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Apologies if there's already a thread for this movie, I searched but couldn't find one.

So this weekend I watched Color out of Space, the most recent movie version of the classic H.P Lovecraft short story.

I am a huge fan of Richard Stanley's 2 early films, Hardware and Dust Devil. I think he was an uderrated director who's career obviously nose dived after the debacle of Island of Doctor Moreau. However, I was very excited to hear that he would return with a classic which suited his directorial style but was also a bit cautious as Lovecraft is notorious to get right on film.

I absolutely love the concept of the original short story but I always felt it would be impossible to commit to film or TV, as the concept of the story would be impossible to convey in a visual medium. If you've read the story you will know what I mean.

I didn't realise however that this story has actually already been turned into more than one movie - Die Monster Die (1965), The Curse (1987), Colour from the Dark (2008), Die Farbe (2010) and also Stephen King admits that the Tommyknockers, which became a TV series, was based on the Lovecraft short story.

Die Farbe, the German version from 2010, sounds exactly how I would have approached the source material so I will need to check it out.

Anyway, on to the Richard Stanley version.

The cast is odd but, given Nicholas Cage's reputation for playing "crazy" on 11, I understand the choice. Joely Richardson on the other hand is a great actress and if you need a weird stoner hippy guy that lives in the woods them Tommy Chong is your man.

I feel though that Nicholas Cage was badly miscast in this movie and that Joely Richardson was wasted. I know Cage will always overact, that's a given, but it just takes away the brooding horror that should be building up throughout the movie.

I also hated the way the "colour" was approached. I'm sorry, but a purple spotlight does not convey what the source material suggests.

All the way through I kept thinking, the only way to make this a movie is to have it shot in black and white and then introduce colour, whch apparently is exactly what Die Farbe did.

The film itself is, disappointingly, just dreadful. It's not all bad. There are some lovely nods to 80's classics such as Brian Yuzna's Re-Animator movies, and the use of both practical effects and CGI is good. It's just that it doesn't convey any sense of dread and if you weren't familiar with the plot from the original short story you probably wouldn't have a clue what's going on.

So, despite my cautious, high expectations for this, I was very disappointed.

As a throw away, rainy afternoon, 80's inspired, horror movie, it's OK. But I don't think it matched Stanley's earlier works and I doubt it will help his career return, which is a shame as I think his earlier movies showed great promise.

But maybe it's just because H.P LOvecraft really is impossible to commit to film or TV?

I think Lovecraft isn't hard to commit to film, but rather doing it proper is an antithesis to modern horror movie pastiche.

Lovecraft doesn't show you his monsters much. Modern horror is like a wheres Waldo book that wants you to see Waldo and prints him on the page 10x bigger than anything else.

Lovecraft lets a creepy atmosphere and sense of foreboding do that for you, something most horror movies seem to go out of their way to not do and instead just throw jump scares at you.

Lovecraft doesn't cast donkey-caves (at least, not unsympathetic dicks) as main characters, which most horror movies do like they're afraid to let anyone halfway decent suffer.

Worst of all, I saw Nicholas Cage was in this movie and knew it would be gak because he's Nicholas Cage and I can't fathom who decided to make a Lovecraftian horror film based on one of his best stories and thought "this movie needs Nicholas Cage." No one will ever fething forget Wicker Man. It is a struggle to take the man seriously as an actor. I only got to take Keanu Reeves serious after decades of Bill and Ted being the first thing I think of when he stared in John Wick and proved he can be a serious actor in the right kind of film.

So, that rant out of the way, I don't think it's impossible. The Thing was great Lovecraftian horror, and Harbinger Down was a good (if very repetitive) throwback to that movie. The Void kind of worked, even as a flawed film, and Annihilation was more like the Color out of Space than the book it was supposedly based on and was okay. Quiet Place has certain elements of the sub-genre right too, and Sinister did atmosphere right and is probably the thing most blatantly missing in modern horror. EDIT: There's also the Ruin, which is very effective in using Lovecraftian themes in a more modern kind of film.

