The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
H.P. (or Howard Phillips) Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a writer who casts a giant shadow over horror fiction. He produced some 60 short stories and novellas and four novels and created a unique vision of horror.
Lovecraft’s work is filled with people questing after forbidden knowledge and enacting rites; of ancient civilisations fallen due to miscegenation with non-human creatures; narrators who encounter horrors that have driven them insane.
Lovecraft’s most important contribution was the invention of the pantheon of Elder Gods (the most famous of which was Cthulhu), all-powerful entities that lie slumbering or waiting to be called and whose very sight alone can drive somebody mad.
The following is a list of adaptations of Lovecraft’s work, pastiches by other writers, works that homage or parody Lovecraft and others that can be said to adopt his ideas.
Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell make their third Evil Dead film. The series hit a peak with the delirious balance of horror and comedy in the second film but here the comedy over-balances and becomes too broad
DC Universe Animated film that is adapted from an Elseworlds story that offers up an alternate 1920s version of Batman who is fighting up against H.P. Lovecraft entities
Quite a decent little low-budget film about a top secret government agency set up to despatch Lovecraftian Elder Gods.
Nobody knew it at the time but this was the beginning of the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on screen in the 00s/10s. This distills the basics of the vampire hunter comic-book down into a smart, kinetic action film
The Found Footage horror film quickly became worn out. However, this effort about the investigation into a haunted church in the English countryside manages to generate some quite reasonable atmosphere
Rodrigo Gudiño, editor of Rue Morgue magazine, directs a horror film with strong Lovecraftian overtones about a portal opened at a mysterious cabin in the woods
Sequel to the cult splatter hit of Re-Animator, directed by the original’s producer Brian Yuzna. Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott and David Gale are back. This has some amazing effects work but lacks the first film’s outrageous black humour
Joss Whedon scripted work that is less a horror film than a meta-horror film that is constantly deconstructing the genre and subverting its cliches. A rare genre entry less about visceral impact than it has brains to spare
Fan parody/homage of H.P. Lovecraft that comes waist-deep in references and jokes. The film is an amateur effort made with a painful cheapness in some areas; nevertheless it is clear that the team are really into making it and their enthusiasm carries the film
One of the key films in the cult of Lucio Fulci, a zombie film driven by a series of gore-drenched set-pieces. On the other hand, there is the complete lack of a plot holding everything together
While The Shape of Water took attention, there was 2017’s other film about sex between human and fish people. From Xavier Gens, a a Lovecraftian tale about men in a lighthouse engaged in a fierce battle against amphibians
Richard Stanley made one of the most exciting directorial debuts with Hardware. Welcomely returning after a long absence, he is one of the few directors to mainline the essence of H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horrors
Actor David Keith directs an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space. Unfortunately the focus on cheesy and ridiculous effects quickly takes the exercise down into Grade Z territory
Dreary British occult film that wastes a great cast line-up, including Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele and an 82 year-old Boris Karloff in his last performance
Stuart Gordon returns to adapt H.P. Lovecraft for a third time. As before, Gordon allows Lovecraft’s unspeakable terrors to be eclipsed by creature effects but the results are nothing too memorable
A no expectation adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams of the Witch-House from a director down the low-budget end of the spectrum that does some surprisingly modest things
From the director of the standout Meander, a dark and claustrophobic film set in the 1950s about miners disturbing a Lovecraftian entity buried in the depths of a mineshaft
Adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space, directed by Roger Corman’s production designer Daniel Haller that draws on the look and mood of Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films
Adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story in which Sandra Dee is lured by a young Dean Stockwell in order to summon Elder Gods. This seems like it has potential but befalls plodding, nondescript direction
An adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story. While more faithful to the story than the earlier 1969 adaptation, the film is very cheaply made and collapses into the frequently ridiculous
A variant on the horror anthology film that manages to let the potential in its three stories fall through its hands. Narrated by Rod Serling, creator of tv’s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone, who must’ve needed the money
Nominally a sequel to Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s first film Resolution, this concerns a strange cult but expands outwards to involve a mind-boggling array of backwoods timeloops and reality blurrings
