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Rhuen1 In reply to Sagittarius-A-star [2014-11-17 03:37:37 +0000 UTC]

Watch Dagon. Also mermaids are monsters, monsters that like fairies have somehow become associated with little girl stuff despite being sociopathic creatures.

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Sagittarius-A-star In reply to Rhuen1 [2014-11-17 07:19:20 +0000 UTC]

Hmm, I haven't watched Dagon, but I read a lot of Lovecraft so I am familiar with H.P. Lovecraft's strange underwater races as hinted at in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "Dagon" (the short story).  Those are always described as bloody peculiar creatures combining the features of a fish and a frog that like to breed with humans to make strange hybrids who gradually become stranger looking until they finally take to the see as immortal fish-frogs themselves.  Not quite the winsome, deadly creatures of legend we associate with the word "mermaid"... though of course you could always interpret a mermaid in a more savage, animalistic light rather than the "stick the top half of a beautiful woman on a fish tail" school of mermaid design.

You are quite right, both fairies and mermaids are quite dangerous in the old stories- almost psychopathic, except that they simply aren't human- and make it the rule rather than the exception to do harm to any human unfortunate to run across them.  Mermaids deliberately wreck ships in order to steal the cargo and eat the crew (well, I always thought they did).  Although these days that won't yield a horde of Spanish gold.  If a mermaid picks the modern "treasure ship" carrying its horde of "black gold" (an oil tanker!!) she'll get herself and all the surrounding sea life slathered in sticky, choking crude oil.  Bad news for her.  Other ships have boring stuff like bananas or digital electronics.  Perhaps that is why we don't see mermaids singing on rocks nowadays...

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Rhuen1 In reply to Sagittarius-A-star [2014-11-17 07:32:19 +0000 UTC]

Dagon was one of the better movies based on HP lovecraft stories...which sadly doesn't say much. It is Shadow Over Innsmouth except it takes place off Portugal or something. The mayor's daughter is kind of a tentacle legs mermaid.

and yeah, all the fae were sociopaths by human standards as they can't be thought of as human; in fact fun fact the word "eldritch" actually means "elf kingdom" eld-rich" alp-reich basically. The original inhuman monsters that people simple can't understand, tend to come from the sea and another dimension, and come in all sorts of strange monstrous forms. The only difference between the Seelie court and unseelie court is "mischief" towards humans and "maliciously kill" humans.

heck the Green Lady is a Seelie court faerie (she will help cattle and children she finds lost in the forest to take them to safety) yet...she will kill men and drink their blood. *also what I thought the movie Mama was going to be about early on, so imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be THE least creative of all monsters instead.*

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Sagittarius-A-star In reply to Rhuen1 [2014-11-17 23:48:16 +0000 UTC]

There doesn't seem to have been a good H.P. Lovecraft film so far... to the point that I say they have not adapted his stories to the screen, even though if I look into it there is usually a really bad film made for any particular story.  "The Dunwich Horror"- they have made a crappy B-rate film out of it.  "The Colour Out of Space"- there is a REALLY crappy looking film based on it that seems to have zombies in it even though the original story is about a non-corporeal space beastie that is just a "colour" unknown on Earth sapping the life out of everyone within its influence.  "From Beyond"- they made a film out of this, which isn't unwatchable, but doesn't really feel much like Lovecraft in any sense.  Even though there is a rich vein of ideas to tap in Lovecraft, filmmakers just don't give his stories enough respect to think of them as anything other than fodder of B or even C rate cheap horror flicks.

"At the Mountains of Madness" they've kicked around as a movie concept, except they can't figure out how to shoehorn in a love story (I kid you not).  Actually, that would be a good idea, in my opinion.  In the end, one or both of our star-crossed lovers would be half-mad and gibbering lines from the Necronomicon.  That would nicely accentuate Lovecraft's theme that our human concerns and ideas are revealed as pointless in the greater scheme of the cosmos. XD I thought it was interesting that Lovecraft was so sympathetic to the star-headed Elder Things in that story- to the point that the narrator exclaims that, however monstrous their form, they were men just like us (not in form, or culture, but in the shape of their minds and their devotion to high civilization).

Really?  That's pretty funny, actually- eldritch, elf-kindom.  Makes sense, too.  Lovecraft actually uses faery legends in some of his stories, like "The Moon-Bog".  Certainly the original conception of faeries as strange, inhuman, often frightening aliens dwelling in a hidden kingdom (and begrudging us our dominion over the Earth) fits in with Lovecraft's other unearthly horrors.  Like Cthulhu, these beings once reigned on Earth and aren't that happy that we have come to dominate it.

