The United Federation of Charles

As a long-time Doctor Who fan, I have wanted to do a proper review of the series but, really, the jumping on point for that was years ago and requires a dedication to fandom which is difficult when you are also a science fiction author. I wanted to see this special at the local theater with my wife but she broke her leg about the time I was going to do so.

I, thus, haven't seen it until now.

Day of the Doctor is the 50th anniversary celebration of Doctor Who, as a result I will take a short while to talk about my Whovian credentials. I first saw Doctor Who when I was a wee tot on PBS and fell in love with the series.

This episode has a fez, therefore it is awesome.

It was the Fourth Doctor and I would acquaint myself with the Fifth Doctor's adventures on VHS at my local library. Eventually, the creation of the DVD allowed me to view the Doctor's adventures for the first time in order--or, at least, as much order as my budget and the release schedule allowed.

I'm even acquainted with the audio and lost episodes of the 1st two Doctors, having a decent understanding of why they captured the public's imagination. I read some of the novels but, honestly, the ones I read were mostly rubbish (or simply too WEIRD to wrap my head around).

Oh yes, and I watched the new series too. I'm still catching up with that on Netflix but the 11th Doctor is something of a mystery to me. So, knowing that, I still chose to watch Day of the Doctor so I could appreciate its importance to the milestone. For causal fans, Day of the Doctor is the end to the "Time War" arc started with "Rose" and which has influenced the franchise for numerous seasons.

The premise of this special is the Doctor’s 10^th, 11^th, and previously unknown “War Doctor” forms are gathered together to deal with the final moment of the Time War—when the Doctor decided the only way to end it was to destroy both Time Lords as well as Daleks. Previous episodes have justified this act of genocide by making the Gallifreyans complicit in genocide every bit as much as the Daleks, with only two objections.

The three Doctors play off each other wonderfully.

This never sat right with me because genocide is not something you can paper over by saying the victims were bad. The Doctor has always attempted to treat even the Daleks, personifications of hate and war, with compassion. It's also a poor lesson for children as anyone can find a justification for destroying their enemies--it's not justifying it which is the lesson Doctor Who has always attempted to teach.

    You know, when not blowing up space fleets.

    At the risk of spoiling, Day of the Doctor retcons something which many new fans might find integral to the saga. I, on the other hand, think of this as a retpro. It examines the consequences of what it is retconning, acknowledges their place in the greater saga, and changes it in order to reaffirm the values of the series.

     It's like Abrams Star Trek films taking the time to remind fans that war and explosions are the opposite of what the Federation is about by visiting a new planet to make peace between two feuding native groups. Or the X-men movies doing a scene where humans and mutants take the time to appreciate each other's company. It may not be what the work is famous for, but it's what it's about.

Jenna Coleman acquits herself quite well too.

That bit of saccharine out of the way, Day of the Doctor isn’t the greatest Doctor Who episode ever. I maintain that is Dalek, followed by Genesis of the Daleks’ final episode. The plot is more or less just an excuse to get the three Doctors together and the absence of Christopher Eccelston is conspicuous (even if it was never likely to happen).

Ironically, the best parts of the episode deal with John Hurt's Doctor who many fans (wrongly) speculated to be the Valeyard. John Hurt does a wonderful job of showing why an older Doctor may be superior to the current younger-ones we have. At the very least, he shows why they're just as good.

A weary tired figure, he is every bit the kind of respectable gentleman who fans of the 1st, 3rd, and 7th have been missing for a very long time. He is the Doctor who fought in the Time War but if he is unworthy of the name Doctor, he doesn't display why here. I'm kind of sad we never got to see the War Doctor's adventures since he seems like he'd be a fun guy to follow around (well, maybe not "fun" but interesting).

Indeed, the central conflict of the episode is as much the older Doctor commenting on how the childishness of his current incarnations. While this seems ludicrous, Doctor Who being a series known for its whimsy, I think this is powerful since there's been a moral dissonance in many nuWho episodes. The Doctor jokes, plays around, and laughs when people are dying. The War Doctor has a sense of humor but he has respect for circumstances.

I hope we get that back.

Billie Piper has a tendency to play omnipotent blonde girls.

The supporting cast does an amiable job as well. Billie Piper's role as the Moment is more entertaining to me than most of her run as the archetypal NuWho Companion. Jenna Coleman's Clara Oswald is cute as a button, making me want to watch her episodes. I was also fond of the new female-run UNIT. Unfortunately, for the state of gender everywhere, they have even more idiot moments than the one run by the early Brigadier.

