Another Tasty Horror Treat From Apple

Matthew Rhys stars as Mayor Tom Loftis in Apple's Widow's Bay

Widow’s Bay is a quaint island town 40 miles off the coast of New England. But something lurks beneath the surface. Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is desperate to revive his struggling community. There’s no Wi-Fi, spotty cellular reception and he must contend with superstitious locals who believe their island is cursed.

He wants these people to respect him. They don’t. They think he is soft and cowardly. And he is. But Loftis is determined to build a better future for his teenage son and turn the island into a tourist destination.

Miraculously, he succeeds: tourists are finally coming. Unfortunately, the locals were right. After decades of calm, the old stories that seemed too ludicrous to be true, start happening again. Widow’s Bay blends genuine horror with character-driven comedy.

From these teases, it would appear that Widow's Bay is a delicious blend of dark humour, Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, and Twin Peaks. Possibly. Or it could be something completely different... but I look forward to finding out.

Hailing from Apple Studios, Widow’s Bay is created, showrun, executive produced and written by Katie Dippold.

Director Hiro Murai executive produces alongside Carver Karaszewski, Claudia Shin and Rhys. Murai directs five episodes this season, in addition to directors Ti West, Sam Donovan and Andrew DeYoung.

Apparently the story of Widow's Bay began as a spec script Dippold wrote for - of all things - that greatest of sitcoms Parks and Recreation. Which makes me want to watch this even more!!!

The first two episodes of the show drop in three weeks, on April 29, then the remaining eight episodes of the series will appear on subsequent Wednesdays through to June 17 (with a second double-dip on May 27).

Paintings and Ice Schooners Lead Me Down A Rabbit Hole

Beautifully packaged parcel from Peahen In The Tree

When I started putting my thoughts together about returning to the world of blogging a year or so ago, I never imagined I'd be writing so much about my book collection.

But then I discovered Booktube, and my perspective shifted somewhat.

The other day, a random eBay advert hit my eyeballs for different edition of a key book from my formative years as a young gamer: Wereblood (or, in this iteration, Were Blood) by Erik Iverson (aka alt-history maven Harry Turtledove).

My 'new' copy of Wereblood

But what made this printing of particular interest to me was the painted Boris Vallejo cover (see above), which bore no relevance to the Gerin The Fox story told in Wereblood whatsoever.

In fact I knew it from a 1985 roleplaying supplement from Mayfair Games' Role Aids line that I was mildly obsessed with as a youth. Ice Elves did exactly what it said on the tin (and in Vallejo's 1978 painting).

It was an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure and rules supplement that explored the idea of a race of elves living in the frozen North, getting around on ultracool "ice riggers".

The reason I was rather hooked on this supplement is because of the similarities, especially in the whole "ships that glide over ice" aspect, to the first Michael Moorcook book I ever read: The Ice Schooner.

However, the more I thought about this - especially when my parcel from online book trader Peahen In The Tree arrived - the more surprised I was by the fact that Vallejo's art didn't decorate the covers of the either of the two editions I have of The Ice Schooner.

My two copies of The Ice Schooner

But a wee bit of Googling quickly revealed it had, of course, been used as a cover illustration for a 1978 Dell Publishing edition of The Ice Schooner:

Was this painting originally commissioned for this book?

A key aspect of the book that introduced me to the wonderful writing of Michael Moorcock is that it was another purchase from P&P Book Exchange in Goods Station Road, Tunbridge Wells.

This is the same - sadly, long-gone - second hand book store where, four decades ago, I discovered the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft for the first time and was transformed from a "dabbler" in comics to full-on collector when I purchased piles of Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans and John Byrne Fantastic Four comics.

It's no understatement to say that one store played a major role in shaping my lifelong geeky interests. 

The world needs more browsable, brick-and-mortar, second hand book shops.

SUPERB OWL LX MOVIE TRAILERS

SUPERGIRL

THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU

DISCLOSURE DAY

SCREAM 7

MINIONS & MONSTERS

The Unsettling Nature of Quatermass

I have three movies I call my "comfort films" that I will try and watch whenever I see them listed on the TV schedules or can turn to (via blu-rays, dvd, or streaming) whenever I'm feeling a bit down and need an escape hatch.

These are Raiders of The Lost Ark, George Pal's The Time Machine, and Quatermass and The Pit.

To me, these are perfect, review-proof works of genius that I can never tire of watching, all with deeper meanings and impacts on my life than what is shown on screen.

Today, we're thinking about the "adventures" of Professor Bernard Quatermass.

My first exposure to the world of Quatermass was the apocalyptic 1979 sci-fi thriller series known simply as Quatermass.

This bleak, four-part miniseries had a major impact on its 13-year-old viewer when first screened; implanting in me a fascination not just for adventure stories set amongst urban decay but the heroic futility of standing up to alien creatures of unimaginable power and destructive capabilities.

I am sure there is some synchronicity between my first viewing of this televisual tale and my discovery - not long afterwards - and immediate love for, the works of HP Lovecraft.

From Cthulhu to Galactus, all these cosmic entities can trace their influence on me back to watching Quatermass on ITV in the late 70s.

So inspired by this series was I that I also clearly remember creating (but never playing) a Quatermass role-playing game system and, once we started playing the comic book RPG Villains & Vigilantes, I named an alien race after the "enemy" in Quatermass - The Harvesters... although they were nowhere near as powerful as that entity!

Set at the end of the 20th Century (the future when this was made), Quatermass sees the return to London of Bernard Quatermass (Sir John Mills), founder of the British Rocket Group which pioneered space travel in the UK (see The Quatermass Experiment of 1953 and its cinematic remake).

