MU Podcast 035 – 7th Ed Postmortem

Post by **Keeper Dan** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 12:29 am

Since the original "Who Goes There?" was published two years after Mountains of Madness was published, it's possible there was some level of inspiration. I think it's mostly limited to the environment though, as there are very little actual elements apart from those that are related to living in arctic climates that carry over.
I wouldn't even connect the shoggoth with the alien in Who Goes There as direct, since their behavior is quite different even though they share shapelessness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Goes_There%3F
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Mo ... of_Madness

trevlix · Post by **trevlix** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 12:44 pm

This is very interesting - I always thought The Thing was an homage in part to The Thing from Another World, but it looks like its more a conglomeration from a number of sources.

Dr. Gerard · Post by **Dr. Gerard** » Tue Jul 16, 2013 5:31 pm

I'm a big Dario Argento fan, too -- I can't say I'm a completionist since I've only seen two, Suspiria and Tenebrae, but they're among my top b-movie choices. I also love the band that did a lot of scores for those movies, Goblin. I hear there's actually a scenario in Blood Brothers II that emulates the genre, and would love to run it with fans of that strange world.

Since we're catching a load of shite for the movies we DIDN'T mention in this episode, I thought I'd paste the whole list of films I wrote out for discussion notes during the taping. Again, there were so many that it seemed insane to start mentioning ALL of the films influenced by Lovecraft, instead of focusing on adaptations. For the freaking record, (I'm staring right at Jon when I say) CARPENTER'S THE THING IS ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVORITE MOVIES EVER.

Here's a cut-paste of my short list, with categories:

Movies that ignited my horror obsession:

The Shining
Halloween
The Omen
The Exorcist
JC's The Thing
Alien
The Other
The Changeling
Ghost Story
A Clockwork Orange (Well, it horrified me as a kid. I inherited an LP of the score when I was 7, and played it over and over while making monsters out of LEGOs.)
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Them
The Blob
Altered States (The one and only time Ken Russel scared me. And really, it was just the image of a crucified goat-man with spider eyes.)
Hellraiser
The Fly (original)
The Fly (80s remake)
Angry Red Planet
Nosferatu
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Directors who truly freak me out:

David Lynch: (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead)
Lars Von Trier (Dancer in the Dark, Dogville)
David Cronenberg (Scanners, Naked Lunch, Existenz)
Harmony Korine (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy)
Jan Svankmajer (Alice, Little Otik)
Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream)
John Carpenter (The Thing, The Fog)

Surreal/ Dark Comedy (for me, often scarier than pure horror):

Parents (with Randy Quaid)
Dead Girl (horribly disturbing, probably because of blatant misogyny)
Delicatessen
Dogville
Orphan
The Audition
Man Bites Dog
Pan’s Labyrinth
Boxing Helena (Another misogyny warning here. Not supporting it, just saying it disturbs me deeply.)
Donnie Darko
Uzumaki

Animation:

Little Otik
Anything by The Brothers Quay
Tetsuo

Sleepers to mention:

Let the Right One In
Moon
The Ruins
Die Monster Die (actually an HPL adaptation, but I want to mention it again)
My Winnipeg
30 Days of Night (Maybe not a sleeper, but I have to put it somewhere.)
The Hands of Orlac (Is amazing. Go find it.)

Movies in which the director seems out of control, and undermines the paradoxical feeling of safety that the horror genre usually relies on:

Night of the Living Dead
Last House on the Left
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
House of 10,000 Corpses (Rob Zombie)
Blair Witch Project (Shut up haters, I think part of its strength is in its amateur mistakes.)

A shout out to The Good Friends of Jackson Alias for covering this topic first. Their episodes on horror films and television made me want to rise to the challenge -- but any perceived mimicry is purely coincidental.

R.J. MacReady · Post by **R.J. MacReady** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 4:38 am

Lots of good stuff on that list Dr. Gerard. As for Argento I'd highly recommend watching "Bird with the Crystal Plumage" and "Deep Red" - his two best in imho.

Carpenter's "The Thing" is definitely my favorite horror film of all time. That being said, one that's a close second is Georges Franju's "Eyes WIthout a Face." Such a freakin' masterpiece and one that you'll never forget after viewing once. I usually describe it as if Charles Addams was a stoic French filmmaker, he would have made "Eyes WIthout a Face." Criterion put out a great version if it on DVD a few years ago. It's definitely worth picking up. In fact Barnes and Noble is having their fantastic annual 50% off Criterion DVDs and Blu-rays till the end of the month I believe. Be warned though, I managed to talk myself into ordering DVDs from it the other day that I really can't afford...but both "Repo Man" and "Wages of Fear" on Blu-ray, for $40! How could I not buy them?!? (see how easy it is).

Citysliker · Post by **Citysliker** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 8:37 am

Just finished the podcast guys and as always, very informative and entertaining.

One point to note (and I apologise if this has been covered elsewhere) is the communication post Kickstarter completion.