In conclusion, it's not the best episode of Doctor Who ever but it's something that every fan has to see. It's a fitting emotional conclusion to the Time War story and also "gets" the series, which is something not all episodes can make a claim to do. I dare you not to feel moved when we meet the Collector and the final "power shot" of Doctors.

9.5/10

    The X-men franchise had, with the exception of The Wolverine, seemingly run its course by the time this movie was announced. X-men: The Last Stand was widely believed to have killed the franchise and X-men Origins: Wolverine was beating nails into it. X-men: First Class was good but didn't reverse the damage done to the franchise's reputation.

    This one is a time-travel story.

    Hmm, dare they actually press the retcon button in-universe? That was the question which hung in my mind during all of this. I got my answer at the end of the movie but it doesn't really matter as the larger question of the movie is--is it good? All the retcons in the world won't fix bad storytelling.

    Short answer: Yes.

Ellen Page is awesome and a perfect Kitty Pryde. My teenage self is crushing on her.

Long answer: It's the best of the X-men movies so far, better than X-men 2 and First Class put together. I'd argue that it's about middle-of-the-road for the Marvel movies, which is a great accomplishment given the Fox movies had been running on autopilot for some time now. Certainly, it's better than Thor: The Dark World.

The premise of Days of Future Past is one of the classic stories of the X-men comic series. The robotic Sentinels have taken over the world and established a Nazi-influenced rule where humans are herded into camps, separated from 'pure' into groups based on the possibility of producing a mutant, exterminated, and that's it. It's a wonderfully dark future where the sun never shines ala The Matrix and humanity is on its last legs.

Charles Xavier as a stand-in for traumatized Vietnam vets is a clever bit--inappropriate, but clever.

    How bad have things gotten? Magneto and Charles Xavier have banded together, both of them putting aside their differences to realize the other had a point. Unfortunately, it's too late for such an alliance to have an affect.

    In a contradiction of every depiction of Amazo, the Super-Adaptoid, and other robots possessing the powers of multiple X-men--the new Nimrod class of Sentinel is capable of killing heroes. They really ARE too powerful for the X-men to fight. While we know they'll all get retconned away, the danger of the Sentinels is brought home by the number of mutants we see killed on-screen.

    I liked the band of mutants assembled to serve as the de-facto X-Force of the films. Blink, Kitty Pryde, Colossus, Bishop, Iceman, Sunspot, and Warpath were never a team in the comics but they work well together in the movie. Even if most of them barely have any dialogue, their fight scenes are a visual treat to behold. We also get a sense of a generation growing up in the aftermath of an apocalypse (no, not the big blue one).

The fact Fassbender is wearing that outfit unironically shows this movie has the courage of its convictions (it's actually better than the last movie's).

Well, one of the mutants (Ellen Page's Kitty Pryde in this case) has developed the ability to send people back in time telepathically. I'm not sure what this has to do with phasing through walls but we'll chalk it up to secondary mutation. Charles Xavier and Magneto immediately hit on the idea of reversing this hopeless future but find the only one of them who can solve things is, of course, Wolverine. They need to stop the assassination of Bolivar Trask and Mystique being captured to harvest her DNA to build the Nimrod-type Sentinels.

The 1970s portion of the movie is just as good as the future one, giving us both hilarious fashions as well as insights into the political situation of the time. Peter Dinklage's Bolivar Trask, sadly, remains a mystery. We never get a real sense of why he wants to destroy the mutant race, only that he considers them dangerous enough that he's conducting horrific experiments on them with Major Stryker. Also, whoever put Peter Dinklage in that mustache has committed a crime against fashion.

If I had that mustache, I'd want to kill a quarter of humanity too.

The standout character of the past is Evan Peter's Quicksilver. He plays only a short role in the movie but leaves such an impression and has such cool powers, you have to wonder why the protagonists leave him behind. Superspeed is presented as so useful, you think they'd want to keep him around to make sure the world doesn't end. Yes, he has an annoying attitude but that's what you get when you're a teenager with superpowers.

The continuity-welding between the First Class portion of the franchise and the original movies is well-done. You can see how Fassbender's Magneto transformed into Ian McKellens' and how James Mcavoy's Charles Xavier turned into Patrick Stewart's. Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique was always dissonant with the near-emotionless assassin played by Rebecca Romjin Santos but manages to become a unique character in her own right.

The Sentinels are about as well-designed as I imagined they could be. A good compromise between function and iconic imagery.

