• Directed by Andrew Leman
• Written by Sean Branney, based on the story by H.P. Lovecraft
• Starring
  • Matt Foyer
  • Ralph Lucas
  • David Mersault
  • Noah Wagner
  • Patrick O’Day
• Produced by Sean Branney and Andrew Leman

Like it or not, “The Call of Cthulhu” is the Big Kahuna in the Lovecraft canon. It lends its name (or the name of the titular Great Old One) to the mythology within and around Lovecraft’s stories, and from there out into role-playing games, stuffed toys, and political bumpers stickers which may have been amusing the first time around. One could very legitimately argue that “The Call of Cthulhu” is neither Lovecraft’s best story nor his most representative one (for instance, it contains none of his frequent “Don’t breed with THAT!” themes); nonetheless, as the poster child for his work and reputation, it would take a lot of chutzpah to attempt to adapt it to film, especially given the spectacularly less-than-successful previous attempts to translate other of Lovecraft’s works to the screen.

To the degree that this adaptation succeeds, then, that success comes largely from the additional idea which motivated the project. Why not make “The Call of Cthulhu” as a silent film, supposedly contemporary to the story’s 1927 composition date? The concept alone is absolutely brilliant; when I first heard it, I had an “I wish I had thought of that!” moment of rare magnitude. Lovecraft works best “straight” in period, anyway, when the antique era for which he had such an affinity was recent history with a gloss of modernism still wet over the top.

The eldritch elevator opened, and someone — or something — had farted!

Beyond simply the brilliant conceit of the adaptation, though, there are several necessary criteria by which this movie succeeds or fails:

1) Does it successfully adapt the story? “The Call of Cthulhu” easily ranks as one of the least-easily filmed stories Lovecraft ever wrote, in that the protagonist is a man who pieces together the clues of a monstrous reality from the documentary evidence supplied by the people who had actual adventures. Our hero, in effect, does nothing but read, and never encounters the horrors of which the story attests. Can such a tale be told with the visual immediacy of cinema — and more, can such a verbose tale be conveyed with the relative paucity of words necessary for a silent film?

2) Does it successfully mimic the silent movies of the early 20th century? It takes more than simply leaching the color from footage and adding a few title cards to recreate the cinema of a hundred years ago. There were visual tropes and cinematic shorthands which are not “greater” or “lesser” than those in use today so much as simply exhibiting a different sense of style; do the filmmakers acknowledge those stylistic choices beyond the blunt technical hallmarks of silent film?

3) Does it do both in a way which is accessible to the 21st-century viewer? In an age in which too many movie viewers would turn up their noses at even a black-and-white movie, I would hope that the target audience of Lovecraft aficionados would generally be more sophisticated and broad in their acceptance of film styles. But even then, how many of them have seen much silent film outside of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton comedies, and perhaps a viewing of The Phantom of the Opera? To translate the short story into an accurate recreation of silent cinema is admirable, but if the result is too far removed from the movie-going experiences of the modern viewer, the translation will have been into a dead language.

“FILM REVIEWER GOES INSANE AFTER ONSLAUGHT OF BAD MOVIES”

With all of that as a far too lengthy preamble, then, let’s take a look at the film itself:

The final product is remarkably faithful to the structure and storyline of Lovecraft’s original. (By the way, I am going to assume that you are at least passingly familiar with the story in question; if not, do yourself a favor and read it here at your leisure.) The only major concession to the medium is in having our nameless protagonist (Matt Foyer, listed as “The Man” in the credits) framing the story to a doctor in a sanitarium rather than simply writing out an account; the man recounts the death of his academic uncle and his discovery as executor of a cache of documents on the “Cthulhu Cult,” the recounting of which takes up a large part of the running time. Likewise, the only major concession to budgetary restrictions is in the crew of the Emma finding the ship Alert adrift and empty at sea, rather than battling and overpowering her hostile crew; open combat between two ships simply wasn’t going to happen here. Other than that, the only real casualty is of thousands of adjectives which go unused.

Within the bounds of that faithfulness, then, how effective is the adaptation? I’ve been rereading the Lovecraft stories prior to watching the movies that draw from them, and in this case, I rather wish I hadn’t, to be better able to gauge the ability of the film to convey the story to a viewer without the text recently refreshed in his memory. Any lacunae in storytelling on screen were filled in by my knowledge of the story. So… hmm. On the other hand, it’s probably a valid assumption that the clear majority of any audience for this movie is already a Lovecraft fan, and thus is expecting a film which retells a known story rather than one that tells it afresh.

