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Post by hman on May 26, 2007 14:32:12 GMT -8
With the faux-silent "Call of Cthulhu" film having come out in 2005 and the Tori Spelling "Cthulhu" film coming out this year, I decided to read some of his stories so that I might understand the mythos and the references that B-movie watchers make to his stories, styles, and films based on those. I found his stories at www.dagonbytes.com and read six of them this week. His work is composed of mainly short stories, the longest one being 90 pages (the shortest one being 8). They were all fairly interesting; I'll write more specifically in subsequent posts. So, are there any fans out there?
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Post by Torgaman on May 27, 2007 12:19:59 GMT -8
Hey I just read THE CALL OF CTHULHU in a book I took out from the library.It is a coolection of Lovecraft tales.I am halfway through with the book.
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Post by hman on May 27, 2007 12:56:36 GMT -8
I read 6 stories so far. I read "The Music of Erich Zann", "Call of Cthulhu", "The Rats in the Walls", "Dagon", "The Shadow over Innsmouth", and "At the Mountains of Madness."
The Music of Erich Zann - A student in Paris finds an apartment off the beaten path on an ascending street. In the floor above him, an old musician has discovered that his music has some terrible consequences. The story has some good imagery and atmosphere in it.
Call of Cthulhu - Considered to be the quintessential Lovecraft story, this story marks the only personal appearance of the famous Lovecraftian god, Cthulhu. Lots of interesting imagery in the story and apocalyptic mythology.
Rats in the Walls - A man goes back to the house of his ancestors and discovers why one his great-grandfathers had slaughtered its inhabitants generations before. Awesome imagery, good atmosphere, and a crazy ending make this one of the best horror stories I've read.
Dagon - A man escapes from a German-controlled boat and finds a mysterious continent. Not all that great.
The Shadow over Innsmouth - A young man goes on a geneaology trip and decides to pass through a mysterious, forboding town. An essential story in the Lovecraftian mythology, the exposition-heavy first half is balanced by a gripping action scene and apocalyptic ending.
At the Mountains of Madness - An expedition to Anarctica discovers a sinister mountain range and an abandoned city in the middle of the ice. The discoveries made there are even more sinister and shocking. Excellent suspense/horror/sci-fi story. Bogs down a little bit in the city part, but has great atmosphere and an appropriately apocalyptic ending.
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Post by Shonokin on May 28, 2007 21:08:35 GMT -8
Welcome to the Lovecraft Mythos! I started reading HPL in the mid-70s and go through periods of re-reading him once in a while nowadays. And since he only wrote so many stories, as with most HPL fans, I started reading other writers pastiche. Even just 10 years ago, finding other works in the Mythos was pretty hard to come by... but it now seems to be a cottage industry for several small publishers.
The interesting thing is that most people sort of shrug his stuff off as turgid pulp with too many adjectives, with the main attraction being for teens who are into monsters. I pretty much thought that myself but as I grew older I started to find in his work a lot of effort to craft a story meticulously and not just pounding out a couple of cents per word grue. To me I find his writing to be much more simlar to an artist trying to paint the perfect picture, more than trying to tell an entertaining story.
Though most are entertaining on one level or another, I find them to be more pleasing as well-crafted pieces of textual art.
That Tori Spelling would be in anything related to Lovecraft seems rather horrifying in itself and also strangely fitting. She does look a bit like a deep one.
You might try in your next batch THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS which is one of my favorites and what I think is one of HPLs most atmospheric and tense pieces. It is also the next film being done by the HPLHS, the folks that did the faux silent CoC.
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Post by Xenorama ™ on May 29, 2007 8:40:04 GMT -8
i'll re-read the book i have again, but not at night! on first reading i found it heavy on atmosphere, light on actual goings on, but i was in a different place at that time.
Colorado.
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Post by Shonokin on May 29, 2007 20:56:37 GMT -8
Hey I have a personal ghost story about Colorado. It's here.
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Post by hman on Jun 1, 2007 16:00:36 GMT -8
I read "The Lurking Fear" this week. That was a pretty good story--it was a lot gorier than the other stories I read. I already knew the final twist, but it was still pretty good. There have been three films made about it: "Dark Heritage: The Final Descendant", "The Lurking Fear", and "Bleeders". Surprisingly, the first film follows the story the closest (or so I've read) while the film that shares the story's name strays the farthest. I haven't watched any of them.
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Post by hman on Jun 7, 2007 8:51:20 GMT -8
I read two more stories this week so far. The first is "Horror at Red Hook." It's about a cop who investigate strange goings-on in a New York slum and discovers some cultist activity linked to a rich Duchman. It's kind of racist, linking pagan/Satanism to immigrants and other races. However, when there's a neat part near the end where...
- Spoiler Alert! -
...the main character is sucked into hell and sees the various Gods and monsters of various world religions and mythologies, including Lilith of Judeo-Christian "mythology".