He's been living in seclusion in Scotland and is unaware of the anarchy spreading through England, with gangs roaming the streets, power cuts and the general collapse of society. He is looking for his runaway granddaughter and instead meets up with a fellow scientist (Simon MacCorkindale).

Also roaming the land are a group known as The Planet People - hippies who gather at stone circles, prophesying a mass transmigration of those who "believe" to a Utopian alien planet.

Then the beams of light start coming from the sky, hitting the places where people have gathered and seemingly disintegrating them; although the Planet People believe they have been "taken to The Planet".

Seen now Quatermass can seem slightly melodramatic in places, but it can still deliver an incredible impact with its portrayal of a very British Apocalypse, complete with polite graffiti, a plate of sandwiches and a thermos of tea.

It faces themes of science versus belief, youthful enthusiasm versus the experience of age and the human spirit's unwavering strength in the face of overwhelming odds.

If HP Lovecraft were alive in the 1970s, this is exactly what he would have been writing - man as an insignificant speck in the Universe, caught up in events way beyond his understanding and ability to comprehend.

Don't expect answers, explanations or convenient happy endings - there is no Deus Ex Machina in the world of Bernard Quatermass... it is that God In The Machine that is "harvesting" the human race!

Originally created by writer Nigel Kneale (who also penned The Stone Tape) in the paranoia-fuelled 1950s, Quatermass - an intellectual professor defending the Earth from extraterrestrial threats through the use of brains rather than brawn - is an obvious precursor of The Doctor (who shares many of the same traits and convictions, despite being an alien himself).

Kneale wrote three original Quatermass serials for television: The Quatermass Experiment (an astronaut returning to Earth unknowingly carrying an alien creature which is continually mutating); Quartermass II (aliens take over a research plant on the South Coast); and Quatermass And The Pit (workmen in London unearth an old, crashed spaceship and release 'psychic ghosts').

I discovered all three of these stories through Arrow's script books, published in the late '70s, almost certainly released to cash in on Quatermass.

Later would come the radio series The Quatermass Memoirs, first broadcast as part of a season about 'The Fifties' on Radio 3 in 1996, and while some of the old news clips are a bit scratchy, the whole drama-documentary is an informative, inspirational and terrifying reflection of a time when the world was gripped by fear of nuclear holocaust.

It is a five-part documentary about the origins of the character, intercut with genuine 1950s news broadcasts, exerpts from the original serials, recollections and anecdotes from Nigel Kneale and an original mini-play by Kneale, set in the 1970s, wherein Bernard Quatermass, having retired to the wilds of Scotland (as mentioned at the start of Quatermass), discusses his life with a young journalist.

Long before Space:1999, UFO, Thunderbirds and even Doctor Who, there was ... Quatermass.

Throughout most of the 1950s, Quatermass was a British science fiction institution which appeared both on TV and in the cinema. Yet perhaps more importantly, it was the first adult based, dramatic science fiction television show in the world.

Now, over 70 years later, Quatermass not only lives on through its devoted fan base, but is a name which continues to resonate with science fiction fans both young and old.

In this special retrospective study, we look back upon the history of this highly celebrated franchise, whilst not only addressing the positive aspects the series brought to the science fiction genre but also the many challenges it faced in doing so.

Lights! Camera! Die Roll! Set-Piece Ideas For Gaming

By Elizabeth Thompson - Royal Collection , Public Domain, Link

Great memories - that is "magic moments" in roleplaying games - often come from the unplanned and unexpected, but that's not to say some gentle nudging and downright scheming from the Gamesmaster is inappropriate.

Browsing the deep back catalogue of Craig Oxbrow's excellent inspirational resource The Watch House (if you're into sci-fi and/or Doctor Who gaming then you need to read his Door In Time blog as well) I came across an article he'd written on Six Staples Of SF/F Series, by way of Den Of Geek.

These standards are:

• The Bodyswap
• The Time Loop
• Ascension To A Higher Plane Of Existence
• Alternate Dimensions
• The Doppelganger/Double/Duplicate
• The Dream Episode

And all are immediately applicable to the anime-inspired fantasy campaign I'm kicking around at the moment while the Tuesday Knights get all pulpy in Pete's new Outgunned Adventures game (season two of his epic weird science campaign).

Tie these "standards" into my own "wish list" of cool moments and there's plenty of meat for potentially memorable adventures, if I'm GM enough to script plots that can do these tropes justice.

I guess, in part, all this comes from my passion for visual media (films, TV, and comics in particular) and thus my desire to emulate moments I see in these at our table.

The main bullet points from my "wish list" were:

• Have the players running the defence of a "hopeless situation", ridiculously outnumbered by an implacable foe, as seen at Rorke's Drift in Zulu, Dros Delnoch in David Gemmel's Legend, and Helm's Deep in The Lord of The Rings. To name but three.
  
  
• A "Horatio Holds The Bridge" moment - I'd just discovered D&D when this poem was read to us at school and the two just clicked.
  
  
• An interesting time travel story (cf. Doctor Who et al)
  
  
• The party encounters cosmic entities that threaten the world and only the heroes can stop them - every Marvel/DC comic book that features this sort of stuff inspires me to greater madness, combined with a lifelong love of the works of HP Lovecraft.
  
  
• Rescuing a trapped companion from incarceration in the pit of Hell - this came from reading the dedication pages in my original (and treasured) Arduin Grimoire Trilogy, by Dave Hargrave, where he mentions an epic campaign to free his own character.
  
  
• Having the players caught up in a war between angels and demons.

Originally my list was drawn up for a legacy D&D campaign, but the ideas are so broad, universal, and potentially over-the-top that they work just as well for anime fantasy game in the same vein as Delicious in Dungeon, Frieren, and Record of Lodoss War.