Oogah-chakka! Oogah-oogah-oogah-chakka!

The movie is probably weakest in its attempts to recreate the stylings of an early 20th-century silent film, though this is really where the lion’s share of the effort was spent, simply because such a task is a lot harder than it looks. Title cards are used judiciously, makeup styles are designed with monochrome in mind, and there are actually some sly nods to then-contemporary film styles (the alien geometry which informs the miniatures of the city of R’lyeh owe more than a little bit to the crazy angles used in German Expressionist sets). However, in my admittedly fractional knowledge of silent film, it seems to me that motion in narrative was conveyed more often with static shots edited together rather than through mobile camera work. Here, though, some of the most striking images are conveyed in smooth pans and dollies, which seem far too modern (as opposed to Modern). And here’s one of the most bizarre complaints: The video footage is too clear. There are some obvious concessions to the look of old film, with some artificial scratch lines and a persistent hair flickering in the frame, but otherwise the images are far sharper than one should normally expect from the filmstock of the first few decades of the movie industry. And it’s not just a question of looking better than most prints should look; directors of the time knew the technical issues which could degrade their vision: print quality and degradation, poor focus and other projectionist errors, etc. Thus, those old movies were shot with the worst-case presentation in mind, and tried to compensate for potential problems in making their shots foolproof, intelligible even in fuzzy projection and scuffed prints. That kind of thinking isn’t present here; these filmmakers, quite naturally, shot and edited their movie with the expectation that it would eventually be seen exactly as they wanted it to be. It’s a subtle and subjective difference in mindset, and most people wouldn’t even be able to articulate exactly how it alters and affects the final product, but the difference it makes still keeps this movie from perfectly imitating the old silents at a very fundamental level.

Antiques Roadshow: Old Ones Edition

All of which leads to the third question: Given that the audience for this picture is not that of the original silent films, but one whose knowledge of those early movies is tempered by a lifetime absorbing far more recent media, how does this modern film in an antique style come across to modern viewers?

And the answer is… not too shabbily at all. Within the constraints of staying as true as possible to Lovecraft’s original text, it both portrays and dramatizes the events thereof with a certain level of skill, and if it does not perfectly disguise itself as a believable silent movie, it nevertheless disguises the microscopic budget on which it was made, and gives no indication that any facet of production was determined or curtailed by cash on hand… With one technical exception.

And this exception is a big stumbling block as it tests the viewer’s suspension of disbelief. The miniatures which stand in for the ocean vessels and the risen city of R’lyeh are nicely designed, but when in motion, they look like toys. Is it not possible to overcrank a digital camera? Whatever the technical hurdle, the constant cutting in climactic scenes between live actors and miniatures that look distinctly miniature robs the most tense scenes of a lot of their impact. And then to have a stop-motion Cthulhu in those very same scenes… One could argue, of course, that any stop-motion would indeed been authentically shaky or awkward in the decade before King Kong (1933); but still, to see that technique introduced suddenly in the final ten minutes of the film, contrasting with the superior clarity and smoothness of motion of the live video footage, is jarring. I wish that the filmmakers had decided to go with rod puppetry or some other practical technique.

Great Cthulhu and his noodly appendages.

Having complained far too much, though, I should point out the considerable strengths in this adaptation, both large and small. The most striking scene is the Louisiana cult orgy, in which the green-screen layering of groups of extras on the miniature swamp set creates a period look whose impact is enhanced, rather that diminished, by the sense of unreality. The musical score is terrific, deftly supporting and enhancing the visuals without calling undue attention to itself. In an interesting twist, the three separate Cthulhu figurines we see are crafted in disparate styles, reflecting the divergent ethnic origins of their crafters (the one discovered among the Esquimaux cult, for example, is carved from an ivory tusk). And all through, the filmmakers find small but important ways to render the details of Lovecraft’s text, whether it be a quick location shoot in Rhode Island merely to get the exterior of the Fleur-de-Lys Building, or the clever dramatization of an crewman on R’lyeh “swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse.”

So echoing my earlier comment (because I love structural symmetry in my writing) that the success of the project is directly proportional to the degree to which it carries out its central conceit, your appreciation and enjoyment of it will be in direct proportion to the regard you have for Lovecraft’s text, and your respect for the ingenuity and passion which motivated and informed the film production.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 9
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 4
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Barry Lynch (“Prof. Webb”) played “Ensign Stefan DeSeve” in the TNG episode “Face of the Enemy” (plus voice work in several of the video games)