Stuart Gordon and H.P. Lovecraft
A look back at four of director Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft's adaptations. Part of April's Pulp and Schlock series of stories and essays.
“The movies are so rarely great art, that if we can't appreciate great trash, there is little reason for us to go.” Pauline Kael
Before gaining notoriety as one of the most anarchic genre filmmakers of his time, Stuart Gordon (1947-2020) was the most anarchic theatre producer of the late 1960s. A friend and early collaborator of fellow Chicago resident David Mamet, Gordon directed Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago for his Organic Theatre Company in 1974, which also staged productions of Ray Bradbury’s The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan during the same decade. Yet, it was Gordon’s earlier work with the Screw Theatre company he formed with his wife that would hint at the rule-breaking disregard for censorship he’d bring to Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986), his first two films, and the ones that remain as giddily excessive as when they were first released to shocked but appreciative critics and audiences in the mid-80s.
The Game Show, a 1968 stage show, was Gordon’s attack on apathy that had audience members fooled into thinking people seated amongst them were being beaten, raped and verbally abused (the victims were plants), until the unsuspecting members of the audience rioted and put a stop to the show. That same summer, Gordon staged Peter Pan in an acid soaked hippy retelling with psychedelic light shows and nudity that resulted in him and his wife being arrested for obscenity. In both his work and activism, there’s a cyclical nature to the man, from being tear gassed at the 1968 Democratic Convention in protest against the Vietnam war to joining the picket line at the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike. He worked with David Mamet again in 2005 when the two adapted the bleak and controversial Edmond for the screen, and returned to directing theatre in 2009, staging Re-Animator: The Musical in 2011, when he showered the audience nightly with fake blood. He had the rebel spirit of Larry Cohen but was far more censor-baiting in his depictions of sexual violence on screen; after Re-Animator was released unrated and uncut, the MPAA kicked back by cutting Gordon’s sophomore effort, From Beyond to ribbons. Fortunately, Gordon recovered the missing film and restored it for a Blu-Ray release.
If you like schlock with brains, then he’s in bed with Mario Bava, Larry Cohen and Joe Dante. The difference with Gordon’s horror pictures, though, is that you get an uneasy feeling as soon as the credits roll and his name appears. You know he’s going to force you to react any way he can, whether it be by making you laugh out loud, reach for the sick bag, cover your eyes or hit the rewind button. His films are by turns outrageous, inventive and shocking, and when he wasn’t busy laying on the gore in Dolls (1987), The Pit and the Pendulum (1991), Castle Freak (1995) and Dagon (2001), he was either writing equally gross horror movies for his sometime collaborative partner Brian Yuzna with The Dentist (1996), creating Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) for Disney, or directing bonkers science fiction fare like Robot Jox (1990), Fortress (1992) and Space Truckers (1996). However, of the thirteen films he directed, his finest efforts have been the four features that took inspiration from his literary hero, H. P. Lovecraft.
Re-Animator (1985)
Based on ‘Herbert West — Reanimator’ (originally published under the title ‘Grewsome Tales’ in Home Brew Vol.1, Nos.1-6 February-July, 1922)
“My friend believed that artificial reanimation of the dead can depend only on the condition of the tissues; and that unless actual decomposition has set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may with suitable measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion known as life.”
Wildly exploitative horror films aren’t usually as well regarded as Gordon’s directorial debut, an adaptation of a serialised story that Lovecraft himself detested. But Re-Animator, when it played at Cannes, had critics like Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert praising the director for his desire to make a very good film within a genre not known for its quality.
Gordon’s original vision for Re-Animator was as a short episodic TV series more in keeping with Lovecraft’s story and setting. When lack of funding and interest scuppered that idea, he secured $900,000 from Charles Band’s Empire Pictures to make a feature instead, and even though Lovecraft purists hated his take on their cherished author, Gordon achieved what he set out to do: introduce horror film fans to Lovecraft’s literature in the same way Roger Corman had introduced Poe to Gordon through his cycle of adaptations in the 1960s. The film takes the bare bones of the story, introduces a female character (bravely played by Barbara Crampton) solely for her to be defiled, and instils a counter-culture sense of anything goes into its story of a deranged medical student playing God with a dead cat and the college dean.