The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973)

In pre-Second World War Poland, a young man, Józef (Jan Nowicki), travels to a run-down sanatorium in the country to visit his dying father, Jakub (Tadeusz Kondrat), only to be told that his father is dead.

However, the strange properties of sanatorium mean that, like Schrödinger's cat, he is also still alive. From there Józef sets off on a surreal journey into his memories, where the Jewish community he grew up in becomes interwoven with the rooms - and residents - of the sanatorium as he tries to come to terms with his guilt over leaving his father in such a place and the events that led to his father's incarceration in the first place.

The Hourglass Sanatorium (aka Sanatorium Pod Klepsydra) opens on a strange train where all the passengers, bar Józef, appear to be corpses and this unnerving Lovecraftian Hammer Horror feeling continues up until the scenes where Józef meets his father.

At first it appears as though our perfectly-normal protagonist is simply taking his increasingly peculiar surroundings in his stride, but quite suddenly we realise that Józef is as out-of-sorts with normality as everything else that is unfolding before our eyes.

Apparently based on a series of short stories by Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz, the film quickly dispenses with such mainstream concepts as a narrative plot and instead swims dream-like through a cycle of reality-blurring vignettes that whisk Józef from swamplands overrun by soldiers to lost loves of his youth.

The dialogue and scene structure has a strong William Burroughs 'cut-up' vibe going on and much is reminiscent of Naked Lunch (the book more so than the film, but without the sexual obsessions) mixed in with Jacob's Ladder, Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and, if I really reach, Rob Zombie's House Of 1,000 Corpses and Grant Morrison's The Invisibles.

However, this isn't a horror film so much as magical realism; an exercise in trying to capture on film a concept that this is ultimately indescribable, the experience of visiting a place where time works in ways alien to our normal perception.

Visually hypnotic and lyrically directed by Wojciech Has, The Hourglass Sanitorium is the strangest film I've seen in a long while, but it flows so beautifully and provocatively that you're soon convinced it's either incredibly meaningful or else the cast and crew were simply making it up as they went along.

Black Friday! (2021)

It's the dreaded Black Friday at We Love Toys and the work force are not looking forward to the hordes of shoppers about to pour in, seeking those "once in a lifetime" bargains.

However, what makes matters worse this year is a meteor shower bringing an alien virus that turns the infected into hideous, angry, monsters seeking to both 'spread the love' and construct a 'nest' for each of the initial meteors to achieve their "final form".

Black Friday! is a fun blend of rage zombie horror, Lovecraftian alien invasion, kaiju action, The Blob, Clerks, and old Quatermass movies.

Leaning into its weird fiction inspirations not everything mentioned in the story is explained, adding to the occasionally unnerving strangeness of what the extra-terrestrial entities are up to and what their ultimate objective may be.

There's plenty of body horror in Black Friday!, with the practical make-up effects on the transformed infected being particularly striking as they evolve into piranha-toothed ghouls, oddly reminiscent of the beast in The Unnameable duology 

Written by Andy Greskoviak and directed by Casey Tebo, the 84-minute flick is a runaway train that doesn't hang around, getting to the meat of its set-up almost immediately and not wasting any time establishing deep backstories for the central characters (these are filled in during the unfolding chaos).

While the film is a satire of corporate America, it is  primarily an apocalyptic splatterfest romp that doesn't take itself at all seriously.

If you're looking for a "people trapped in a store during the end of the world" film, but aren't in the mood for the heart-breaking buzzkill of The Mist, then you could do worse than check out the more light-hearted Black Friday!

Bruce Campbell is in there as the store manager, playing a bigger role than I expected but still a supporting character, while the leads are Final Destination/Chucky's Devon Sawa, Super 8's Ryan Lee, and Pan's Labyrinth's Ivana Baquero, as three undervalued workers in the soulless toy store.

Other familiar faces that pop up include Michael Jai White, while Seth Green provides the voice of a malfunctioning animatronic bear (who might just be a parody of Ted).

BOOK REVIEW: In The Mouth of Madness (Sutter Cane)

John Carpenter's cosmic horror magnum opus In The Mouth of Madness came out in 1995 and almost immediately devotees were calling it the greatest Lovecraftian movie that's not based on an HP Lovecraft story.

I don't know when I first saw it, but it was almost certainly the Lovecraft vibe that drew me to it and I was immediately smitten.

In The Mouth of Madness is quite possibly my all-time favourite horror movie.

At its heart, the story concerns a hunt by insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) for a missing best-selling horror author, Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), and his much sought-after final manuscript, In The Mouth of Madness.

Fans have long demanded a novelisation of the movie - which in a turn of mindbending metafiction is the novel that forms the heart of the film - and finally this year it came to pass.

Published by Echo On Publications, the novel of In The Mouth of Madness fully embraces its cinematic provenance, being authored by the fictional Sutter Cane (actually Christian Francis) and "published" by Arcane (the publisher of Sutter Cane's work in the film). It even uses the front cover artwork shown on the book when it's onscreen.

But, sadly, there my fanboyish excitement ends.

For the most part this is a very pedestrian adaptation, only really grabbing the reader in the final act when it seeks to expand the world we know from the film.

Sutter Kane is a contemporary reimagining of HP Lovecraft - in a world where his Great Old Ones were actually real - with a heavy dose of Stephen King mixed in for good measure, so I had high expectations for this book (fuelled by the several decades' wait for it to be announced).

Yet, given that - in-universe - this is supposedly a book written by an author who outsells Stephen King tenfold, it instead reads in large part like fan-fiction.

Was this actually a hurriedly released unedited first (or early) draft? 

That might explain the most frustrating thing about the novel, which can't entirely be blamed on the author (unless this was self-published and he was expected to edit it himself). 

The text is riddled with typos and missing words, which isn't a dealbreaker but is immensely frustrating for a professionally published book.

