Prince of Darkness (1987)

"Hello? Hello. I've got a message for you, and you're not going to like it. ... Pray for death."

When a priest investigates the death of another priest, he discovers a hidden chamber in an abandoned California church. Known only to an ancient, secret order of priests called the Brotherhood of Sleep, this chamber has housed a terrible artifact for five-hundred years, keeping its existence hidden from the world, and even the Catholic Church itself.

It is pure evil, concentrated, and incredibly ancient. It is Satan, the son of an evil god who walked the Earth before time began. He was contained in this artifact millions of years ago to await a time when he will be unleashed up on the world to open the door for the return of his father. the Anti-God.

The priest consults with a physicist friend, and they bring together the brightest young minds in the fields of theoretical and applied physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, theology, ancient languages and texts, and other subjects to study the artifact. The goal is to prove scientifically what the priest knows through his faith - that evil is a real, fundamental force, and it is imprisoned in the artifact, working to find its way out and be reborn.

The evil force reaches out from its containment to infect those susceptible to its growing power and influence. Moving objects by its conscious thoughts. Causing the local homeless population to stand guard around the church, killing anyone who tries to leave. Controlling the creeping things that crawl upon the Earth. Preparing a vessel for the evil's return.

The priest and the assembled scholars are all that stand between the world and the incomprehensible evil within the artifact. Together, they must stay alive long enough to understand the evil force, unlock the mystery of the recurring dream shared by the Brotherhood of Sleep, and keep the Prince of Darkness from reigning over the Earth.

Prince of Darkness is one of John Carpenter's most underrated films. Some people may be put off by the "Satan in a jar" concept, which could seem silly at first blush, and fail to give the movie a chance. But if you go along with what the movie is telling you, and go a little deeper than the four-word elevator pitch above, you will find that it's a terrifying, cosmic-scale, Lovecraftian story with implications beyond our normal comprehension of evil, religion, science, and reality.

The movie is full of dreamy, atmospheric, creepy visuals, from the swirling green substance in the artifact, to the motionless homeless people standing vigil outside the church, to the insects crawling everywhere the evil touches, to the terribly unsettling VHS-quality recurring dream everyone experiences. And Carpenter's airy, bouncy, chorus-y synth score - possibly his very best work on the keyboards - is tailor-made to set you on edge and open you to possibilities you had never imagined.

Carpenter considers Prince of Darkness a part of a loose trilogy of apocalyptic films he has created, along with The Thing and In The Mouth of Madness. These films have very different mechanisms for bringing about the end of the world, but they share a number of commonalities. Each has themes of something alien and evil entering our world, an isolated few protagonists being the only ones who know what is happening, an unsettling, hopeless tone, and a sense of reality breaking down in some ways. And each of these movies is the work of a true "master of horror" at the top of his game. Highly recommended.

The Curse (1987)

What do Wesley Crusher, Bo Duke, and H.P. Lovecraft have in common? That would be The Curse, a low budget adaptation of Lovecraft's "The Colour Out Of Space." This little gem was directed by David Keith, who is mostly an actor, and featured special effects supervised by none other than Italian gore movie director Lucio Fulci (credited here as "Louis" Fulci.) Also, the Producer's name is Ovidio G. Assonitis, which never failed to make me laugh when it came on screen.

Young Zach Hayes (Wil Wheaton just before he donned his rainbow-y Star Trek: TNG uniform), his little sister (played by Wheaton's real-life sister Amy), and their mousy mother live with Zach's step-father Nathan and Nathan's jerk-ass son Cyrus on a small farm in Tennessee. Their lives are changed when a strange glowing meteor crashes into their field.

The meteor diminishes in size until it disappears, leaving the "experts" to determine that it was nothing more than a frozen chunk of waste released from an airliner. (See also Joe Dirt. Or don't.) Whatever the case, the meteor causes their fruits and vegetables to grow extra large. The joy over the bumper crop is short-lived, however, as slicing into these crops reveals loads of hideous maggots and worms wriggling inside. Eww.

The effect of the meteor on the family is even worse (well, arguably). As they drink contaminated water, they grow blisters and sores on their faces and basically lose their minds. Zach is able to escape this fate by drinking water and eating food bought from the grocery store, but his poor mother has to be locked in the basement and his sister spends most of the movie sick in bed.

Also entangled in the plot are the doctor next door, a local real estate agent, the agent's assistant, and a representative of the Tennessee Valley Authority (played by the Dukes of Hazzard's John Schneider) who is in town to buy the farm and make it into a reservoir.

After a sluggish start, the movie ramps up to a satisfyingly tense, gloppy, gory conclusion. I was impressed by the oppressive atmosphere even before the meteor's arrival, and it only gets better after the family has devolved into madness and mutation. The Curse boasts knife-wielding maniac attacks, dog attacks, horse attacks, and even chicken attacks.  If you are a Lovecraft fan who has exhausted all of the better known story adaptations and can get past the budgetary limitations, you'll find this one to be a pleasant surprise.