I think the issue really is that a good movie in Lovecraftian style is the opposite of a very stagnant modern horror genre, which is not taken seriously by most directors, critics, actors, or executives and is generally treated like a genre for "low budget high return" gambles.

Those are all very good points.

I'd actually forgotten about Annihilation but you're right, it is actually very similar to the original Colour out of Space story.

I actually quite enjoyed The Void too.

And you're absolutely right about modern horror which is why I was excited that Richard Stanley was directing this. Dust Devil was a great example of slow, tense, build up that was sadly lacking in this version.

Another film I felt was quite Lovecraftian was In the Mouth of Madness, with Sam Neil. Although that is 100% more about Stephen King it still felt very Lovecraft to me.

StraightSilver wrote:
Another film I felt was quite Lovecraftian was In the Mouth of Madness, with Sam Neil. Although that is 100% more about Stephen King it still felt very Lovecraft to me.

King isn't shy. He's openly stated that Lovecraft is one of his biggest influences and acknowledges that many of his stories are based on, or derived from, Lovecraft tales. Many of his best stories are. It's really obvious to see in It, and the Dark Tower series borrows a lot from Cosmic Horror.

Mouth of Madness was named after At the Mountains of Madness and took a lot of inspiration from The Shadow over Innsmouth. I actually didn't like Mouth of Madness much because it was a bit too loopy imo. It was more of the modern "Lovecraftian horror is people going insane and reality twisting" cliche, something I also disliked about The Void, than true Lovecraftian horror imo, but it was certainly a more concerted and dedicated effort to get the sub-genre on film than others have been.

Lovecraft, ignoring his personal flaws which certainly shine through his writing, is just not a great author to film. A lot, if not all, of his horror relies on your imagination, because let's be honest, strobe lights from the well aren't actually that scary, and no one will lose sanity from seeing a squidman with wings, no matter how big. Certainly not today, when cinema showed monsters far more inventive than that.

I am surprised directors don't focus more on his easier to film works, like the Whisperer in Darkness.

I enjoyed color out of space. I think they tried to create the Love Craft atmosphere. I think the only practical change and I am not sure if it would have worked, would have been changing the color so that it was different from every others pov. Making it debatable as they all see something different from who ever else is also seeing it.
Nicholas Cage. He did flip out several time and it seemed very out of the blue to me when it started but I don't know if that was him doing his thing or "an artistic choice". He seemed like the odd man out in the case to me. I don't think he helped or hurt this movie.
I think it's best to keep expectations low for most movies horror or other. Especial if it's an adaptation.
On the subject of horror movies and actors I prefer not to know who the actors are from other movies or tv. The lesser known the better. seeing faces I know or faces I see or have seen everywhere is very tiresome. There was a period, maybe the 90's where I thought every actor and actress looked nearly identical, yuck.

I also enjoyed The Void. I really enjoyed the claustrophobia and dread of what could be further ahead just out of site.
I really like the less is more approach to horror/monster movies.
More of that please.

I'd like to see more love craft adapted. I found a bunch of his stories on MP3 (By horrorbabble) on Bandcamp. Whisper in the dark, the thing on the doorstep were a lot of fun.

For faithful movie adaptations of Lovecraft the HP Lovecraft Historical society ones are hard to beat. https://www.hplhs.org/
Their Call of Cthulhu is excellent, made to look like a 1920s silent movie. The section on R'lyeh is straight out of the Cabinet of Dr Caligari. They've also done a good Whisperer in Darkness film, and some excellent audio dramas.

The BBC has recently done two audio dramas adapted in the style of modern true crime podcasts: The case of Charles Dexter Ward and the Whisperer in Darkness. Both are available for free from the BBC sounds app.

I also quite like Dagon, which is basically a shlocky adaptation of the Shadow over Innsmouth by Stuart Gordon (the writer/director of Re-Animator and From Beyond).

From Beyond is my favourite Lovecraft story, and it has had some adaptations, including one with Jeffrey Coombs, but it's still something I think Hollywood would have a hard time imagining.

So, having seen the film now... It's actually not as bad as I expected.

As a Lovecraft movie, it's a straight F. They managed to get the sense of foreboding and creepiness right (wow!), but the movie just isn't scary so much as discomforting.