    A part of me feels "iffy" about a touchy-feely Mystique when she's one of the meanest femme fatales in the Marvel Universe but this one was raised by/with Charles Xavier so that's bound to leave a mark. Besides, it was inevitable Jennifer Lawrence's "It" girl status would bleed into the movies and lead to an expanded role. She looks far more confidant playing Mystique this time around and I loved several of her "outfits."

    The Sentinels, villains we've been waiting to see in the franchise from the beginning, have only a limited role in the past section of the story. Thankfully, we get more than our share of robot-bashing action in the future part of the story but I prefer the retro-looking Sentinels to the modern ones. I also give kudos to the movie for showing that Magneto is not just a bunch of powers but is just as much a genius as Charles Xavier.

    The relationships are really the heart of the movie and while I question Beast serving as Charles Xavier's butler in the 1970s for years or the latter being devastated by the Vietnam war drafting his students (no insult intended to those who were), I really liked the way everyone was portrayed. Magneto and Charles' relationship has continued to disintegrate but there's still an underscore of respect. Raven has started to question Magneto's choice in methodology, not quite hitting the Stormtrooper fanaticism she has in X-men 1&2.

    Raven's respect for Charles hasn't completely evaporated either. Jennifer Lawrence really knocks it out of the park with her interpretation of the First Class Mystique. Even though they have a short role to play, Ellen Page's Kitty and the rest of X-Force come off as good friends--something direly missing from the rest of the movies. There's also a moment where two versions of a character meet and it's awesome.

    I expect some fans will be divided by the ending but I think, as retcons go, it was earned. The whole "immutability of fate" concept is touched upon and I say 'boo' since there's no point to the story if nothing can be changed. It felt like a love letter to an exceptionally-long movie series and I'm glad Bryan Singer is back onboard.

    In conclusion, it's X-actly what the Professor ordered.

9/10

*warning-lengthy rant ahead*

    Princess Leia has not gotten a novel until now.

    This is something which should irritate me and does, but it comes with the realization the Expanded Universe is coming to an end anyway so I really shouldn't be overly concerned. Still, I just realized how marginalized Princess Leia Organa (later Solo) has been throughout the course of the Star Wars Expanded universe.

    At the risk of spoiling dozens of novels and retro-history, the storyline of Princess Leia after Return of the Jedi has her marry Han Solo and go on to become President of the Galaxy. Which, you'd think, would not be something that marginalizes you. Unfortunately, it is. Princess Leia was always doing something political and very rarely got to do much of the action which made her famous in the first movie.

    This is no clearer than in the Leia's treatment as a Jedi Knight--or more precisely, her complete inability to become one. As the Daughter of Skywalker, Luke's twin no less, Princess Leia possesses the same godlike potential as her male relatives but never gets handled as a Jedi of note. Yes, she eventually is knighted in The Corellian Trilogy but it's a GED-equivalent where Luke says, "Yeah, you're never going to be as awesome as me but I'm going to give you this pity gold star and a red lightsaber for trying."

    No, seriously, the scene is where Luke says Leia is a Jedi Knight but not one like him who completed his training the proper way. This from a man who studied for three weeks on a swamp world with a muppet. You're telling me Leia couldn't find three weeks to study to be a Jedi Knight in the entire history of her flying around the Falcon to and from the Outer Rim territories? I'm calling nerf poodoo on that.

    The only time Princess Leia was treated as a Jedi Knight in the history of the Star Wars Expanded Universe was in Dark Empire--where she still doesn't get the opportunity to kick Emperor Palpatine's ass but certainly HELPS. I can't put this down entirely to sexism, we have the characters of Mara Jade and Jaina Solo after all, but it seemed the writers coudn't imagine more than one butt-kicking female in the series at a time.

    One of the big missed opportunities was in the fall of Jacen Solo, itself a giant clusterkark, but one conspicuously lacking in Princess Leia attempting to redeem or put down her wayward child. A lightsaber duel was even foreshadowed between them but do we get the steel of a woman who survived her planet's destruction and willing to do the things Luke can't? No, it falls to Jaina Solo to stop her brother--which, bluntly, just confuses me because she's always been more of a pilot than a duelist.

    So, after all this time, what is the first Leia novel about?

    Not that much.

    Yeah, that's the most disappointing aspect of this novel. We have a novel by an author who understands diversity--there's a bunch of Earth ethnicities, women in prominent roles, and even aliens across this book--but who puts our plucky princess in a story which isn't all that interesting. Leia finds some expatriate Alderaanian survivors have turned pirate and decides to recruit them for the Alliance. That's it. Nevermind the odd question as to why they have an Alderaanian patrol vessel they're using for piracy when the planet had no weapons--it's a serviceable enough B-plot. The problem is it's the A-plot.

