Lovecraftian Cinema

[brsrkrkomdy]

With Rosemary's Baby, you forget one of the lines in dialogue: "God is dead! All hail Satan!" Judeo-christian concept of evil is a motif used in an existential nightmare. There's nothing optimistic in this film which you must notice in Lovecraft, there wasn't anything optimistic in his tales.
Suspiria is more of a fairy tale like that of Brothers Grimm. There's a little bit of M.R. James and Blackwood with its elemental terrors sprinkled with light and shadow. I only said it's slightly Lovecraftian at the ending where the Jessica Harper character came out laughing. Now, is she going slightly insane or was she just happy she's alive? It's hard to say.
Black Sunday springs immediately to mind "Dreams Of the Witch House", where the witch craved immortality by transforming into something not human. It is slightly LeFanu, where the writer is a legends & folklore type of guy with his stories. I don't agree that there was an M.R. James' presence in it. I think there's a definite Poe in this one. Poe's influence is strongly felt in Lovecraft's fiction. If you're thinking that standard story is that a witch or wizard tries to bring about a monster or an alien type demon that would spell the end of the world and someone tries to thwart the mad plans. That's not necessarily Lovecraft. Maybe in Cthulhu Mythos stories but certainly not Lovecraft.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by brsrkrkomdy

With Rosemary's Baby, you forget one of the lines in dialogue: "God is dead! All hail Satan!" Judeo-christian concept of evil is a motif used in an existential nightmare. There's nothing optimistic in this film which you must notice in Lovecraft, there wasn't anything optimistic in his tales.

I must admit that I see very little Lovecraft influence on Rosemary's Baby; and as for the line you quote -- that was much more the sort of claim that was being made in the 1960s, especially with the rise of the Church of Satan and various other occult and mystical societies. I can even recall various magazines (such as Time or Life, etc.) carrying that "Is God Dead" debate as a feature article with a large headline on the cover. There may be some Lovecraft influence there, but I really think it was much more the cultural aspects that influenced that film -- as well as the novel from which it was adapted.

Black Sunday springs immediately to mind "Dreams Of the Witch House", where the witch craved immortality by transforming into something not human.

I'm afraid you lost me there. Where does Keziah Mason "crave immortality by transforming into something not human"? It is even quite debatable that immortality was her goal, or that she achieved such -- she certainly remained human, or Gilman couldn't have killed her by strangling her with that chain. What she did achieve was the ability to travel through hyperspace, going anywhere in time or space which would allow (even briefly) human life. This did enable her to continue into the early 20th century, but only because she had not lived through the intervening years. The witch in Black Sunday (or, more properly, "La maschero del demonio") simply intends to replace her modern counterpart, in order to return to life and have her revenge. If there is any nod to Lovecraft here, I'd say it's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, with Joseph Curwen. But the film itself is inspired by Gogol's "The Viy"; so I'm rather dubious about the Lovecraft connection.

As for the Poe connection... I'm not really seeing a great deal of that, either, unless it be "Ligeia", and even then quite loosely. Or are you referring to a general atmosphere of Poe -- in which case I'd argue that this is much more a mark of the late Gothic and the Romantic writers of the time, rather than exclusively Poe. Wonderful film though... very well sustained atmosphere.

[brsrkrkomdy]

That "God is dead" part was sort of a quote from Fredrich Neitzche's. Lovecraft's stories were often scarier when you take away the existence of God in the stories. Same went for Rosemary's Baby. With God being "dead", the tale gets bleaker in the outcome with malevolent entities that are not here for Mankind's benefit.
As for the witch of Black Sunday and the witch in "Dreams Of the Witch House", maybe "achieving immortality" is the not exactly the right objective to describe what these two were trying to do. Yet they are similar in character. The one in Black Sunday was killed twice. As for the witch in "Dreams", I gotta reread that one. My memory's a bit hazy. I do, however, think their objective was for revenge. Why else would they come back?
As for Poe, it's the gothic atmosphere in the likes of Pit & The Pendulum and Fall Of the House of Usher, not necessarily in plot. Poe did have influence on the later gothics. Gothic is a genre that started back in the early nineteenth century and Poe was part of that century. The Romantics influencing Bava's film? I dunno. I doubt it.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by brsrkrkomdy