A film about backwoods occult that comes with much H.P. Lovecraft influence. An inngenue film made by several unknowns who later became key figures at Industrial Light and Magic
Ferociously paced low-budget hit that put the names of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on the map. What made the film a cult hit was Raimi’s full tilt pace and entertainingly over-the-top splatter effects
Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell return in a sequel to their earlier low-budget cult hit. With a far better budget this time, Raimi goes completely over-the-top with a delirious silliness that will bring tears to the eyes
After the cult success of Re-Animator, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs and most of the principals returned with a further H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. More outrageously over-the-top splatter effects but this is somewhat the lesser
A superior sequel to the modest The Gate. This borrows from H.P. Lovecraft and delves into the area of cursed wishes that turn on the wisher, all with imaginative results
Amid the 2010s spate of multi-director horror anthologies a la The ABCs of Death, V/H/S etc, this is a trio of tales from all German directors, the most well known of which is Jörg Buttgereit of Nekromantik infamy
Film with a literally off-the-wall premise in which Ryan Kwanten is trapped in a rest stop bathroom with a Lovecraftian deity that speaks through a glory hole in the next stall
Charlie Steeds is a low-budget British director who has shown reasonable promise. Here he makes an H.P. Lovecraft homage about a submarine expedition that awakens Cthulhu on the ocean floor
Low-budget director Albert Pyun, best known for his kickboxing cyborg action films, conducts a micro-budgeted adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story about a scientist who fends off death by keeping their room chilled
Low-budget film about a woman who inherits a British country estate to find someone has opened a portal to unleash entities. One of several low-budget films of late to appropriate Lovecraft’s name
Another low-budget film that appropriates H.P. Lovecraft’s name above its title. From low-budget director Chad Ferrin who previously ventured into Lovecraft with The Deep Ones
A low-budget adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story Dreams in the Witch House about a student who moves into a house with occult geometry and stirs dark forces
A festival of H.P. Lovecraft short films held in Vancouver, which display a quality and faithfulness to the original texts that far outstrips the professional efforts being made elsewhere
A low-budget adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. That is if you can imagine Lovecraft’s story about fish people mating with humans relocated to a California AirBNB
This was ostensibly another in Roger Corman’s series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with Vincent Price possessed by his ancestor. This only borrows Poe’s title and instead adapts an H.P. Lovecraft story.
The first of Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptations of Mike Mignola’s comic-book about a demon superhero. Not as good as the sequel, the film’s ace in the hole is Ron Perlman in the title role
The film that put the name of Clive Barker on the map. A work of considerable imagination where Barker delves into forbidden pleasures and fuses the film with S&M imagery for the memorable creations of the Cenobites
Dan O’Bannon scripted film that is uncreditedly based on an H.P. Lovecraft story about family horrors and creatures lurking beneath the graveyard. Aka Bleeders
H.P. Lovecraft is a cult horror writer whose work brims over with a sense of cosmic dread. One of the most bizarre Lovecraft film adaptations is this work of children’s animation featuring a young Lovecraft
The second in a series of animated children’s films about the young H.P. Lovecraft and his encounters with the various denizens of the Cthulhu mythos
The third of the trilogy of animated films from Arcana Studios based around the adventures of a young H.P. Lovecraft
This adaptation of the cult Marvel comic-book from Lucasfilm should have been a classic but went tail-feathers up in a big way such that it became the term used for a film that bombs for years afterwards
A Found Footage film about a tv crew investigating Lovecraftian cultists who are trying to raise an elder god. This makes an okay stab but is distinctly hampered by a low budget
Scottish director Lawrie Brewster, a promising newcomer on the genre horizon, has obtained the rights to revive the Amicus Films name and conducts a strong homage to the studio’s signature anthology film
In one of his last really good films, John Carpenter pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft in this horror film that becomes an amazing blurring of the line between reality and fiction
Low-budget adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth about a town where the locals have become mutant fish people, which has been weirdly mashed up with a girls boarding school story
A film with Lovecraftian overtones about a group at the Miskatonic University doing research into time travel that proceeds to go wrong, while unleashing mysterious monsters
Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli makes a mind-expanding effort that seems a conceptual collision between Donnie Darko, Limitless, a slacker version of Supernatural and Dr Strange
