Cinematic Interpretations of H. P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space

2012 illustration by Ludvik Skopalik

Written in March, 1927, H. P. Lovecraft's novella, The Colour Out of Space, is a science fiction/horror tale about a meteorite that lands on the Gardner farm near its well. Scientists from Miskatonic University travel to the isolated farm in the Massachusett hills to discover the meteorite has strange qualities and is shrinking. They find a clear globule they pop by accident releasing a color that lies outside the known spectrum. The well becomes infected and the water becomes insidiously poisonous.

Over the next three years, the vegetation around the farm including the animals and eventually even Nahum Gardner, his wife, and his three sons become affected by the residual effects of the Colour.

The Colour appears to be something akin to a living being inimical to terrestrial life and if you wish to read the story in its entirety, it is available here free and legal.

Over the years, there have been a number of attempts to bring the story to the silver screen, some more effective than others.

The first attempt was made in 1965, when Die, Monster, Die, directed by Daniel Haller, was released in both the United States and Great Britain. Starring Boris Karloff, Nick Adams, and Susan Farmer, the plot is based only loosely on Lovecraft's story.

The existing plot point is a radioactive meteorite lands near the mansion of Nahum Witley who discovers it has strange effects on plants and animals. Unwisely bringing it into his house, the residents began to mutate as well with predictable results and all does not end well except the hero managing to escape with Witley's beautiful daughter.

Critics did not have a lot of praise for the film, but it still deserves a fair following from those fans of early horror films, especially fans of Boris Karloff. I personally found the story interesting enough to maintain my attention and the final transformation of Witley was passably horrifying by the level of special effects available during that time period.

The second film to attempt bringing the Color to the big screen was The Curse (1987) starring Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation) and Claude Aikens who plays the role of Nathan Crane, the stand-in for Lovecraft's Nahum Gardner. Unlike Gardner, Crane is a caricature of a religious zealot who exists only to make life miserable for Wheaton's Zack. As the entire family is composed of nothing more than bullying hypocrites, they exist only to die in hideous ways and one could care less.

Still the story is more true to Lovecraft's original story, but in my humble opinion it is not as entertaining as Die, Monster, Die in spite of the latter's shortcomings.

I confess I have no praise at all for Colour From the Dark (2008), an offering from Italian director Ivan Zuccon. This time the color is not an interstellar wanderer but is just something that dwells within the earth and ends up in the family's well. As the color begins to affect the family, crucifixes melt into sludge, and a priest who comes to bless the house meets an untimely end. As one reviewer stated, the story is not so much cosmic horror but a bad retelling of The Exorcist.

The next film to tackle Lovecraft's tale is Die Farbe (The Color). Directed by Huam Vu, I agree with S. T. Joshi that "this is the best Lovecraft film adaption ever made." The decision to set the story in Germany in the 1940s and not Arkham, Massachusetts, and film it in black and white adds to the film and does not detract. The color itself does appear as a pinkish-purple color and the contrast it makes in a black and white film when staring out of the sockets of a skull or appearing above the well is shocking with its contrast.

As of this writing, Die Farbe is available for those who have purchased Amazon Prime and I believe is worth the investment of time.

I must confess a guilty pleasure for last year's offering, The Color Out of Space starring Nicholas Cage and Joely Richardson. Taking place in the modern era, Nahum Gardner (Cage) and his wife, Theresa (Richardson) move to a farm with their three children. Set near Arkham, Massachusetts, the everpresent meteorite crashes near their well and before you know it, insects and plant life begin mutating and Cage does what Cage does best, chewing the scenery as he and his family descend into madness and body horror as the color sucks out their life and vitality. By the bye, Tommy Chong makes an appearance in the film and plays a wonderfully lunatic follower of conspiracy theories.

Though not as thoughtful or as slowly paced as Die Farbe, Richard Stanley straps the viewer in for a wild ride and a wild ride it is. Again, I believe it is well worth the investment of time in spite of its shortcomings and wanderings from the original storyline.

The best news about this moving is that the director has promised that this movie is the first of a trilogy of Lovecraft films, the next one being an adaption of The Dunwich Horror.

I can hardly wait.

Blade Runner 2049: A Review

Let me start out by clearly stating that I very much enjoyed Blade Runner 2049 and it is a worthy sequel to the 1982 film.