As a campy b-horror flick... it's actually perfectly fine.

Nick Cage manages to restrain himself to my utter shock from being completely out there. The feth? There are movies he's been in that would have been better if he'd acted in them like he acts in Color out of Space. His somewhat off teeter demeanor as the weird family dad actually gives the movie a certain discomfort factor it would otherwise lack. Which really defines the entire film. It's not scary so much as it is, discomforting which is sort of an achievement. The movie really isn't scary though. The purple spotlight is not scary in any why whatsoever. If anything you'll roll your eyes or chuckle at it. It's not scary. But the movie does manage to build a sort of "campy" horror vibe. It's really not that Lovecraft as a final product, but it's actually not terrible as a B-Horror flick that occasionally makes you chuckle as B-Horror flicks do.

Just watched it and enjoyed it - I felt it had some good moments and atmosphere. I quite liked the end when time, space and everything started acting wierd.

I did not thinlk it was as good as Anhiliation which had some really good out there moments and a really intersting journey - and a very fethed up/scary bear-thing.

The Alpacas in the barn was almost the same as the famous shot of the dogs from the original (and truely awesome) Thing move - where it was "wierd and pissed off"

I'm also in the "Not perfect as an adaptation of the novel, but good as a movie" camp. Goes very early into "The threat is obviously real" when the novel is more like, nothing is obvious about it until the very end iirc.

 LordofHats wrote:
Lovecraft doesn't cast donkey-caves (at least, not unsympathetic dicks) as main characters

That's because he's the donkey-cave, he doesn't need anyone else .

Did you see Vivarium?
Oh, and if you want an horror movie that goes out of its way to *avoid* jump scares(but lacks ), there was The antenna. I mean, given how the shots are framed and all, I think it was a conscious decision of "We are going to make an horror movie, and we will make it scary, while making sure we get 0 jump scare!". Character is hiding from someone in a closet? You will see the person they are hiding from approaching, even the the character don't, and it'll replace the jump scare with a less gimmicky sense of foreboding and dread.

I did not thinlk it was as good as Anhiliation which had some really good out there moments and a really intersting journey - and a very fethed up/scary bear-thing.

Yeah, the bear in Annihilation was easily the eeriest part of the whole movie.

There needs to be more Roadside Picnic/Annihilation movies out there that really embrace the mindfeth.

Finally saw it (had to buy it) and found it to be a real mixed bag.

As an adaption I thought they made some genuinely positive improvements - the original short story has this weird framing device where a guy surveying the land for the new reservoir project arrives some time after the fact and has to get the story second hand from a character named Pierce. In the film, they're combined into one character, played by Elliot Knight (named Ward Phillips!), who has most of the qualities of a typical Lovecraft author avatar, but marries it to a certain heroic sensibility in order to justify the Pierce elements without being a lifelong friend of the family. He's actually a standout part of the movie. They also integrated modern technology into the story reasonably well.

There are other things though, things that distract and don't add much - there's an effort to give every kid their own distinct flavour throughout the movie and the movie doesn't really have enough time to do it justice. A lot of the key story beats from the original story do appear or are at least referenced to but sometimes they feel out of order (the bit with the fruit and vegetables was actually included, but happens long after the truly weird stuff gets into full swing).

Overall as an adaption it's a mediocre effort, as an actual movie though, it's got some proper stand out problems:



All that said... it was actually a solid B movie. The CGI clearly struggled but the art direction and cinematography shone through. Like Guyver 2 or Battle L.A. I would definitely watch again and probably enjoy it more. Tommy Chong was surprisingly great.

I just saw it, and honestly I was blown away with how good it was. I think it’s my new favorite film.

 LordofHats wrote:
I think Lovecraft isn't hard to commit to film, but rather doing it proper is an antithesis to modern horror movie pastiche.

Lovecraft doesn't show you his monsters much. Modern horror is like a wheres Waldo book that wants you to see Waldo and prints him on the page 10x bigger than anything else.

Lovecraft lets a creepy atmosphere and sense of foreboding do that for you, something most horror movies seem to go out of their way to not do and instead just throw jump scares at you.