A fitfully amusing H.P. Lovecraft fanboy comedy. Lovecraft, a noted conservative, would likely have deplored the idea of the nerd comedy but this gets the flavour of Lovecraft’s works down better than most
Charles and Albert Band had a success with the H.P. Lovecraft adapted Re-Animator; their attempt to replicate that with another Lovecraft story is lacking Stuart Gordon’s splattery black humour
Another low-budget H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, this abandons all but the bare bones of the story to create a work about abominable experiments lurking in the halls of an abandoned asylum
The one moment of triumph from director William Girdler who takes a work that sits just on the threshold of schlock and transforms into something incredibly eerie with an injection of H.P. Lovecraft and American Indian mysticism
British-made homage to H.P. Lovecraft that has some of the most stunning black-and-white photography seen in some time but I am still trying to puzzle out what the film was actually about
Modestly creepy adaptation of a Stephen King short story about a boy who realises that his grandmother is a witch who made a deal with a backwoods entity
Film that has developed a cult reputation set in a seaside town where the dead are returning to life. The film has an unsettling nightmare ambience where things happen without any explanation
Frank Darabont delivers one of the best Stephen King adaptations where the story of people at siege in a supermarket from unseen creatures in a mystery fog outside becomes a study in fear and prejudice. With one of the great unforgettable endings
Video-released compilation of above average horror short films all set around the titular website
Anthology of three H.P. Lovecraft tales from directors Christophe Gans, Brian Yuzna and Shusuke Kaneko. For claiming such a quintessentially Lovecraftian title as this, you feel that it should have been more than it is
TV mini-series that adapts eight Stephen King short stories. As with any anthology, the stories vary in quality but are generally quite reasonable
This creates quite reasonable atmosphere as an undocumented Mexican girl takes a room at a boarding house that has sinister secrets
From the increasingly underrated Mickey Keating, a film about a ghostly small town where Keating creates an incredibly eerie and haunted atmosphere
An original work that conjures a fantastic sense of ominous Lovecraftian cosmic horror as a man is haunted by a cult whose purpose is to wake a slumbering deity that is dreaming all of reality
One of the most head-scratchingly bizarre efforts among the great Ozploitation fad – a comedy about vampires in an Australian Outback town
A film overstuffed with mad ideas and genre cameos about psychic experiments that have unleashed a series of other-dimensional entities
This was one of the classic 1980s splatter films. Stuart Gordon throws most of H.P. Lovecraft’s tone out the window and goes for hilariously black comedy served up with outrageously over-the-top effects
Starting out as a gritty intervention drama, for some time this is not even a horror film. In the background are suggestions of increasingly more disturbed happenings until the film becomes something eerily cryptic – sort of The Evil Dead by way of The Picnic at Hanging Rock
Charles Band returns to H.P. Lovecraft and conducts a low-budget remake of From Beyond, which he had memorably overseen back in the 80s with Stuart Gordon
Alien scripter Dan O’Bannon jumps aboard the 80s/early 90s fad for H.P. Lovecraft adaptations is this directorial outing that eventually develops quite reasonable effect
Amnesiac persons wake up in a bunker filled with monstrosities. Sort of H.P. Lovecraft served up as a low-budget variant on Resident Evil
Sequel to the earlier The Rizen with the group of people trapped inside a labyrinth of Lovecraftian horrors
One of the more obscure H.P. Lovecraft adaptations based on an unfinished pastiche, not widely seen but well worth reconsideration
An H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, this is a venture into bodyswap horror that proves immensely entertaining ride
A horror anthology featuring episodes from seven different directors. As with other anthologies, the episodes vary in quality, ranging between the so-so, the mostly quite good and one standout segment
A Roger Corman produced horror parody that conducts send ups of most of the horror icons of the 1980s – Freddy Krueger, Pinhead, Michael Meyers etc – without being particularly funny
One of the spate of H.P. Lovecraft adaptations that came out in the late 80s/early 90s. This feels like an effort by earnest amateurs but does take its Lovecraft seriously unlike most of the other films of this cycle.
A sequel to the earlier H.P. Lovecraft adapted film The Unnamable. Despite having a bigger budget, this is no more of an improvement over its predecessor
In his follow-up to Manborg, Steven Kostanski abandons the affectionate homages to 1980s video-released genre films he has specialised in so far. A homage to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this should be seen for the utterly wild and outlandish makeup effects that Kostanski delivers
Solidly atmospheric effort concerning a middle-aged couple who buy a house with sinister forces lurking in the basement. This builds to an admirably gore-drenched climax
An H.P. Lovecraft adaptation that makes exacting effort to get the mood and period setting right