The name of Cane's publisher, Jackson Harglow (played by Charlton Heston the film) changes spelling several times within a few pages, for instance, and there are even TWO inexcusable typos in the blurb on the back cover of the dust jacket.

Did nobody proof this?

On the other hand, there are some delightful additions to the story - such as interjections in the text, often directed at the reader, from Cane himself.

Another interesting inclusion was the discussion between Trent and Cane's editor Linda Styles over Cane’s approach to writing.

For the most part the book sticks to the film script, but there are some minor tweaks to the narrative, alternative takes as it were, and one major element slipped in that, as far as I was aware from multiple viewings of the film, adds a whole new level of existential horror to the story.

Sutter Cane's In The Mouth of Madness is at its best when it captures the cosmic horror of the movie, but ultimately serves primarily as a novelty artefact to sit on your shelf and spark conversation with those 'in the know'.

It certainly isn't the Lovecraftian/Stephen King assault on sanity that we'd all been waiting for.

If Adventure Has A Name, It Must Be The Tuesday Knights

On and off, the Tuesday Knights (my gaming group) has been playing Pete's period pulp action campaign for 32 sessions over three years. He likes to keep things fresh by switching the rules system for every story arc.

We started in the 1950's, fighting zombies and giant monsters - even travelling to an alien world at one point - using GURPS Atomic Horror, then we slipped through a portal to the 1930's for an extended Hollow Earth Expedition-fuelled hike from New York to Antarctica, punching villains in the face along the way, and finally being drawn into some Lovecraftian cosmic horror shenanigans that were a delicious blend of John Carpenter's The Thing and old HPL's At The Mountains of Madness.

That adventure culminated with my character Buck Hansen, a world-weary big game hunter and explorer, managing to blow up - rather impressively - a newly-risen ancient god.

The other members of the team are Kevin as former G-man Dick Tate, Mark as daredevil aviatrix Onyx Jones (he took over Erica's character when she left the group), and Clare as photojournalist Freya Larson.

For the next stage of the campaign - which is scheduled to begin in December (all being well) - Pete is turning to Outgunned Adventures, a standalone spin-off of the popular Outgunned system from Two Little Mice.

I think we're staying in the 1930's for the moment, but hopefully there will be an in-game explanation for the subtle changes in our characters (and the new rules mechanics).

The other night Pete came round to talk through the new game with me and seek my assistance in roughing out conversions of the characters from HEX to Outgunned.

I was extremely flattered by this, especially given that my recent attempts to get a campaign going (a Shadowdark game that lasted one session and a Villains & Vigilantes one that lasted three sessions) both fizzled out in most depressing manners.

The Outgunned Adventures rules book is gorgeous, both in its layout and art, and full of homages to the Indiana Jones movies (particularly Raiders of The Lost Ark).

The game's core system seems elegantly straight-forward (but then again so did HEX - in theory - which turned into a confusing mess in play).

Tests in Outgunned are made with small dice pools of two to nine six-sided dice and you are looking to match numbers to score successes (e.g. roll 5d6 and threes come up on four of the dice, then that's four successes).

Although I'm still not a massive fan of dice pool mechanics, as I grow older and more befuddled I've come to really appreciate simplicity at the heart of my games (which was one of ways I went wrong with Villains & Vigilantes game).

Outgunned's dice pool mechanics are rather different than the HEX approach to generating successes, but hopefully the Tuesday Knights will latch on quickly.

Pete and I were able to find pre-generated templates that matched the characters in our little group, and then went through the personalisation process of picking out various traits and abilities that matched those that our characters had used in the earlier adventures.

Flicking through the book, I couldn't help but keep catching myself thinking "this looks really nice, perhaps I could use Outgunned to run something in a different setting".

Well, in the cold light of day, I don't know about that, but - while I'm taking a break from sitting behind the GM's screen - it's certainly got me thinking more positively about running a game again... at some point in the future. 

Indiana Jones much?

Stuart Gordon's Lovecraftian Oeuvre

Lovecraft’s stories have inspired a lot of horror movies — some good, some not so much. But Stuart Gordon’s take on them always stood out.

Doctor Mordrid - Master Of The Unknown (1993)

It should come as no surprise to anyone watching Full Moon's Doctor Mordrid to learn that it was originally developed as Dr Strange project, but when the rights were lost for the Marvel Comics character it was reworked as its own entity.

Lovecraftian legend and regular Star Trek guest star  Jeffrey Combs stars as the titular Doctor Anton Mordrid, an ageless entity living among mortals in human form, protecting us from demonic entities, such as Kabal (regular villain Brian Thompson), an evil sorcerer he imprisoned 150 years ago.

Guided by a mystical entity he refers to as Monitor, Mordrid is alerted to Kabal's escape from a fifth-dimensional prison and he sets out to prevent 'The Death's Head' from using alchemical skills to take control of The Philosopher's Stone... and then the world.

Mordrid's life, however, becomes a bit more complicated when he attracts the attention of his new neighbour, large-haired police consultant Samantha Hunt (Yvette Nipar), who then seeks his assistance on a 'Satanic' murder case she's working on.

This, naturally, leads to all sorts of trouble when her colleague, no-nonsense cop Tony Gaudio (Jay Acovone) collars Mordrid for the murder.

Coming in at 74-minutes, Doctor Mordrid feels like a TV movie or a pilot for a great '90s cop show (there's some strong language and a scene of random female nudity, but all involve supporting characters that could easily be trimmed for a more family-friendly edit) rather than a blockbuster movie.

Sadly, while it has its moments, there's nothing actually in the film to rival the multi-dimensional, cosmic psychedelia suggested by the DVD's cover.

I have to be honest and admit I was hoping for a bit more "duelling wizards" material, the mid-section of the film instead feels as though it gets rather bogged down in police procedural.