I can see why the public has panned Blade Runner 2049 and it is not doing well at the theater:

• The public is tired of dystopia movies.
• The movie is almost three hours long.
• You have to pay careful attention to the plot line as it is rather convoluted with a number of significant red herrings.

However, I very much liked it. I thought the acting top notch, the story was great, and the cinematography was amazing.

The story follows a Blade Runner known only as Joe chasing down a rogue Nexus 8 replicant. This is not a spoiler as it is revealed immediately that Joe himself is a Nexus 9 replicant. In the ensuing investigation, Joe and the LAPD discover a body buried on the property that makes an amazing revelation about the Nexus 8s that changes all that was known about replicants.

I did not like the unnecessary nudity and MILD SPOILER ALERT, I thought the bizarre scene where Joe's holographic girlfriend superimposed herself over a "lady of the evening" was simply silly. (to see the script, hold down the right mouse button and run the cursor over the blackened text)

I was not aware the director of Blade Runner 2049 made three short videos to lay the groundwork for the film. I wish I had seen them before viewing the movie. Be aware these videos are NOT for children and the squeamish as they contains scenes of blood and violence. The films are:

• Black Out 2022 when Nexus 8 replicants create a global EMP in a struggle for freedom.
• 2036: Nexus Dawn is 14 years later when the ban against creating replicants is lifted opening the door for Nexus 9 models that must obey Asimov's Three Laws.
• 2048: Nowhere to Run takes place a year before the film introducing one of the characters that appears in the opening scenes.

Lycan (2017): A Review of One Dog of a Movie

I take no joy in savaging a film because I love movies. I also dislike releasing a review with spoilers, but director Bev Land just stole an hour and a half of my life and I'm not feeling in a generous mood. So, just in case there is somebody reading this who actually wants to watch this travesty, here's my warning:

SPOILERS AHEAD

Here's the plot in a nutshell: Six college students given the assignment to write a paper on revisionist history decide to tackle the hundred year old urban legend of Emily Burt, the "Talbot County Werewolf." So on the weekend before finals when every other college student is living on coffee and Poptarts, our intrepid college students take a horseback ride into the Georgia countryside looking for Burt's grave and end up getting killed by what could probably be a werewolf.

First, let me say what I liked about the film:

• The cinematography is actually quite good, good enough that some scenes could have been used for the Georgia State Board of Tourism.
• Actors Dania Ramirez and Craig Tate do an excellent job with the script they are given.

For the rest of this review, you might want to get a drink and some popcorn. This is going to be a long one.

After the title board tells us it's the year 1986, the movie begins with a sex scene. That in itself is a clear sign that the movie can't deliver as a horror film because it has to throw in titillating filler. The amorous couple are interrupted by something attacking their chickens and dog so they go outside to investigate and are attacked by something unknown and the screen goes black. Did they survive? Will we learn anything more about the couple?

Nope. The couple are never referred to again. It was just pointless opening filler.

Cut to a young Hispanic woman (Dania Ramirez) riding a bike. She stops to write some graffiti on a brick tower and then pedals on.

Cut to a college class with all the students clearly a decade older than they should be and you discover the next week is Finals Week, but instead of an exam, the teacher divides them into groups and gives each group the weekend to write a 20-page paper on revisionist history that will make up 50% of their grade.

And this has to be the cruelest teacher in existence. Evidently, the students have no other finals to study for or they are going to be in one painful time crunch.

So the group gets together in a traditional blend of horror movie college students including Isabella, the aforementioned Hispanic. The makeup of the group is so stereotypical, I was waiting for a Great Dane with a speech impediment to appear. The group decides to investigate an old urban legend of Emily Burt, the "Talbot County Werewolf" and I'm thinking, how are they going to get 20 pages out of that? And since its the weekend before finals, instead of researching old newspaper reports and interviewing local historians, they all decide to ride horses into the countryside in an effort to find Burt's grave. Really. On the weekend before finals.

But before they leave, we see Isabella working on a horse farm somewhere and she clearly has a large tramp stamp tattooed on the small of her back. Remember the year? It's 1986. The practice of women tattooing elaborate arabesques on their backs was not in existence in 1986, but nobody making this film cares. And why does the character of Isabella even have a tattoo? She's as introverted as they come and the idea of her sitting in a tattoo parlor just doesn't mesh with the character's personality.

So they all go off into the woods on horseback and almost all of them get killed in gory ways.

In the film, the chain holding the dog is not visible.