As funny and as anarchic as a horror film can get, Re-Animator crashed a decade that was dominated by the stalk and slasher film. The Friday the 13th series alone spawned eight films between 1980 and 1989, Halloween hit sequel number five by the end of the 80s, and Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street franchise already had three films under its belt before going full guns in the 1990s. In amongst these were the imitators, most of which had at least one sequel to their name and all as interchangeable as the non-actors who lined up to be murdered in the goriest ways possible: Prom Night (1980), The Slumber Party Massacre (1982), Sleepaway Camp (1983), and Sorority House Massacre (1986) were cynical bandwagon jumping quickies, while Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) was a pointless sequel that paled in insignificance when compared to the original. Occasionally, an unexpected gem like Basket Case (1982) would rear its head from out of the grindhouse circuit, while the major studios did their bit by producing glossy hits like Body Double (1984) and Fatal Attraction (1987). Re-Animator, however, didn’t even try to fit in. Its source material came from a writer who was active in the early twentieth century, and not the picture that came before. It had more in common with lurid, camp 1970s fare like The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) or more current pictures that wore their B-movie influences on their sleeves, like 1981’s An American Werewolf in London. It was a weird and unfashionable mad scientist movie with a score that stole from Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho (1960), a jaw clenching and impassioned performance from Jeffrey Combs, and a horror sight gag (a decapitated head giving head) to rival the Farewell to Arms joke in Evil Dead II (1987). The 24 gallons of blood that splattered the walls, floors and faces throughout its 86 minute running time earned it immediate thumbs up from horror fans, while the oral sex scene gave it the notoriety that cemented its place in cinema history.
Choosing to release the film unrated to avoid the extensive cuts demanded by the MPAA to secure an R rating, Gordon was able to take what he’d done in theatre and transpose it to the cinema screen. For his next film, he was contractually obliged to have the film rated, and the MPAA, pissed off at how far he’d gone with his first feature, chopped his second Lovecraft adaptation, From Beyond, to ribbons.
From Beyond (1986)
Based on ‘From Beyond’ (originally published in The Fantasy Fan Vol.1, No.10, June 1934)
“We shall overlap time, space, and dimensions, and without bodily motion peer to the bottom of creation.”
Gordon planned for Dagon to be his second picture, but when producer Charles Band rejected the idea because he thought people turning into fish was a dumb idea, producer and co-scripter Brian Yuzna chose to film Lovecraft’s ‘From Beyond’ instead. But before From Beyond went into production, Band gave Gordon the script for Dolls, a fun horror picture that Gordon filmed first, but eventually met with lukewarm reviews when it was released the year after From Beyond.
Jeffrey Combs returns to play Dr. Crawford Tillinghast, the apprentice to Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel), the inventor of the Resonator, a machine that can give the ability to see beyond perceptible reality. Barbara Crampton plays Dr. Katherine McMichaels, the psychiatrist treating Tillinghast after Pretorius’s experiments and subsequent death cause Tillinghast to be wrongfully diagnosed as insane. Like Re-Animator, Crampton’s character is added to flesh out the story, but mainly to bring some kinkiness to the film. Pretorius, too, is discovered to be a sadist and pervert, and his want for sexual gratification beyond what the realms of our world can offer lead film down some Cronenbergian body horror explorations. Here’s where the film veers off the Lovecraft path, particularly in the middle before it gets back on track with a stunning, gory, effects laden finale.
Taking its visuals from the page, Gordon and cinematographer Mac Ahlberg painted From Beyond in garish purple and pink lighting, in contrast to the medical greens and whites of Re-Animator. The ultraviolet hue described by the narrator in Lovecraft’s story is awash throughout the film, and the overall effect brings to life the author’s cosmic imaginings more effectively than does its predecessor. It feels more like a genuine Lovecraft adaptation, especially during the scenes with the worm-like creatures floating around once Tillinghast’s pineal gland has been aroused.
Well worth seeking out, even though, for all its gore and excess, it feels weirdly more conventional than Re-Animator. The final shot of McMichaels’ mind fracturing in front of concerned onlookers is pure Lovecraft in the sense of “I’ve seen too much and now I’ve toppled over the brink of insanity.”
Castle Freak (1995)
Based on elements of ‘The Outsider’ (originally published in Weird Tales, April 1926) and ‘The Rats in the Walls’ (originally published in Weird Tales, March 1924)
“I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame.”
