Silent Cthulhu Movie

For a movie made by a fan organization (The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society), "The Call of Cthulhu" is amazingly watchable. It may be the most successful distillation of mythos aura into film this side of "Hellboy." The HPLHS pull it off by means of a clever trick: the story is presented as a silent film. This maneuver not only lends an appropriate atmosphere to the movie, but also covers over the amateur acting and cinematography. Only the fight scenes are truly painful. Is cyclopean architecture any less cyclopean if it's made of styrofoam? Perhaps, but creature effects can be even more effective if they're fleeting and old-fashioned. Cthulhu lives. I will say no more.

You can order the DVD through Amazon or directly from HPLHS.

Wachowskis Do Frankenstein Comic

The Wachowski brothers do love their utopias. The world of the Matrix has Zion, complete with Cornell West and raves, while Doc Frankenstein has a fortress in the desert founded by the Frankenstein monster. In the Wachowskis' recent venture into comic writing we discover that the monster from Mary Shelley's novel has survived to the present of Bush's America, where he has established his desert stronghold as a rationalist haven for freaks and free-thinkers. The existential anti-hero of Shelley's novel has become a superhero in the Wachowski book: instead of confronting a silent God in lonely angst, he confronts a Catholic military organization, guns ablazing. As in the Matrix movies, the utopian prospect is ultimately just a dramatic backdrop for the action. Nevertheless, the backdrop makes the action particularly satisfying for the like-minded. Here's an excerpt from issue 2: [Note that the monster has capitulated to common practice and now simply answers to the name of his creator, Frankenstein]:

Soldier of God: Do you have any sins to confess?
Frankenstein's girlfriend: Only that I didn't kick you harder.
Soldier of God: Then may God have mercy on your soul.
Frankenstein's girlfriend: May Frankenstein have mercy on yours.
Frankenstein (crashing through ceiling): Okay, we can do this the easy way, where you drop your guns, or we can do this the hard way, where I rip your arms out of their sockets.
Soldier of God: I don't need a gun, monster.
Frankenstein: That's Doctor Monster to you, God-boy.

Good clean fun.