I could rant on and on about the stupidity of the story. How logical inconsistencies fill the plot and how certain events and locales make no sense at all, but here's my biggest problem.

From what I could discover, the original title of the movie was Talbot County. If they had kept that title, I wouldn't be writing this review, because I would not have purchased it. Instead, they renamed it Lycan and since I'm the president of the South-Central Pennsylvania Canid Research Group, I have a passing interest in werewolves and dogmen.

I bought the film thinking I was going to see a Grade B film about a werewolf.

Nope, it's just a Grade Z slasher flick. 

So, the biggest crime here is false advertising. If I buy a movie that implies a werewolf in the title, I want my werewolf, not two crazy women who pretend!

And in a second viewing, knowing who the killers are and why they are killing people, the inconsistencies scream at you. You would find yourself thinking, Wait up. That can't happen, or Why are the killers talking or acting like they really don't know what's going on?

Here's a link to the trailer. WARNING: TRAILER CONTAINS SCENES OF GORE AND BLOOD.

Alien: Covenent--A Review

Posing with my posse

Went to see Alien: Covenant last Saturday with a pile of friends and family and I thought I would share my thoughts. There are spoilers in this post and some major spoilers in the comments.

It is rather hard to put my thoughts together about this film as my feelings are so mixed. In 1979 when the first Alien film came out I was blown away by the overwhelming emotions of fear, revulsion, and wonder at what I was experiencing. Aliens (1986) came along seven years later and though a very different film, still added so much to the mythos.

As far as I'm concerned, Alien 3 (1992) and Alien: Resurrection (1997) never happened. They were nothing more than nightmares Ripley had in hypersleep while en route to home from the end of the second film.

Alien: Covenant is a direct sequel to Prometheus (2012) so if you have not seen that film, you will miss much of what is referred to in Alien: Covenant and the motivation of the android, David.

The film opens with the spaceship Covenant en route to Origae-6 that they hope to colonize. Along with a regular crew, they have 2,000 colonists in cryosleep and a few hundred human fetuses.

An emergency forces the crew awake early and with a badly damaged ship, they discover that there is a habitable planet closer than their original destination so they change course.

The new planet is the original home of the Engineers, an alien race introduced in Prometheus, but the planet appears to be abandoned. It isn't. David, the android from Prometheus, is alive and well.

My mixed thoughts:

• Michael Fassbender is an amazing actor. He pulls off two roles in this film, playing David 8 as well as the other android, Walter, each with different appearances, personalities, and accents and he does it flawlessly.
• Director Ridley Scott should have learned from the disappointment of Alien 3 where the audiences witnessed the deaths of Newt and Colonel Hicks from the Aliens film that characters the audience has an emotional bond to should not be discarded as unimportant. We deserved a better treatment of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw who was the heart and heroine of Prometheus.
• The source of the xenomorphs is completely revealed in Alien: Covenant. I was not impressed. Somehow the storyline has lost its magic and the xenomorphs have lost a little of their vicious majesty.
• The action scenes will put you on the edge of your seat, especially as the survivors attempt to leave the planet for the relative safety of the Covenant. That one xenomorph is worse than a tick.
• I was surprised to discover that some of the trailers contained scenes that were not in the film and not meant to be there. In fact, NONE of the scenes in this trailer appear in the film:
   
• The cinematography is incredible. The Covenant's scout ship soaring over the landscape of the Engineer's homeworld is breathtaking.
• New xenomorphs are introduced and they contribute to an understanding of the evolution of the more familiar monster that we know.
• The movie moves too fast. There is important information given in the film and it flies by so rapidly, if you blink, you'll miss it. There should have been some more time spent on the revelation of Shaw's fate and why David betrayed her when he said of her that he had never experienced such kindness from another human being.
• What happened in 2,000 years that the Engineers apparently devolved culturally and were no longer a space-faring race?
• Why are Ridley Scott's scientists so stupid?
• The ending was so necessary for the sequel (Ridley Scott has said there will be two or three more), but it was so emotionally a bummer for me.

Share your own thoughts in the comments.

Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1990) A Review

Made in 1990, Xtro II: The Second Encounter is a sequel in name only to the English splatterpunk film, Xtro (1983). Amazingly, both were directed by the same man, Harry Bromley-Davenport who later admitted he hated the sequel and made it only because he needed a job and the money. You may think that I want to praise the film, but I point it out as an example of what happens when you have no business writing a script or making a movie.