Castle Freak is the product of two ideas that Gordon and screenwriter Dennis Paoli turned successfully into a feature length film. Looking for a project for a low-budget unrated shocker, Gordon noticed a poster in Charles Band’s office depicting a deformed man being whipped by a woman, and when he suggested turning it into a film, Band gave him the go-ahead as long as it had a castle and a freak in it. Though Gordon went on to deny the film was based on Lovecraft’s ‘The Outsider,’ it’s hard not to notice that the premise is similar, but with added characters and a fleshed out plot that owes a nod to Stephen King’s The Shining.
Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton play John and Susan Reilly, an unhappily married couple (John is a recovering alcoholic responsible for the car crash that killed their infant son and blinded their daughter, Rebecca) who, along with Rebecca (Jessica Dollarhide), inherit a castle in rural Italy. Unfortunately for them, the son of the deceased owner, a sadistic duchess who imprisoned and tortured him as a way of getting revenge on the American G.I. who left her holding the baby, has been left behind and forgotten in the bowels of the castle. Rebecca is the only one of the three who has come into contact with him and is more aware of what is happening than her bickering parents. Cue a lot of rationalising of strange goings on by John and Susan, and every genre trope we’ve come to expect from a horror movie; which is exactly why this film is such a success. Gordon doesn’t have time for the cosmic weirdness that made From Beyond so Lovecraftian, and his claim that he wasn’t making a Lovecraft film with Castle Freak holds more weight as the film progresses. It’s a simply made, hugely entertaining horror film with one particularly graphic scene of sexual violence, a good script by Re-Animator and From Beyond screenwriter Dennis Paoli and, in Combs’ portrayal of John Reilly, a man so reprehensible he brings a hooker into his family home whilst wallowing in self-pity.
Brian De Palma once said he didn’t appreciate Stanley Kubrick’s approach to The Shining because Kubrick, in turn, seemed to station himself above the tropes that make a horror film work. Castle Freak, on the other hand, delights in the tropes at its disposal, thunderclaps, gross-out gore, and all.
Dagon (2001)
Based on ‘Dagon’ (originally published in The Vagrant No.11, November 1919) and ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ (originally published in book form in 1936)
"We shall dive down into black abysses . . . and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.”
The most faithful of Gordon’s Lovecraft adaptations, Dagon may lack the budget that could have realised the Deep Ones more effectively onscreen, but the town of Imboca that stands in for Innsmouth is as close to how one imagines it when reading Lovecraft’s most unnerving story. Shot on location in Spain and produced by Brian Yuzna’s Fantastic Factory, the foreign setting adds to the otherness of Lovecraft’s tale. Ezra Godden and Raquel Morono play Paul and Barbara, a young couple who find themselves stranded in a fishing port when their boat capsizes, killing their friend Howard and leaving fellow passenger Vicki at the mercy of Dagon, a fertility god that demands the people of Imboca sacrifice women to produce hybrid offspring in return for gold and the fish that keep the community’s economy thriving.
A welcome reunion that saw Gordon reteaming with Yuzna and screenwriter Dennis Paoli, this is a highlight in his filmography. The scenes are soundtracked by the incessant rainfall, rushing tides, and clicks and whistles of the cephalopodic residents as Paul splashes around in search of Barbara after she’s taken captive by the town’s web-fingered priest. Instantly relatable, Paul is reminiscent of Evil Dead’s Ash; an average Joe forced into playing the hero while he struggles to keep his glasses from sliding off his nose and into a puddle. He attempts to disguise his lack of courage by calling his tormenters motherfuckers and brandishing a pretty ineffectual pocket knife. He is the archetypal Lovecraft antihero; always on the cusp of losing his mind in the face of unfathomable horror, bereft of the heroic qualities found in Robert E. Howard’s superhuman male warriors and left with only a grasp of the logic that is being tested by the frog eyed freaks out to kill him.
Dagon is one of those pictures that reaches way beyond its budget and comes out on top, and what it lacks in plot (the finale throws in a needless twist as if trying to give what is essentially a prolonged chase sequence more depth), it makes up for in a final act that offers a glimpse of Dagon as Barbara is offered up for sacrifice. This is top tier Gordon at his Lovecraftian best.
For more content on Stuart Gordon, including interviews and analyses of the films covered here, check out these interviews in Cineaste, Paste and Sci Fi Now.
All of Gordon’s films are worth your while, but of his non-Lovecraft films, I’d especially recommend Dolls (1987), Robot Jox (1989), The Pit and the Pendulum (1991), Fortress (1992), Space Truckers (1996), Edmond (2005) and Stuck (2007).