That "God is dead" part was sort of a quote from Fredrich Neitzche's. Lovecraft's stories were often scarier when you take away the existence of God in the stories. Same went for Rosemary's Baby. With God being "dead", the tale gets bleaker in the outcome with malevolent entities that are not here for Mankind's benefit.
As for the witch of Black Sunday and the witch in "Dreams Of the Witch House", maybe "achieving immortality" is the not exactly the right objective to describe what these two were trying to do. Yet they are similar in character. The one in Black Sunday was killed twice. As for the witch in "Dreams", I gotta reread that one. My memory's a bit hazy. I do, however, think their objective was for revenge. Why else would they come back?
As for Poe, it's the gothic atmosphere in the likes of Pit & The Pendulum and Fall Of the House of Usher, not necessarily in plot. Poe did have influence on the later gothics. Gothic is a genre that started back in the early nineteenth century and Poe was part of that century. The Romantics influencing Bava's film? I dunno. I doubt it.

Yes, the "God is dead" is (more or less) from Nietzsche (a paraphrase, as I recall, rather than a quote); but it had become a very important part of the culture here in the States in the late 1960s, in connection with the movements mentioned in my earlier post, some of which took it as a sort of banner. The cultural divide over this one went fairly deep, and there were some serious battle lines drawn. So, while the origin is with Nietzsche, I'd still argue the relevance was from what was going on culturally at the time; in neither case from Lovecraft, who did tend to avoid directly bringing in aspects of the Judaeo-Christian tradition (save for exclamations using "God" or such as indications of the narrator's increasingly unsettled emotional -- not necessarily mental -- state).

As for the witch in the Bava film (whose name, by the way, is Asa) and Keziah Mason (she of "The Dreams in the Witch House") -- while there are some very loose similarities, they are really poles apart. Asa is a fully human witch, driven by human passions; while with Keziah we never really have an indication of her motivations, save for brief bursts of anger against Gilman when he does something that threatens what she's doing at the time. And she doesn't "return" -- she moves in and out of our part of (or dimension of) spacetime according to either some alien rhythm (hinted at, perhaps, in the descriptions of the cycles and rhythms in hyperspace) or at her own whim; but she has evidently been around that house periodically ever since her original life was interrupted by being hauled off and tried for witchcraft in the late 17th century. There is no indication of any kind of revenge motif going on there, as there is no one in the tale connected to Keziah or her past in any way.

As for Poe having an influence on the later Gothics... actually, this would be the other way around. The first acknowledged Gothic novel was published in 1765; by the time Poe's writing began to be published (the late 1820s), it was nearly spent, with only a handful (at most) of the Gothics to come. Even "the greatest as well as the last of the Goths", Melmoth the Wanderer, had been published before Poe's first tale ("Metzengerstein", itself something of a send-up of the Gothic genre) saw print. Poe himself was heavily influenced by much of the Gothic paraphernalia and mood -- especially an interesting take on the Burkean sublime, which formed one of the philosophical foundations for the Gothic movement -- but he was perhaps even more heavily influenced by the translations of the German Schaueromantik or such writers as Hoffmann, as well as Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who was very highly regarded by Poe, Mary Shelley, Dickens, etc., though he is largely ignored or denigrated today (more so than is deserved, I'd say).

[j. d. worthington]

Looks like the HPLHS has a new film coming:

YouTube - The Whisperer in Darkness

[j. d. worthington]

And now Lurker Films has put out a new volume in the H. P. Lovecraft collection:

Lurker Films—Lovecraft, Cthulhu, Poe, Weird Tales, Movies, FIlms, DVDs