It took four men to script this disaster and not even the presence of Jan-Michael Vincent who was beginning to enter the nadir of his career could salvage this wreck of a film. Dealing with alcoholism, the reason Vincent delivers his lines with all the energy of a sloth is that the director had to individually feed him his lines before Vincent spoke them.

The movie's pacing is interminable, there are logic and continuity problems, and basically, the storyline makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

The movie opens with 3 full minutes of credits interspersed with a helicopter flight going through ice-capped mountains but from the perspective of the helicopter's interior showing the back of actress Tara Buckman's head.

Finally, we get to see an 8-bit computer display of the facility in which the entire movie takes place and the female computerized voice that will act as the chorus to our sad little journey into terrible movie making.

Then we see an interior shot of the place and you will recognize right away that the producer just grabbed some random factory in which to film the movie.

The story line has all the familiar tropes: two scientists in competition with each other, a rude government-type who wants to shut the project down, a moody hero who knows a lot but isn't telling anybody anything, but has the hots for the female lead, a rubber monster who can suddenly appear in different locations with no idea how it could logically travel from Point A to Point B.

Think of Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) and James Cameron's Aliens (1986) combined on a $5 budget.

Unfortunately, in attempting to describe the plot, I will actually make it sound like there is some sense to the story. Abandon all hope ye who enter here. There is no sense at all.

For some reason, the U.S. government has rebuilt a facility to restart the Nexus Program that will enable people to travel to parallel universes. The first facility in Texas resulted in disaster three years before the start of the film when one Dr. Ron Shepherd (Jan-Michael Vincent) blew the place up and, (wait for it), never told anybody in the government the reason for such a dramatic action and somehow he did not end up in a federal prison. Instead, he enjoys a cozy retirement and for the rest of the movie, though he traveled to the alternate universe and knows everything that is going on, says nothing to anybody about what they are facing.

After the pointless helicopter ride intro, we see Secretary Kenmore just arriving at the facility (by car, mind you, not helicopter) and he is just in time to see a team of three people take a foray into the alternate universe. Now they should have sent robots to retrieve air and soil samples, but they send a team of people first and when they finally get live visuals, they are grainy and in black and white. The trio sees some type of globe-shaped structure on the horizon when suddenly they are attacked by something and all contact is lost.

Now evidently there is no oxygen in the parallel universe (no idea how they knew that and the suits they are wearing are not airtight) and if the team is still alive, has only 12 hours of air left.

After an intense discussion on how to rescue the exploratory team, it's revealed that the two scientists in charge of the Nexus Program have strong feelings about Dr. Ron Shepherd, the guy formerly in charge of the Texas institution. It seems Dr. Julie Casserly (Tara Buckman) was Shepherd's former lover and Dr. Alex Summerfield (Paul Koslo) hates Shepherd with a passion that goes beyond all reason. So in spite of the fact that Shepherd blew up the original Nexus Program's Texas facility without ever giving a reason, Secretary Kenmore insists they bring him to the current site to act as an adviser.

"Take me home, country roads!"

So 15 minutes into the film, we get to meet the film's hero played by Jan-Michael Vincent and who looks eerily just like John Denver, the late folk singer.

Anyway, once again Shepherd refuses to reveal why he blew up the original facility, but he agrees to come and find out what has gone wrong and offer what help he can.

In the meantime, Dr. Summerfield assembles a military rescue squad of four of the oddest most eccentric military men possible: Colonel McShane (all business military guy), Zunoski (a New Age hippy), Baines (played by Nicholas Lea before he became famous in TV shows including the role of Alex Krycek in X-Files), and finally, Mancini, a long-haired, smart-mouthed guy with a foreign accent.

These guys are military. Right.

Anyway, at a group meeting, Shepherd encourages the military people not to go into the parallel universe and once again refuses to tell anybody what happened the last time he himself made the journey. However, the viewer will never get a chance to see an alien world anyway, as one of the original trio, Marshall, the crew's sole female, somehow returns and is in a coma. No neat trip to a parallel universe for us. The budget wouldn't allow it.

Well, here's a spoiler for you: Marshall is pregnant with a monster and when she does wake from her coma for a moment, she scratches Dr. Summerfield on the neck infecting him with some mutational disease of some type that nobody ever knows about so no explanation is needed.