Even the faeries who are disposed to aid humans are touchy and will turn violent if insulted or disturbed.  If brownies take care of your cattle for you, make sure to leave their milk and bread crumbs out for them... and don't spy on them.  Just don't.  Oh, yeah, Mama was a disappointment.  It would have been really cool if that movie had used the Green Lady instead.

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Rhuen1 In reply to Sagittarius-A-star [2014-11-18 00:09:00 +0000 UTC]

The problem with adapting Lovecraft's works to movies is two fold.
1: He mostly wrote short stories and poems, which minus the lengthy use of adjectives has very little action or character development other than (terrified of *insert weirdness*)
and
2: Its existential horror, which works best when the audience is asked to imagine what it is. Its not that Yog-Sothoth is a giant Defiled Flesh Abomination that was scary to 1910's audiences, it was that the idea of him existing made God not exist and that there was no good power protecting mankind from an unfeeling indifferent universe. Add in the time difference with things like (a color not of the visible spectrum: which is something you CANNOT imagine) and (Irridescent balls of noise) type impossible imagery and making an image for the big screen takes away its impact.

Heck the best  story to adapt to a visual would have been (Call of Cthulhu) pad out any of the three parts and you have a story. People going crazier seeing the same dreams, a cult in the bayou sacrificing humans, and a steam boat running into a monstrous un-natural island and being chased by a giant monster (really surprising that wasn't made back in the 50's and 60's when giant monsters were a huge thing for cinema).

on Lovecraft and relations to faerie stuff. Look up this author (Lord Dunsany): HP Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, and JRR Tolkein all borrowed from his works.

in fact Azathoth its self bares a striking resemblance to Dunsany's creation god.

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Sagittarius-A-star In reply to Rhuen1 [2014-11-24 04:06:49 +0000 UTC]

True, but that also gives any filmmaker plenty of leeway in adapting a Hollywood-suitable story to Lovecraft's basic ideas, if he or she is ambitious enough.  I think "At the Mountains of Madness" would make a fine SF/horror film if given a suitable story of Antarctic exploration to fit the existential horror into.  The "you will think me mad" and "do not follow in our footsteps" after-the-fact found writing style of the original story will only adapt to the silver screen as a voice-over, which is usually best avoided... but maybe it could work.  Or maybe the film could start with the second expedition setting out despite warnings not to.  The tentacle-headed Great Old Ones would require some good creature design, but Lovecraft spends so much time describing the exact locations and relationships of every bit of their body geometry, appendages, and orifices that I really don't have the feeling we were intended to only imagine them.  Shoggoths would require a little more subtle handling... maybe a glimpse near the end.

The real horror is, of course, that if the Great Old Ones exist, they created all life on Earth for their own edification and food supply- and we humans are only an unintended by-product of their tinkering with the seeds of artificial life on a barren Earth.  All our comforting ideas about benevolent creator gods giving humanity an exalted place in the universe or human existence somehow mattering in the greater scheme of things is simply gone in the face of the new facts about Earth's history, human development, and cosmology that the Miskatonic expedition uncovers.

The Cult of Cthulhu has a great concept, but it was kind of a not-so-great short story. The best concept in there was the idea of artists and other sensitive folk going mad from dreams all stemming from the same source (Cthulhu)- which was used again to great effect in Fritz Leiber's "The Terror from the Depths" (where Cthulhu's dreams incarnate as winged worms and dig tunnels under the L.A. area!!).

In general, it is best to avoid showing the monster too much, it takes too much away from the imagination.  Any of these Lovecraft stories would require that kind of handling to retain its impact in a film adaption.  I still think Lovecraft's brooding style of cosmic horror, combined with a sufficiently imaginative and grotesque visual style, could adapt to a horror film very well if Hollywood would expand their concept of horror beyond cheap scares and cliched monsters.

I will look up Lord Dunsany, thanks for the tip... I recall hearing the name Lord Dunsany many times before in references to old fantastic literature.

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dashinvaine In reply to epicspacebadger [2012-06-23 22:15:51 +0000 UTC]

He does, and a bit of a beer gut.

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epicspacebadger In reply to dashinvaine [2012-06-25 00:20:53 +0000 UTC]

I approve of drunken Cthulhu. Not a lot to do when all of your friends are in a deathlike sleep.

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