- End of Spoilers! -
The other story that I read is "The Colour Out of Space", which talks about the events following the fall of a meteorite on a country farm. That story was pretty cool. It's been twice as a film, first in "Die Monster Die!" and "The Curse". I've seen bits and pieces of both, but can't really comment a whole lot on them.
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Post by hman on Jun 9, 2007 13:22:24 GMT -8
I read "The Shunned House" a couple of days ago. It's pretty good. The ending was kind of cool, although I would've preferred the author find a different body part (i.e. a heart or brain). There's an Italian movie about this which incorporates elements of both this story and "The Music of Erich Zann."
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Post by Torgaman on Jun 10, 2007 9:40:45 GMT -8
I'm finishing off that Lovecraft book.I have to say I don't think I will become a diehard Lovecraft fan.I gave it a try and it just didn't work for me.
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Post by hman on Jun 24, 2007 14:45:11 GMT -8
It's not for everyone, but I think that Lovecraft, like Poe or even Greek Mythology, is important reading just to understand modern horror literature or film.
I read "The Outsider" this week and I really liked it. It struck me as being a follow-up to "The Rats in the Walls", or more appropriately, the same story going in the other direction. Excellent imagery. I told this story to one of my English classes and they liked it.
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Post by RedKing on Jun 26, 2007 7:49:11 GMT -8
I'm a huge Lovecraft fan, ever since I read the first half od SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH (up to his escape from the hotel)one night before bed, dreamt that I turned into a fish creature, and read the end of the story the next day where that is exactly what happens to the narrator! Living in upstate NY I'm also very close to alot of his locales for various stories and I used to visit the ocean every summer. I especially gravitate to the mythos stories, especially Innsmouth because I have a dual fascination and fear of the sea-I love the ocean but i can't swim.
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Post by Shonokin on Jun 26, 2007 11:21:07 GMT -8
I can swim but have the same love/fear of the sea. On my honeymoon in San Diego I almost got swept out to sea! I live around San Francisco and the ocean is like ice water up there. So being down south where the ocean is more like a warm bath, I got so relaxed on the water that I didn't notice I was floating out to sea. Had to really swim like crazy and fight the waves knocking me on my head to keep from drowning.
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Post by Xenorama ™ on Jul 17, 2007 22:12:19 GMT -8
we always gotta watch you landlubbers! and besides, there's no Baywatch babes to get rescued by- i got stung by a ray and when i went to the lifeguard station there were no babes there at all!
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Post by hman on Aug 26, 2007 13:49:03 GMT -8
Well, I finally read "Whisperer in the Darkness" after a two-month Lovecraft break. This one was pretty good. I really loved the mental image(?) of an ominous buzzing sound made to sound like human speech. That's pretty spooky. I think it was commented that the end twist was pretty easy to guess, which became especially apparent in the final conversations and revelations. I liked the frantic tone of the first two-thirds of the story.
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Post by hman on Sept 15, 2007 19:18:08 GMT -8
I finally read "The Shadow Out of Time", which is said by some to be Lovecraft's best story. It's pretty good, especially when they get to Australia. The climax is completely compelling, even though you can see the final "twist" coming about 10 pages away. The climatic flight from the city seemed to mirror "At the Mountains of Madness", too (these two stories have a lot in common). I think the narrative loses a little bit of its power when he goes into a lot of detail about the lifestyles and history of the races in question. But still really good stuff.
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Post by RedKing on Jan 2, 2009 4:55:02 GMT -8
My wife got me a very cool CD of HPL audio stories. They are MP3s so there are about 35-40 stories on the disc !! I didn't even know there were any HPL audiobooks, much less so many stories! I've listened to Shadow Over Innsmouth, Colour Out of Space, Dagon and Mountains of Madness and they are all excellently done. Most are down almost like radio dramas with soundeffects and music too, great stuff!
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Post by Shonokin on Jan 4, 2009 16:56:22 GMT -8
Are these the Wayne June readings? If not I highly recommend them. He's a proffesional voice talent and was born to read HPL.
There are some audiodramas out there. Atlanta Radio Theater has done some really great adaptations. Some of their live shows feature Harlan Ellison doing some parts. I think he played Zaddok Allen in Shadow over Innsmouth.
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Post by RedKing on Jan 9, 2009 22:25:20 GMT -8
There are several Wayne June and Radio Atlanta Theater recordings on the disc as well as a 1940's radio adaptation of "The Dunwich Horror" among many others. It's really an excellent collection!! I wish there had been a bigger Lovecraft movement earlier as I would have loved to have seen Vincent Price in more Lovecraft movies as well maybe do "An Evening of HPL" similar to his great "Evening of Poe" TV special. Also Christopher Lee is a huge HPL fan and I would love to hear him do some audio recordings of Lovecraft too!
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