Lovecraft doesn't cast donkey-caves (at least, not unsympathetic dicks) as main characters, which most horror movies do like they're afraid to let anyone halfway decent suffer.

Worst of all, I saw Nicholas Cage was in this movie and knew it would be gak because he's Nicholas Cage and I can't fathom who decided to make a Lovecraftian horror film based on one of his best stories and thought "this movie needs Nicholas Cage." No one will ever fething forget Wicker Man. It is a struggle to take the man seriously as an actor. I only got to take Keanu Reeves serious after decades of Bill and Ted being the first thing I think of when he stared in John Wick and proved he can be a serious actor in the right kind of film.

So, that rant out of the way, I don't think it's impossible. The Thing was great Lovecraftian horror, and Harbinger Down was a good (if very repetitive) throwback to that movie. The Void kind of worked, even as a flawed film, and Annihilation was more like the Color out of Space than the book it was supposedly based on and was okay. Quiet Place has certain elements of the sub-genre right too, and Sinister did atmosphere right and is probably the thing most blatantly missing in modern horror. EDIT: There's also the Ruin, which is very effective in using Lovecraftian themes in a more modern kind of film.

I think the issue really is that a good movie in Lovecraftian style is the opposite of a very stagnant modern horror genre, which is not taken seriously by most directors, critics, actors, or executives and is generally treated like a genre for "low budget high return" gambles.

Huh, here I was actually thinking that in terms of modern films, almost all my favorite ones from the past decade have been either independent, original horror or sci-fi, or a blend of both (like Annihilation, which you mentioned).

I think part of the reason I disagree with The Thing as particularly Lovecraftian is that its central conceit of figuring out "the rules of the monster", solving the mystery, and defeating it is essentially the antithesis of what makes Lovecraft scary. And almost all of Lovecraft's real horror potential comes from watching a character think they've done that thing, and then slowly realize that he's only seeing one tiny, infinitesimal part of the truth and the revelation of the whole truth either consumes or destroys them.

Something like Hereditary, Annihilation, heck even some sci-fi like Ex Machina seems to embody that spirit better than a lot of the classically beloved monster horror movies, exactly because they deny the moment of catharsis and getting to feel like you're a clever boy for figuring it all out. Like you said, the monsters in lovecraft were kind of window dressing, and mostly served to show how vast and incomprehensibly complex the system the main character was peering into was.

solving the mystery, and defeating it is essentially the antithesis of what makes Lovecraft scary

This is honestly something of a modern conceit.

In the Dunwich Horror, the Lovecraftian monster is both understandable in human terms and defeated by the national guard.

In At the Mountains of Madness, the Lovecraftian monsters are understandable in human terms and only indefeatable because a research expedition didn't bring any guns.

Cthulu is 'beaten' in Call of Cthulu by ramming a boat into him.

The idea that Lovecraftian monsters are unknowable and indefeatable is something invented after Lovecraft, and not something his actual works support. The horror of his stories is the cosmic implications of his monsters, the revelation of man's insignificance in the broader span of the universe. It's not that his monsters and horrors can't be understood or beaten, it's that understanding and beating them is irrelevant frivelously human thinking. Go ahead and understand that one thing. Beat that one monster. Survive dipping your toes in the ocean. You're still meaningless in the universe and there's yet more things you don't yet know around the corner and the moment you think you have a handle on it something else will come along and tear your understanding asunder. Civilizations greater than us have risen and fallen in the uncaring void and we will be no different, ultimately forgotten but for some tiny shard of evidence we once existed.

That and lots and lots of super racist undertones, but we can just set those aside for now XD

 LordofHats wrote:

solving the mystery, and defeating it is essentially the antithesis of what makes Lovecraft scary

This is honestly something of a modern conceit.

In the Dunwich Horror, the Lovecraftian monster is both understandable in human terms and defeated by the national guard.

In At the Mountains of Madness, the Lovecraftian monsters are understandable in human terms and only indefeatable because a research expedition didn't bring any guns.

Cthulu is 'beaten' in Call of Cthulu by ramming a boat into him.

