We decided to catch “HP Lovecraft: The Terror Within” at the 1:30pm timeslot on Saturday. The theater had 3 separate screens going the whole time, and this one happened to be in the smaller theater upstairs. The movie was a cross between MTV Road Rules and A Shadow Over Innsmouth. The concept of the movie was interesting: what if Lovecraft had traveled Europe and gotten some ideas for his stories from eastern European coastal towns. It was filmed as a mock documentary (also an interesting idea, if not a little played out since the Blair Witch Project). The movie focused a little too much on the bickering of the traveling band of researchers in an RV. Justine and I were getting restless about 40 minutes into the movie which twice that length.
We were a little bored during that movie, but were REALLY looking forward to the next timeslot, which featured a huge block of “shorts”. These movies are mostly amateur films in lengths of 5 – 40 minutes. The festival featured 2 different blocks of short films and this was the first one. There were too many to mention each one, but of the highlights are the following:
- Antiques Road Show: Arkham Mass. (7 min) – This was a very funny spoof of the PBS show of the same name, featuring horrible arcane items of pure eee-vil. The host eventually goes crazy and runs off the stage. Excellent chuckles.
- Call of Cthulhu (47 min) – This was the “feature” short of the block that remade the classic Lovecraft tale into a 1920s style silent film. It was amazingly well done. The directors and writers were in the audience and fielded a Q&A session after the movie. The made the film for under $50K and it looked like a million bucks.
- Experiment 17 (5 min) – This film combine historic Nazi film footage with a background story of Lovecraftian proportions. The film makers explored the idea of “what if Hitler found the Necronomicon?” The effects were interesting and the costumes and props looked great.
- The Gibbering of Howard Ghormley (12:20) – Filmed in South Carolina, this film plays with concepts of time and reality. Very well done. Justine and I both enjoyed this one.
And that was Day 2. Around 10 movies in one day and we were ready for bed. We visited the dealers room and made our way back to the hotel for the night.
-Dave