Mordrid's Castle

The final showdown between Mordrid and Kabal - although boasting some decent Harryhausen-esque stop-motion animation - is surprisingly brief, especially when compared to effects heavy final acts in similar films today.

Amidst the flashy sorcerous combat, we get a teasing glimpse of the demonic forces that Kabal is releasing, then wallop, Mordrid slams the door in their stop-motion faces (which is a bit of s shame as they looked quite cool).

As is often the way with these low-budget outings, there are some great ideas at work here with the potential to spark some fantastic, tangential creativity and there's definitely an unavoidable feeling that Full Moon Features were hoping to milk this franchise for at least another film, maybe more.

Mordrid's extra-dimensional castle - where Kabal is imprisoned - is too good a visual alone not to want to revisit the world of Doctor Mordrid.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

 

"... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

- HP Lovecraft 

Filmed as an authentic, 1920's black and white, silent movie, The Call of Cthulhu is an amazing 47-minute piece of work, perfectly encapsulating the psychological horror of H.P. Lovecraft's iconic story.

Styling it as a movie that Lovecraft himself might have seen in the 1920s is a stroke of genius by the filmmakers of the HP Lovecraft Historical Society, as it allows for considerable leeway when it comes to the necessary effects required to bring the Great Cthulhu - and his island home of R'lyeh - to life.

The story itself is a puzzle box, an onion of layers upon layers, beginning with a man (Matt Foyer) in an asylum recounting to his doctor (John Bolen), how he was charged with sorting out the affairs of his great-uncle, Professor Angell (Ralph Lucas), upon the old man's death.

Going through the professor's papers, the man comes across a particular box of papers and files, and as he reads these we are taken back to a series of seemingly disconnected events, from the lucid dreams of artist Henry Wilcox (Chad Fifer), via a raid by New Orleans police on a savage swamp cult, and the discovery of a drifting ship with only a single survivor onboard.

We learn about the cult's worship of alien beings, Elder Gods, who are sleeping under the sea, waiting for the "stars to align", so they can awaken again, but little else to tie things together.

Later the man - having put his concerns about his uncle's affairs to one side - stumbles across further details of the mysterious ship, which sends him on a global hunt for the elusive final pieces of the puzzle.

Eventually, he arrives in Oslo and is handed the personal account of the ship's lone survivor.

This details the discovery of a strange island, where the crew disturb the resting place of the monstrous alien god Cthulhu. 

Structured as stories-within-stories-within-stories, as characters recount events in which further characters recount other events, helps accentuate the disorientating, dream-like nature of the whole affair.

Which may well just be the ramblings of a mad man.

However, clues are slowly pieced together from different events to formulate a possibly complete picture of what links all these disparate tales... and what it means for the future of humanity.

I've been reading Lovecraft since I was about 12, so am probably biased, but I love this film and treasure my old DVD of it, for all its authentic, creaky, mannered staging.

By sticking close to the original text, the combination of Sean Branney's script and Andrew Leman's direction, within the self-imposed constraints of vintage filmmaking, make Call of Cthulhu one of the best, pure, Lovecraftian adaptations.

It isn't about gore and jump scares, the horror comes from the larger scale suggestion of what the narrative implies.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Seed (2021)

Three old friends - vapid online influencer Deidre (Lucy Martin from Vikings), pet shop worker Charlotte (I Hate Suzie's Chelsea Edge), and Heather (Sophie Vavasseur, Resident Evil: Apocalypse) - head for chilled weekend at an isolated luxury villa in the Mojave desert.

The idea being they will spend the time catching-up, drinking, taking drugs and watching a "once-in-a-lifetime" meteor shower.

However, an unexpected side effect of the meteor shower is the arrival of a strange creature, dropping out the sky into the villa's swimming pool.

Thinking it's possibly an armadillo or a bear cub, Charlotte wants to care for it, but the others are less keen and just want rid of the bizarre, stinking object.

However, as the weekend unfolds, the new arrival begins to have a strange effect on first Deidre and then Heather, before Charlotte (the obvious Final Girl from the moment she appears on screen) realises what is going on.

The first feature-length work from writer-director Sam Walker, The Seed is an engrossing - if not totally original - spin on an anti-E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial meets Color Out Of Space story.

On a superficial level, this is a 1950s shlock horror movie of the "aliens-want-our-women" sub-genre, updated for the contemporary social media generation. 

I was really expecting to find the leads annoying, but even the over-the-top Deidre is hypnotically watchable because of Lucy Martin's stellar performance.

Throw in some surreal Society-style shunting; psychedelic mental communications; and gallons of black, alien, blood and you have a great recipe for an enjoyable 90-minute Lovecraftian body horror romp.

The alien creature itself is fascinating as it is largely passive, but, as long as you can suspend your disbelief, this puppet-from-another-planet is a compelling antagonist since it relies primarily on mental powers - rather than physical - to get what it wants.

The script isn't perfect though. While Charlotte and Deidre are well-developed characters, Heather seems oddly lacking any sort of backstory beyond the fact that her father owns the villa and she's constantly worried about messing it up.

And when Charlotte and Heather are exploring the seemingly-abandoned cabin of their nearest neighbour, there's a definite suggestion that something apocalyptic has happened to the rest of the world already, and yet later we learn this is not the case.

Conversely, through the clever use of clairvoyant montages, The Seed does an excellent job of foreshadowing the alien invader's plans for the Earth without anyone spoon-feeding them to the audience.

Sam Walker also clearly loves his fake-out endings, which I always approve of if done well and these are.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Color Out Of Space (2019)

Nathan Gardner (Nic Cage) and his wife, Theresa (Joely Richardson), have moved, with their three children, out of the big city to a secluded farm in the woods outside Arkham, Massachusetts, for a bit of peace and quiet.