The idea that Lovecraftian monsters are unknowable and indefeatable is something invented after Lovecraft, and not something his actual works support. The horror of his stories is the cosmic implications of his monsters, the revelation of man's insignificance in the broader span of the universe. It's not that his monsters and horrors can't be understood or beaten, it's that understanding and beating them is irrelevant frivelously human thinking. Go ahead and understand that one thing. Beat that one monster. Survive dipping your toes in the ocean. You're still meaningless in the universe and there's yet more things you don't yet know around the corner and the moment you think you have a handle on it something else will come along and tear your understanding asunder. Civilizations greater than us have risen and fallen in the uncaring void and we will be no different, ultimately forgotten but for some tiny shard of evidence we once existed.

That and lots and lots of super racist undertones, but we can just set those aside for now XD

Concerning these "defeats". None of that is right, to be quite frank.

Mountains, the idea of "beating" a Shoggoth is downright laughable and certainly not within anyone's capability and certainly not with a gun.
Cthulhu doesn't even register the boat, it's the misaligned planets that put him back to sleep. These are very common errors that get repeated quite often unfortunately.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Concerning these "defeats". None of that is right, to be quite frank.

You only addressed two of them. The Dunwich Horror has two monsters in it . One is killed by a dog and the other by an 'arcane' chemistry set (I say that because the description in the story is basically 'they threw acid on it' with lots of mystic terms used in place of 'they threw acid on it').

Mountains, the idea of "beating" a Shoggoth is downright laughable and certainly not within anyone's capability and certainly not with a gun.

Yeah I think I confused the shape shifters with the Elder Things, who are just aliens who got wrecked. Maybe a bit beside the point either way, given that The Thing is a blatant reference to a Shoggoth mixed with an Elder Thing mixed with general body horror. It's definitely Lovecraftian, and that's without even mentioning the pedigree of being based on a story written by an editor of Weird Tales who was very clearly writing in Lovecraft's vein.

Cthulhu doesn't even register the boat, it's the misaligned planets that put him back to sleep.

In Call of Cthulu, Cthulu starts sleep walking a bit, gets bonked in the head, and sinks back into the sea. And that's all the story says at the end. That and the typical survivors go crazy realizing their own cosmic insignificance. The story does say something about the stars being right, but that's just what wakes Cthulu a wee bit (supposedly). Alignments have no mention in the story outside of cult talk about how he can be awoken, and Lovecraft's cultists are rarely anymore right than his melancholic scholars.

What your thinking of I think is actually what was published in a Delta Green source book.

These are very common errors that get repeated quite often unfortunately.

They're really not. They're literally what the stories describe, but people are generally more familiar with the Mythos build up around Lovecraft's stories than his actual stories.

All I can say is that there's a lot of cultural osmosis on this topic. On their face, none of Lovecraft's stories are about any supernatural beings. They're mostly aliens people ascribe supernatural elements to because we don't understand them (and admittedly, Lovecraft was deeply suspicious about the notion that science could explain everything, which is probably why a fair few of his stories involve throwing scholars at monsters they don't understand). The idea of any of his gods being literal gods is mostly the work of August Derleth, not H.P. Lovecraft but that's getting into the complex mess that is distinguishing between H.P. Lovecraft's small body of written works and the much wider Cthulu Mythos they inspired. EDIT: It's also probably partially the fault that Lovecraft's now most well known stories are his more purposefully esoteric ones. More people are familiar with Call of Cthulu and Dunwich Horror and their talk of 'dark gods' than Shadow out of Time or Whisperer in the Darkness and their much more overt nature as science fiction stories.

Yeah this thread is more about the one movie not the entire cthulhu mythos

Lovecraft made ample use of and maybe even popularized the unreliable narrator. Unreliable narrators mean the details of the story, or even the story in it's entirety cannot be trusted. Changing details in adaptations of lovecrafts work isn't just right it's basically encouraged.

 LordofHats wrote:
In Call of Cthulu, Cthulu starts sleep walking a bit, gets bonked in the head, and sinks back into the sea.

Yeah that part was massively anticlimatic after such a buildup, in my opinion.