Having backed a few different projects in this method I can't stress enough how important regular news and communication is to me regarding companies who have my money.

An example of an excellent exponent of this is Elite Dangerous http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/146 ... -dangerous

The steady stream of different levels of news and information to the community is exceptional and keeps the backers involved and on-side.

Not speaking to your backers during the development process is a sure fire way to piss everyone off and destroy any future support for the products or Kickstarter projects.

So far it has been fairly quiet from 7thEd team, the exception being the great interview you had.

Fingers crossed they do commit to and provide a fortnightly e-mail update.

WiseWolf · Post by **WiseWolf** » Thu Jul 25, 2013 12:03 am

I haven't finish the show, but going through the list and films that you talked about, I am surprised no one has mentioned Moore's short film.

http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/32048 ... d-in-full/

Jimmy's end.

It is not lovecraftian movie per se, but I am not sure if we can say that of a film that Alan Moore created.

fox01313 · Post by **fox01313** » Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:55 pm

As I've been catching up through the backlog, like others, listening to this podcast drove me in a mix between crazy on some of the things not mentioned & wanting to take my horror movie library & gathering everyone one at MU together to see them in some theater we decide to take over.

Cannot recommend more on Out of Mind or any of the other in the H.P. Lovecraft Collections from Lurker Films. All the short films are quite good & some are positively haunting. Out of Mind though is quite peculiar in how it is a love letter to the Lovecraftian mythos, Randolph Carter & H.P. Lovecraft

Out of Mind collection Vol 3 trailer

delightfully animated version of From Beyond by Michael Granberry

Been a little while since seeing Castle Freak & it's okay for a monster movie but not really that Lovecraftian, the Hellboy films are quite fun with some Lovecraft touches to them, & another slightly Lovecraftian one that's crazy fun is Event Horizon (where a space ship comes back from somewhere & pretty much a fun little ghost story done with a sci-fi setting)

Event Horizon trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVlnER8SxfQ
**

Four non-Lovecraftian movies that would have fit well in his stories also recommended (also highly recommended just to watch the trailer if that but go into these 4 as unknowing as possible as the trailers could spoil things a little but they do such a good job with the atmosphere in these):

Night of the Demon (avoid the US release of Curse of the Demon, look for Night as it's somewhat longer & better)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5qqUSTkrho

Prince of Darkness - where scientists are called in to explain the unknown & ancient
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVEC-fslvGQ

Wicker Man (1973) - though it might fit more in something Arthur Machen would have written
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21gb49H-Uo4

Dead & Buried - Dan O'Bannon was highly influenced from Lovecraft's work & the dvd version of this I have has the best quote from Dan O'Bannon about Lovecraft (below) about this movie of a mysterious town of where things aren't what they seem to be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAL-a4jxYZI

“You see here’s the thing, fear, fear is a sensitizing emotion, if you think about it, it’s obvious that the function of an animal, organism, a human being is in danger it’s survival value is in becoming really aware of where any threat might be coming from. Fear sensitizes you, your perceptions, your thoughts, you entire awareness and so if you frighten an audience they become momentarily more sensitive to everything in the film and the story, and that’s one of the things that make Lovecraft’s stories have such impact. Lovecraft simply isn’t a catalogue of slimy frog monsters, and he’s very good at creating an atmosphere of building fear, and by the time Lovecraft gets you good & scared that’s when he starts to spring some of his cosmic ideas about the nature of the universe, the place of man in the universe, is there a god, is there not, the scale of the universe; and I guess his core idea is that out there somewhere things are different than they are over here. If you hit someone with this on the first page it won’t mean much, but once you get the person frightened they become sensitized to anything and specifically they become sensitized to the story they’re reading, the book they’re seeing."

"Atmosphere is extremely important to horror movies- the old house, the dark woods. I mean a horror movie which does not have a good atmosphere which the mood & setting are bland is almost ineffective, it’s well known that atmosphere is important but nobody really knows why, the atmosphere is not there to support the fear, the fear is there because the writer really wants to write about is the atmosphere and he wants the reader or the filmmaker or audience to be sensitive to these old houses and old woods that he loves so much. If you’re not afraid, it’s just a travelogue; if you’re afraid it becomes a magic wood, a magic house. This is something that I figured out about 15 years ago when I was contemplating a patch of woods and wondering why I enjoy the old woods in a horror story so much, that’s when it struck me, when you are afraid you are sensitized, I loved the old woods but unless you’ve got me frightened they’re just a bunch of trees."

-Dan O’Bannon (Dead & Buried featurette on creating fear)

Dr. Gerard · Post by **Dr. Gerard** » Tue Oct 22, 2013 12:58 am

Great stuff! I love that version of From Beyond.

zombiemaster · Post by **zombiemaster** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 9:01 pm

Now, I don't know if the people who made this film claim any direct influence to HPL, but it's such a Mythos movie.

Under the Mountain
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1275861/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1