Stockbroker Theresa is recovering from cancer and Nathan is trying his hand at becoming a self-sufficient farmer.

However their lives are disrupted when a strange meteorite crashes on their land, polluting the area with a paranormal alien radiation.

HP Lovecraft's original story of The Colour Out Of Space has been adapted many times, but, beyond a shadow of a doubt the latest iteration, from writer/director Richard Stanely, is the most Lovecraftian.

A gorgeous, mind-bending, blend of the cosmic with the body horror of The Thing and Society,  Color Out Of Space focuses on a trapped - and doomed - family, slowly worn down by an unknowable, extraterrestrial invader.

Certainly not for everyone, Color Out Of Space isn't a trashy teen slasher flick with obvious heroes and villains, but a terrifying encapsulation of the central theme of Lovecraft's oeuvre that "common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large".

There is never really any serious suggestion that the alien entity is even aware of the humans it is transforming by its simple presence.

My Copy - Not Used In Any Rituals!

The film bears obvious similarities with 2018's Annihilation, but Color Out Of Space is the stronger work of art by a country mile.

Across the board, the central performances are superb. Nic Cage channels Nic Cage as only he can, exhibiting the convincing levels of madness and sudden rage that he does so well, while The Magicians' Madeleine Arthur is impressive as teen daughter, Lavinia, whose rebellious nature expresses itself through dabbling in witchcraft.

Beyond the gooey body horror, there's some cringe-inducing - but thankfully brief - self-mutilation that might require some eye-covering by those of us with a particular aversion to such things.

As well as rooting the story squarely in Lovecraft country, Richard Stanley has sown his tale with Lovecraftian Easter Eggs, such as the Miskatonic University sweat shirt worn by visiting surveyor Ward (Elliot Knight, sadly no relation) and the tatty, cheap paperback copy - "by Simon" - of the Necronomicon (which we all own) that Lavina consults.

Quite possibly my favourite film of 2020, Color Out Of Space is breathtaking in the audacity of its vision, a modern rendition of a Lovecraft story that truly captures the horror of its set-up and the terror of those trapped within its incidental and inescapable prison.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Archive 81 (2022)

A shy video-restoration expert, Dan Turner (Underwater's Mamoudou Athie) is offered a once-in-a-lifetime financial deal to work on a sensitive project for shady businessman Virgil Davenport (Martin Donovan).

The job involves relocating to an isolated compound, where Dan will be restoring and digitising a fragile collection of fire-damaged video tapes.

He soon learns that these tapes, dating from the mid-90s, were part of a doctoral thesis by student Melody Pendras (Altered Carbon's Dina Shihabi) who was compiling an oral history of the eccentric residents of a New York apartment building.

However, as he watches the tapes, not only does Dan discover a personal connection to the unfolding story but he also sees that Melody seemingly stumbled upon a cult operating in the building.

Told over eight, hour-long episodes, Archive 81 is the latest horror offering from Netflix and I have to say upfront it's as creepy as anything.

Based on a podcast (that I was previously unaware of), for my tastes, this is as close to perfection as anything I've seen in a very long time.

I was also quite surprised - going in spoiler-free - how many coincidences there were between elements of Archive 81 and The Last Ritual, an Arkham Horror story by S.A. Sidor, which I read at the end of 2021.

Both involve cults operating in artistic communities, and, as we go deeper down the rabbit hole the backstory of Archive 81 pays a visit to a very Lovecraftian 1920s. 

The whole cult throughline has incredible Lovecraftian overtones, which made me immensely happy as the series felt like a clever modernisation of the writings of this hugely important and influential horror story scribe.

With its inclusion of another of my favourite tropes - the hunt for mysterious or cursed films - I was also reminded of the comic book mini-series, The Lot (from defunct publisher Bad Idea) and, of course, John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns, and Deadwax.

Initially I'd only planned to watch the first episode (I'd offered to check the show for 'gore content' on behalf of an old friend) of Archive 81, but I was hooked from the get-go.

I binged the whole eight-hour show in a day - with some breaks for 'real life', naturally.

Focusing primarily on Dan's investigation, and then Melody's as a story-within-the-story, some might dismiss Archive 81 as a slow-burner, but it's simply being methodical, with the viewer's close attention being rewarded with subtle clues and foreshadowing.

Some clues are there up front, like the references to Dante's Inferno, with the inclusion of an old film serial called The Circle, and our protagonist, Dan T, being led on this descent into Hell by a gentleman called Virgil.

And I'm sure there were plenty of other references and allusions that I failed to pick up on. 

By the end you will come to realise that everything was important. Other properties may boast that "it's all connected" in their rambling franchises, but in Archive 81 it really is.

If I had a small nit to pick it would be the special effects of a certain creature manifestation, but this is a very small quibble and certainly doesn't detract from the incredible, unnerving nature of the show.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Digging Up The Marrow (2014)

Known for horror movie series like Hatchet and Frozen, director Adam Green (playing himself) receives a wad of information in the mail from a fan who claims to have discovered real monsters.

Green decides this would be a brilliant subject for a documentary and heads out to meet the mysterious William Dekker (Twin Peaks' Ray Wise) and hopefully get a chance to see these so-called monsters.

Dekker spins him yarns about a subterranean world - accessed through holes in the ground usually found near cemeteries - called 'the Marrow', populated by an assemblage of deformed creatures.

Shot in a mock-documentary style (with swatches of 'shaky hand-held camera footage'), the film follows the childishly-excited Green and his sceptical cinematographer, and long-time collaborator, Will Barratt (also playing himself) as they interview Dekker and are then taken on a series of night-time reconnaissance missions, staking out an alleged Marrow entrance.  

