Mention It is hard to convey just how bizarre this film is. Although, if you’ve seen Luigi Cozzi’s next film, Blood on Melies’ Moon (which he didn’t get around to until 2016) then you’ve got some idea of what to expect. What we’re […]
Read more "The Black Cat [Il gatto nero] (1989)"(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 […]
Read more "Necronomicon (1993)"Honorable Mention As many of you already know, when Universal filmed their version of the classic tale of Dracula back in the early Thirties, they shot a Spanish language version of the film on the same sets after shooting was done for the day. The star of this after-hours version was a Mexican actor named […]
Read more "El misterio del rostro pálido [The Mystery of the Ghastly Face] (1935)"When I was a kid, I looked into the whole story of Nostradamus and his prophecies and rapidly came to the conclusion that it was all a load of utter rubbish. All those vague prophecies could be — and were — construed to mean almost anything, particularly since he declared straight out that he was […]
Read more "Nostradamus (2000)"
rivets on the poster 