The weather improved on the second day of the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, with sunny skies fighting against the autumn chill in the air.
I walked into the Hollywood Theater a bit late, as I was up at 5 am for work, and brewed a container of green tea to drink during the afternoon. As I was too late to make the Riffing on Lovecraft panel, I stopped to talk with the people manning the Guerrilla Production booth.
Guerrilla Productions have released several Lovecraft inspired DVDs, including an animated version (or, more accurately, "motion-still sequencing") of The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath. But they are in "prolonged preproduction" for their biggest film yet, an adaptation of The Temple, Lovecraft's tale of the lone survivor on a crippled German U-Boat who finds a massive underwater temple.
Edward Martin III said the company has the cooperation of the US Navy and will be filming on the Blueback, a Barbel class submarine moored at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The first round of casting calls are done and now the company is planning out the extensive miniature work needed to bring the tale to life.
If you are interested in what Guerrilla has in store, or would like to get involved, check out their Facebook Page for casting and crew call announcements and more information on their projects. Also, Edward has started an online horror magazine called Blinkspace, with stories he's written for people at the Lovecraft film festival. You can check out his work at the Blinkspace website.
I left the vendor's area to get a seat for the Cosmic Horror panel, but discovered that I'd misread the schedule and was over a half hour late. But I was able to catch some of the advice Caitlín R. Kiernan was discussing with the audience. She talked about trying to keep the "Other" as faceless, thus as scary, as possible. "One you give it a face," she said, "you can mock it." One panel member brought up the catnip Cthulhu toys for sale at the vendor's market, bringing a chuckle from everyone in the auditorium.
One panelist brought up Threshold, Kiernan's novel that many feel was her first venture into cosmic horror. The panelist mentioning he'd thought the main character would die, but she was able to survive, and wondered if it was cheating to let a character survive such an encounter. Kiernan replied, "It's not a cheat to let your character survive. It is a cheat to allow your character to survive unchanged." As the panel discussed the many shapes such a change could take, Kiernan mentioned that, "One of the changes can be self-annihilation."
After the panel, Kiernan was kind enough to give me a few moments of her time to talk about the festival and her works. She said she doesn't like conventions and is very selective about where she appears. But she was having a wonderful time at the Lovecraft Fest and enjoying what little she could of Portland, finding the city, "beautifully lush."
Kiernan said she read her first Lovecraft book in high school. "I was 17 and I found an old Arkham House book on the school bus," she said. "But I didn't read him again until the 80's (when she was in college)."
I asked about her paleontology background and what prompted her to get into fiction writing. "It was back and forth," she said, describing how she would focus on one, then the other, before choosing to write full time. "While it will always be a part of me, I can't be both," she said. Her novel Threshold was her expression of that side of her personality. She added that she was shocked at the comparison of her novel to the cosmic horror writings of Lovecraft, but gradually opened up to the idea.
I asked her if she felt any pressure after her first novel, Silk, drew such acclaim. She said she was behind on her current novel, as she felt The Red Tree was her best work yet and added, "I have a constant fear of slipping back."
I thanked her for her time and as I headed down to the theater's main floor, she mentioned that she found the ramp leading down to the main floor, "…creepy. There's a gravity well or something." I thought about that as I went down and as the ramp curves to the right, you feel the urge to drift into the wall. Strangely appropriate for a Lovecraft festival.
Having not eaten since lunch, I decided to make a run to the local brewpub for a quick dinner of nachos and a pint. Then it was back to the theater for the screening of Primal, a 2010 Australian horror film. I saw the preview online and it looked pretty good. But trailers had fooled me before, and this one was no exception.
Just a quick warning, this review is rather spoiler heavy. But I think most horror fans will know what's going to happen in the movie, as the script is rather clichéd and the preview shows you the film's climax. But an uninspired script is the least of this film's problems.
The film opens with brief introduction centuries ago, letting us know something evil lives in this rain forest. After the opening credits we catch up with a group of six college students taking a trek to study cave paintings. I have to give the scriptwriter credit here, as the traditional third wheel isn't present. We've got an equal number of guys and gals, which is about the only original part of the movie. Otherwise, the characters are straight out of the Horror Screenwriting Handbook. We have Anja, our survival girl, her boyfriend, the slutty girl and her beau, and two others that are just there, with no real personalities or back stories. Guess who gets eaten first.
Presented with a shortcut though a cave, Anja elects to take the long way around with the car. It seems she was the prisoner of a lunatic when she was younger, and being locked in his basement induced severe claustrophobia. It's not that she didn't try getting through the cave, but she faints before getting in very far and cuts her hand. It appears that's just what the evil force needed, some coed to bleed all over the floor of it's cave and awaken it. Nice going, Anja, I'm sure your friends will thank you later.
But the monster is a slow riser, and everyone makes it through the passage intact to a beautiful jungle setting. They find the cave paintings, but can't seem to tell if it's a warning or not. Trust me, it is, and I'm not someone who's studying ancient paintings. One of the gals (the "slutty" one) goes for a swim and ends up covered with leeches. The parasites are cohorts with the thing in the cave, and soon she is running a fever and sprouting sharp new teeth. Oh yea, she's very hungry and isn't too picky on what (or who) she eats.
The remaining group is trapped, as some mutated bugs with a taste for rubber have disabled their car. With their numbers dwindling and the infection spreading, it's only a matter of time before traveling back through the cave becomes their only choice. But it's not much of a choice. It appears that the mutated girl has been eating the top half of her victims and tossing the lower half to the thing in the cave. And the girl from the bland couple hasn't been eaten (her boyfriend was), but was impregnated by the cave dweller. So it's not just hungry, but also looking to extend its bloodline.