Along the way, there are several cameos from known-genre figures (such as Kane Hodder, Mick Garris and Green's ex-wife Rileah Vanderbilt) who don't get what he is trying to achieve with this documentary and generally dismiss Dekker as a potentially-dangerous nutter or a con man.

This is more than a simple "what if monsters really existed?" movie, as a key element in the tale is that that question is being tackled by a horror movie director whose career is based on creating terrifying creatures.

The mockumentary is joyously incomplete, dangling plot threads that are never truly explained (such as the chronology of whatever is in Dekker's locked storeroom), but that's life. And the movie's brilliant ending justifies wholeheartedly why Green left his magnum opus unfinished.

I get why some people don't grok this. They're wrong. But I get it. Digging Up The Marrow is a slow burner, building up to its kick-in-the-teeth third act. Sure, there's a pretty terrifying jump scare about half-an-hour in, but the bulk of the film is about building atmosphere and creating a world.

I can only imagine that a lot of people - coming off the back of the Hatchet franchise - were caught off-guard by how subtle and intelligent Digging Up The Marrow is.

Thematically it owes a lot to the more-grounded tales of HP Lovecraft's oeuvre (particularly his "ghouls") and, of course, Clive Barker's Nightbreed, but the documentary style gives it a verisimilitude that is only undermined by the presence of such a recognisable actor as Ray Wise in a lead role.

Wise is superb, wholly convincing as the shady and driven Dekker, and I understand why Green cast him - to stress that this is 'make-believe' and not an attempt at a Blair Witch-style hoax. Yet I can't help but wonder how the film would have been received if Green had gone down that route with an unknown actor as Dekker.

In reality, Digging Up The Marrow came about because of a fortuitous confluence of events in Green's life. First, he received a highly detailed package of notes from a fan claiming to be the real story of Green's creation, Victor Crowley (from the Hatchet series).

Later the film director met artist Alex Pardee who gave him a booklet of illustrations for his exhibition Digging Up The Marrow that told the story of detective William Dekker commissioning him to draw creatures he'd encountered in his investigations of the Marrow.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Hagazussa (2017)

Imagine David Lynch remade The Witch, but set it in 15th Century Austria and you might have some idea of what to expect from the totally weird Hagazussa.

For the first half-hour of this glacially-paced movie young Albrun (Celina Peter) nurses her sickly mother Martha (Claudia Martini), who is seemingly dying of the plague, in an isolated shack up in the snowy Alps.

Then the story jumps forward in time and Albrun is all grown-up (Aleksandra Cwen), a full-time goat-herder with a child of her own (Gerdi Marlen Simonn) to care for, although there is no sign of the father.

Shot with a Lynchian obsession for misty landscapes, wind through tree branches, and extreme close-ups of nature, Hagazussa is unrelentingly grim, atmospheric, folk horror.

Just when you think the story can't get any darker, it goes there.

Major kudos to Aleksandra Cwen who pretty much carries the bulk of the movie on her own - with the aid of her amazingly expressive eyes, which writer/director Lukas Feigelfeld makes great use of when the subject matter crosses that line where suggestion is the only way to go.

Like The Head Hunter, there is minimal (German) dialogue (with English subtitles), so it's left largely to the viewer to piece together a narrative that suits the visuals.

Albrun and her mother have been shunned by the nearby community as "witches", but with the intervention of the local priest, Albrun is befriended by local woman Swinda (Tanja Petrovskij).

However, this takes an unexpectedly unpleasant turn.

Now, my reading of what I witnessed in Hagazussa is that the plague that then comes to the community is Albrun's revenge, but the ultra-grim events that follow are the price she has to pay for the black magic.

The multiple taboo-busting, potentially triggering, nastiness that unfolds in the final third of the 102-minute film makes The Witch look like a Carry On film in comparison.

This certainly isn't a movie for those who think jump scares are the height of horror movie craftsmanship or embrace frenetic slasher flicks as the "one true way" for the genre.

Playing heavily with the paranoia of isolation, as well as Lovecraftian fear of the unknown heightened by religious indoctrination,  Hagazussa is unnerving and horrific, rather than frightening.

You're more likely to feel a bit nauseous than scared. 

This is art house horror, plunging deeper and deeper into the dark pit of the human soul on a more cerebral than visceral level (not that that there isn't viscera on display!).

Hagazussa takes the idea of the "slow burn" to excruciating new lengths, but definitely gets under your skin if you're willing to surrender yourself to it.

Right up until the final moment. Then, bizarrely, taking a leaf out of low-budget '80s fantasy, everything randomly ends in inexplicable fire.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Whence Lovecraft?

Mythos Tomes: My earliest forays into the works of HP Lovecraft

I've been reading HP Lovecraft since I was a teenager. I recall writing about him in my English Literature A Level exam, which given I was supposed to be critiquing Dickens' Great Expectations probably explains my poor grade.

My memory of how I actually came upon the works of Lovecraft is rather hazy, but I'm sure I was already aware - and a fan - of his oeuvre before I invested in my first edition box set of Chaosium's seminal Call Of Cthulhu game.

This was published in 1981, with the second edition coming out in 1983, which suggests I picked up the game sometime between those dates.

I suspect my introduction to Lovecraft could well have been TSR's Deities & Demigods (the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement, published in 1980, that - only for its first edition - included the Cthulhu Mythos as well as Michael Moorcock's Elric mythology, as well as various pantheons or gods and heroes from ancient religions around our world).

This almost certainly led me to invest in the paperbacks you see above, several of which are stamped as coming from the P&P Book Exchange in Goods Station Road, Tunbridge Wells (which is where I also came across my first collection of Wolfman/Perez era New Teen Titans comics that got me hooked on the medium and turned me into a 'proper' comic book collector).