Re-Animator (1995)

You would think Re-Animator, another Lovecraft adaptation from director Stuart Gordon (Dagon), would be a hard movie to like. It is intensely gory and loaded to the gills with horribly disfigured naked zombies, cats being brought repeatedly in and out of life, and a severed head interacting with one young lady like something from a Cannibal Corpse album cover. To say it's politically incorrect is to way understate things. But if you're a horror fan and you have a sense of humor, you'll no doubt agree with me - it's just so danged fun!

When eager, idealistic Miskatonic University med student Dan Cain takes on a roommate in the brilliant but unhinged Herbert West, Dan's life becomes a wide-awake nightmare in a matter of days. He soon finds his cat dead, re-animated, re-killed, and re-re-animated. This is just the beginning of the downward spiral of horror that sees the revocation of his student loan, a fight with a super-strong zombie, his future father-in-law's death and re-animation as a mindless monster, mind-controlled zombies, and the awful discovery that West's serum works on body parts as well as whole bodies. It's an eye-popping, bone saw-whirring, head-squashing tarantella of death and un-death.

Smug, cruel, manipulative, and mean, the title character of Herbert West would be repugnant and unlikable if it weren't for the talents of lead actor Jeffrey Combs. He brings an intensity and enthusiasm to the character that makes him not only a palatable screen presence who drives the plot forward, but a delightfully devilish protagonist you can really root for despite the horrible things he does. The whole movie lives and dies (and lives again!) by Combs' performance, and he carries the movie easily.

If you are squeamish, subscribe to Cat Fancy, or can't take a joke, you should give this one a pass. If you like H.P Lovecraft's stories and think buckets of gore can be pretty funny, then Re-Animator is the movie for you. It is absolutely one of the best zombie movies of the 80s and among the funniest gross-out horror movies ever.

Dagon (2001)

Dagon is a direct-to-DVD gem from director and H.P. Lovecraft specialist Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond) that adapts not so much the story from which the film gets its name, but The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Like with Die, Monster, Die!, the story is moved from its original New England location - this time to the fictional fishing village of Imboca, Spain. (Unlike yesterday's movie, the relocation of the setting probably had more to do with the Spanish cast, crew, shooting locations, and financial backing than simply aesthetic reasons. Certainly understandable for a lower budget movie like Dagon.)

Four Americans are shipwrecked on the sharp rocks just off the coast of Spain. When Paul and Barbara go ashore for help, they find the village of Imboca, which is populated with the hideously deformed worshippers of the sea deity Dagon. They are chased through the village by the inhuman Imbocans, culminating in a terrible ritual in the catacombs below the blasphemous church of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. There, Paul is to be made the bridegroom of Dagon's high priestess, and Barbara is to be made Dagon's unwilling lover.

As with most Lovecraft adaptations, there are major differences between the movie and the story. But unlike so many movies, in the hands of a director who gets it Dagon exhibits just the right spirit of bleak terror and existential dread. The acting from the cast of Spanish unknowns (save for the late Paco Rabal, whose name I know but I'm not sure why) is better than you might expect. The physical creature effects and special effects makeup are really fantastic. Particularly excellent is the portrayal of "that Innsmouth look" (or Imboca look, in the case of the movie) that the townsfolk tend to have - pale, clammy looking skin, hollow eyes, subtle (and not-so-subtle) gill slits, and even tentacles. The only missteps, effects wise, are a couple of instances of less-than-stellar CGI tentacles that are shown very briefly. But for the most part, this sort of thing is done practically, like back in the good old days, and it serves the movie well.

The only thing that's missing from this movie is the presence of Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, who both appear in Stuart Gordon's other Lovecraft movies. Otherwise, it has all the creepiness, nihilism, and gore it needs to put it on the short list of good HPL adaptations. If you're a fan of Lovecraft's work, or good monster-y horror in general, don't overlook Dagon.

Die, Monster, Die! (1965)

In Die, Monster, Die!, based on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out Of Space," smug American Stephen Reinhart visits his new girlfriend Susan Witley at her family's mansion in Arkham, England.  (It is unclear why the story's original New England location was moved across the pond.) There he finds Susan's wheelchair-bound (or is he?) father Nahum Witley (Boris Karloff) to be hiding a horrible secret that has to do with a maid's disappearance, Susan's mother's extreme sensitivity to light, and a charred, scarred, dead, and decaying area of land near the Witley house.

The vague descriptions of H.P. Lovecraft's unnamable, indescribable horrors make his stories notoriously difficult to adapt to the screen.  In the case of Die, Monster, Die! (as overblown a title as any movie has ever had), the screenwriter seems to have seized on the concept from the short story of plants growing overlarge near the Witley house and run with it.  Regrettably, this leaves us with a rather conventional plot that has more to do with irradiated plants and people attacking the innocent than the truly alien monster in Lovecraft's original story.

Still, the movie is atmospheric and creepy, especially when the main characters explore the enormous, mysterious Witley house.  The noxious green glow from the greenhouse that holds the family's twisted secret is chilling (and may have inspired a scene in John Carpenter's love letter to Lovecraft, In The Mouth Of Madness).  However, as is so often the case with Lovecraft movies, when monster makes its appearance, it is a bit of a letdown.

If you are a fan of 60s horror and don't mind a few hokey effects mixed in with your atmospheric cinematography, Die, Monster, Die! is worth a shot.  If you are looking for a faithful Lovecraft adaptation, however, you will be disappointed.