This movie has several major flaws traced back to the script. To start, Anja's claustrophobia is just a reason for her not wanted to go into the cave. But the movie didn't need to give Anja such a deep backstory. Delving into the cause of her phobia would be important to the story if the problem involved a slasher or some other human lunatic. But as their attacker is less homo sapien and more rabid weasel, adding it to the script seems like padding. The events at the end of the movie could be seen as a connection to her past, but her back flashes give no real details, so it's a stretch to see any dramatic payoff the script might have tried to achieve.
As for the mutated humans, their teeth are similar to the vampires in 30 Days of Night, but elongated to the point of impracticality. Really, it looks like the slutty girl would puncture her lips if she tried biting into anything. Aside from the mouthful of enameled 12 penny nails, she still looks pretty human. You'd think if something mutated a human by pushing their teeth out of their gums, it would cause more changes to their mouth, or the rest of their face.
If the problems were just shabby monsters and some fuzzy story telling, one could forgive the movie and just enjoy the mayhem. But it's hard to be forgiving when some of the dialog induces howls of laughter at the most inappropriate times. My favorite example is when the slutty girl/monster's boyfriend is trying to convince the others that she's just sick, that she could be cured. Never mind that he's shouting this out in a very unconvincing manner - but she's chowing down intestines in plain view. One can get a sense that the filmmakers were trying to generate some empathy for the guy, his disbelief that his girlfriend would be so monstrous that killing her might be the only hope for survival. But either the actor's overly hysterical delivery, or simple bad writing, had most of the audience laughing during the scene, which is not a good thing for a horror film.
(BIG SPOILER ALERT! Yes, I ruin the ending. So if my review thus far hasn't persuaded you to give this one a pass, go watch it, then come back and finish reading. But if you saw the trailer, you have an idea of what's coming.)
Now, a cool monster might have earned this film some goodwill. But this CGI creature is the worst beast to grace the screen since The Dunwich Horror remake. Basically a fat grub with tentacles, it just looks horribly fake as it pins Anja to the ground and delivers a few pelvic shattering thrusts before remembering to remove the pants first. But don't expect a replay of Galaxy of Terror, because we still need a final showdown between Anja and the slutty girl, who pissed her off earlier in the film.
It's the last line of the film that ticked me off. Now, the good old "C-word" has its place, but it's use just before the credits rolled seemed callous and unnecessary, not to mention out of place.
The film delivers one cringe worthy moment, but the rest just didn't work for me. Director Josh Reed failed to deliver any chills from the clichéd script and the movie wasn't outlandish enough to be cheesy fun. I can't say it's the worst movie I've seen at the Lovecraft Festival (the previously mentioned Dunwich Horror remake holds that title), but it's a solid runner up - 1.5 out of 5, if I had to give it a rating.
Next up was the Howie Award, given to a person whose work helps keep the spirit of Lovecraft's work alive. This time, the Howie was presented to the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which produces merchandise, radio plays and even movies promoting Lovecraft's work.
The most ambitious work from the society was 2005's The Call of Cthulhu, a 47-minute silent version of Lovecraft's most famous tale. After receiving the Howie, members of the society presented a brief clip and a trailer (watch it here) of their latest film, a full-length version of The Whisperer in Darkness, which should overshadow their earlier production.
As with their previous film, Whisperer is filmed in the cinematic style of the story's publication date. This allowed the filmmakers to experiment with sound, as the story was published in Weird Tales in August of 1931. And the society tried to stay true to the time period, leading to an amusing story of finding the proper can of Ovaltine to match the early 30's.
The society members admitted that some liberties are taken with the original story, as is the case with most feature length versions of Lovecraft's work. And they hope to find a distributor and get the film a limited, art house release next year. I hope this happens, as the trailer looked terrific on the big screen.
To bring the night to a hysterical finish, the festival offered up the legendary submission of several years back, Dreams from the Witch House. I've heard about this short, which is so outrageous that few who've seen it can't adequately describe it.
Well, I don't think any words will do justice to how funny this short ends up being. Not that the filmmakers didn't sink their hearts into the work, but when Brown Jenkin is portrayed by a ferret, and the Wicked Witch of the West is haunting the student's room, it's hard not to chuckle. Throw in some subpar acting, primitive visual effects and horrid writing, and the theater spent most of the screening roaring with laughter.
With the festival closing down for the evening, I headed down to Tony Starlight's, a nearby jazz watering hole that opened their doors to a flood of Lovecraft fans. Starlight's tailored their menu to appeal to the crowd. With drinks like 'The Huckleberry Lemonade of Randolph Carter' and 'The Twisted Tentacle', and food like 'Fried Deep Ones' and 'At the Eggplant of Madness', everyone settled in for a slide show of past festivals and members of the original Lurkers
reminiscing about their past festival experiences. It was fun, but rather bittersweet, as 
tomorrow would be the end of this wonderful Portland tradition.
After a couple of Twisted Tentacles, and thanks to a 22-hour day, I had to head for home before Tony Starlight's started closing down. I hoped that a night's sleep might be enough to carry through to the festival's finale, but it turned out I would need a bit of help to make it to the end.
Next: On writing horror proves fruitful, while what horror editors want remains unknown. Stuart Gordon introduces Dagon, Adrienne Barbeau plays a zombie victim, girls gone wild battle El Monstro Del Mar and the last acts of Re-Animator, The Musical proves some things are best left unsung. And I have my first cup of coffee in over a decade. Yikes!