Those paperbacks have seen better days. particularly The Haunter In The Dark And Other Tales Of Terror (a 1963 edition from Panther Books, priced at three shillings and six pence!) which is falling apart because it was read so much.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Baskin (2015)

If you're looking for a memorable horror movie that feels like it was based on an HP Lovecraft story, but wasn't, then look no further than surreal Turkish splatterfest Baskin.

A generally unlikable, thuggish, group of police officers respond to a call for back-up in a rural area with a bad reputation.

Among the five-man team is Arda (Görkem Kasal), the newest recruit and the ward of the chief Remzi (Ergun Kuyucu).

As the freshest face in the unit, Arda has yet to be ground down, or corrupted, by the obviously hard work the men do.

Unfortunately on the way to the emergency, their van crashes.

The squad has to ask for directions from a strange group of "frog-hunters" they find camped at the edge of the lake their van ended up in.

A quick jaunt through the woods brings them to an abandoned Ottoman Empire-era police station.

The building appears to have been taken over by squatters, who have vandalised it with it peculiar graffiti and left evidence of all kinds of obscenities.

But it's only really as they descend into the lower levels of the building that the true horror of the building's current inhabitants becomes clear.

And the police officers soon find themselves in the clutches of a  terrifying, possibly sub-human, cult.

While Görkem Kasal's Arda is the nominal star of the story, the stand-out performance has to be the amazing Mehmet Cerrahoglu as the cult leader Baba (The Father).

Baba: The Father

A Turkish Clint Howard, Cerrahoglu's incredibly rare skin condition gives him a unique physical appearance that he draws amazing power from here in his first feature film role.

Forget all the splatterpunk Grand Guignol for a moment, Baba is the iconic image of Baskin that will endure.

Baskin (Turkish for 'Raid') was the first full-length movie from Can Evrenol, an extrapolation of his 11-minute short of the same name (which featured several of the same actors, including the magnificent Mehmet Cerrahoglu).

Buoyed along by a thumping, Carpenteresque, score, Baskin is Lovecraftian cosmic horror meets Hellraiser by way of The Void, Blair Witch, The Last Shift, In The Mouth Of Madness, and - for for better or for worse - Twin Peaks: The Return.

Even though it predates David Lynch's most recent visit to Twin Peaks, there's a key scene in Baskin - as well as its ending - that share important thematic, and stylistic, similarities and, I think, will ultimately decide whether you rate Evrenol's surreal shocker or not.

One thing I felt after viewing Baskin is that it is more of an experience than a coherent narrative. It's main purpose is to draw the audience into the mind-boggling ordeals that the policemen go through, rather than explaining too much or attaching it all to a traditional story structure.

Be warned, things do go a bit torture porn once the coppers are captured, but, for me, it's all about intent.

This isn't a bunch of wealthy businessmen torturing 'innocents' for shits and giggles, but an evil cult trying to transform its "chosen one" through arcane rituals handed down from their unknowable ancient deities.

Although the truly weird stuff doesn't start until the half-way mark of this 96-minute film, the pacing and rhythm are perfect so you're drawn in from the get-go, as the tension escalates and you try to figure out what the hell's going on.

Throughout Baskin there's talk about dreams (and dreams within dreams) and one - almost heavy-handed - shot of Arda nodding off in the van before everything goes sideways that I thought was the M. Night Shyamalan moment when the "it's-all-a-dream" twist was given away.

But, and I know some of you may consider this a spoiler, that's not what's going on. If it had all been a dream I would have been very annoyed and not nearly as smitten as I am by this flawed gem.

Much of Baskin has a dream-like nature, and dream-logic to its flow, but - as far as I'm concerned - what was happening to the protagonists was very real.

Having sat through much of the movie inner-monologuing "don't be a dream, don't be a dream", I'm now looking forward to going back and watching it again, comfortable in the knowledge that Baskin avoids that cop out (pun intended).

It is, however, genuinely the stuff of nightmares.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Void (2016)

Late at night, on a deserted road outside of town, Sheriff Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) comes across a wounded man stumbling out of the woods.

The lawman rushes the injured man to the nearest hospital, a fire-damaged building on the point of closure, operated by a skeleton staff, including the sheriff's estranged wife, Allison (Kathleen Munroe).

Within moments of their arrival - and a nurse going insane - the dilapidated hospital is besieged by knife-wielding, sheet-wearing, cultists.

From there The Void is a non-stop, violent, gore-splattered, thrill-ride through Lovecraft country by way of Assault On Precinct 13, The Thing and Hellraiser.

This is a film - whose plot unfolds over a single night - that just doesn't let up. The action kicks off from the opening scene, backstories are sketched in with deft brevity, and the viewers find themselves sucked into the absorbing, claustrophobic, horror.

Malleable architecture, hallucinations, and shapeshifting, tentacled, monsters are just part of the sanity-assaulting fun that the writing-directing team of Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie bombard the audience with.

And it's probably worth drawing attention to a couple of extended scenes that feature bright, rapidly flashing lights that could affect people susceptible to such light shows.

There's a strong flavour of vintage '80s horror here (but delivered with ichor-dripping 21st Century practical effects) that should satisfy any fan of HP Lovecraft's cosmic horror who tends to find the best cinematic realisations of his themes come in films not directly based on his stories (such as the aforementioned The Thing, In The Mouth Of Madness, Event Horizon etc).

It would be a gross exaggeration to say The Void is wholly original, but the diverse recipe of influences tap into so  many of my favourite movies, sub-genres, and ideas of what makes good horror, that I embraced it all the more warmly.

In fact there was a part of me that couldn't help wondering if this script was lifted from a game of Call Of Cthulhu, with pointless gunplay, fire-axe-swinging, and pulp novel machismo in the face of monstrosities not meant for the eyes of man.