The monster is born and escapes into the air ducts (you never saw that coming) and while the facility is being evacuated, the AI computer that runs the facility locks all the doors trapping the four military guys, as well as Drs. Summerfield, Casserly, and Shepherd. And the AI is going to set off a nuke within a certain number of hours to cleanse the place unless the source of the "bio-hazard" is removed.

Respect the amount of rubber that went into this.

Cue the increasing body count, the monster who can impossibly appear in places that are not linked together, Summerfield losing his mind as he mutates into a monster himself, lots of screaming, and lots of rip-offs from the Alien franchise.

And then cue an ending that makes absolutely no sense at all.

No...sense...at...all.

What puzzles me is that somebody sat down and thought this was a great movie to invest in when even some of the worst writers I know could have taken this incomprehensible mess and at least made it understandable.

Rock And Rule (1983): A Review

The war was over... The only survivors were street animals — dogs, cats and rats. From them, a new race of mutants evolved. That was a long time ago. Mok, a legendary super rocker, has retired to Ohmtown. There his computers work at deciphering an ancient code which would unlock a doorway between this world and another dimension. Obsessed with his dark experiment, Mok himself searches for the last crucial component: a very special voice. (Opening narration to the 1983 US version of Rock and Rule)

In the late 80s, watching late night television, I came across an animated film being broadcast called Rock And Rule. The story centers on a wannabe rock group consisting of four anthropomorphic dogs: Angel, Omar, Dizzy, and Stretch living in a future dystopian world where all the humans have died out. Angel comes to the attention of the super-rocker, Mok, who is in the declining years of his popularity. Determined to exact revenge on a fickle public, he has dedicated all his efforts to summon a demon from another dimension that will make his last show a real killer attraction. Literally.

And I was fascinated. I set out determined to find a copy and it was not until the late 90s, a friend of mine gifted me with a DVD of the production put out by Unearthed Films. 

Before I continue, one caveat. The Motion Picture of Association of America did not come up with the PG-13 rating until a year after Rock And Rule was released. The film, with its blatant drug references, fleeting nudity, use of strong language, and some fleeting disturbing images puts the film squarely into PG-13 territory. This is not a movie for the kiddies.

Let me be honest. Rock And Rule is a glorious train wreck of an animated film and for good reason. Nelvana, a Canadian animation studio, didn't have much of a script to go with and the story and characters were changed on the fly. According to my DVD's liner notes, the crew behind Rock And Rule went straight into production "without a solid story and a completed screenplay. Indecision on the part of the producers was rampant. Constant re-writes and script alterations invariably took their toll on everyone from animators to camera operators. Whole sequences were cut, leaving months and months of work lying on the editing room floor and the bottoms of dumpsters. Numerous retakes of both minor and crucial scenes became commonplace; characters were redesigned and completely reanimated from scratch, long after the scenes they were featured in were already shot."

And the story gets worse from there.

But here is why I love the film:

1. In its early years, Nelvana was one of the best quality animation studios on the block and a list of their shows can be seen here. Rock And Rule was the first feature-length animated film ever made principally in Canada.
2. The soundtrack features songs from Debbie Harry (of Blondie fame), Iggy Pop, Cheap Trick, and Lou Reed.
3. It was furry before furry became cool (and then ostracized).
4. Not made for the kiddies, even though the message of the film (love conquers evil) is as saccharine as you can get.
5. The film is unrelenting in its dystopian darkness (part of it takes place in Nuke York...that's not a typo).
6. Mok is clearly based on Mick Jagger, the character's full name being, Mok Swagger. Oh, yeah. That's subtle.
7. The animation is just fun to watch and some of the background art is exquisite.

 You can watch a documentary on the making of Rock And Rule here. Be aware this link may disappear. We are talking about the Internet after all.

Angel on keyboard, Dizzy on drums, Omar on lead guitar (and lead vocal) and stretch on bass guitar. And in case you're interested, they are all dogs.

This is Mok. He's the bad guy and, just so you know, he's a cat.

This is the demon Mok summons using Angel's voice, all because his last concert was not 100% sold out. Now I may be wrong, but in my humble opinion, this is not how one endears the fans to return.

Of course, Angel isn't doing this willingly. Mok drugs her and uses a special collar around her throat to force her to sing the demon up. Insert a snarky comment of your own on Mok's fashion sense.

Omar

Stretch and Dizzy (real name: Alphonse). Dizzy can't drive and ends up driving twice in the film. He wrecks both times.