    Actually, the only plot.

    Leia's marginalization occurred over time and was invisible to fans for the most part because our heroine was still doing stuff. She was never inactive. Even during the Black Fleet Crisis where she's the POTR (President of the Republic), she made inspiring speeches. So it's not like she was shuffled offstage. It's just that Leia stuff was never allowed to be as cool as the Luke and Han stuff. The couple of major villains she destroyed were a Hutt Dark Jedi (don't ask) and Kueller, a Darth Vader wannabe she cheap-shotted. Here, for me, the plot just seems to be not BIG enough for Star Wars.

    The story is entertaining enough but even in a story about the Heroes of Yavin versus pirates, everything seems a little too down-to-Earth. In the words of Casablanca (paraphrased), "The problem of a bunch of Alderaanian survivors don't matter a hill of beans in this Galactic Civil War." Even the villain is surprisingly sedate for someone who has their own gladiator arena of DOOM. It feels more like the build-up to a novel or a B-plot than an independent work. It doesn't even get that much into Leia's head.

    Still, I can't be too hard on this novel. The novel brings into sharp relief that we've desperately needed greater diversity in the "casting" of Star Wars novels as well as Leia-centric fiction. It's well-written and I can't say I disliked any of the characters. I just wish Martha Wells had been more ambitious in the scope of her storytelling. I'd love for her to write one of the hardbacks and give us a really epic sort of Star Wars adventure. I think she'd do an excellent job. She also has a good grasp of not only Leia but Han Solo. The one in this novel is not quite sure why he's sticking with the Rebellion after A New Hope but is pretty sure it has to do with the galaxy's feistiest princess.

    I give this novel a 7 out of 10.

Hey guys,

Been a long time since I did one of these so I thought I'd break out the good news first. I've got a three book urban fantasy contract for my Red Room series with Permuted Press. These follow the adventures of Derek Hawthorne, supernatural secret agent, and his partner Shannon O'Reilly.

They're 1st person novels which combine Bond with urban fantasy. The manuscripts for Esoterrorism and its sequel, Eldritch Operations, are already submitted with about 1/5th of the job done on book 3. So I'm well ahead of my deadline.

I've also submitted and (hopefully soon to be accepted) Death May Die, my Cthulhu novel set after the rising of the Great Old Ones. I don't think anyone's done this before or, at least, haven't done it like I have. It's also part of a series I'm creating called Cthulhu Apocalypse, which while a bit on the nose, I think is going to be really entertaining for fans of both Lovecraft as well as PA fiction.

Yes, there's even zombies once (thank you, Doctor West).

The first books should be out next Summer.

Thanks to everyone for their support through all this.

Peace out.

    I've been a big fan of the Dresden Files since the original novel, Storm Front, came out way back in 2000. Which means, roughly, I've been a fan of the series for fourteen years. Jim Butcher's style has influenced both my writing as well as aspirations for being an author.

    Yet, I've never gotten around to writing a review of his books. I can't tell you why this is the case but it's true. I suspect it's because the series was so important to me, ironically, I didn't think I could review it objectively. Well, I've developed a mixture of feelings to the series as its progressed so I'm going to review them all.

    Eventually.

    Skin Game is the first I'm going to review as it's the most recent volume in the series. It's also the fifteenth novel in the series. If I manage to somehow get my Red Room series anywhere near that number, I'll be the luckiest man in publishing.

    Anyway, the premise of Skin Game is that Harry Dresden (Private Eye Wizard) is recruited by Mab, the Queen of the Fae, to help old enemy Nicodemus (Demon ne'er do well) to steal the Holy Grail from the Greek God Hades. Harry would rather not do this but extenuating circumstances mean he has to cooperate up until the point they acquire the Grail. Then it's open season on whoever has the prize.

    After an increasing movement away from its Noir roots with the books since Changes, we return to something at least in the same ballpark with a heist story. Nicodemus has assembled ten or twelve (perhaps ELEVEN if you count creatively) criminals for his mad scheme.

    I appreciate the creativity Jim Butcher has in trying to figure out where to hide the Holy Grail. Hades is depicted differently here than in most media, giving him a much more nuanced personality. I liked that since I feel you should only alter myths if you have a reason for it.

    The actual heist plays out more or less as you'd expect, though Jim Butcher is smart enough to throw a bunch of twists in toward the end. It's a game of cat and mouse between Nicodemus and Harry, only the mouse is the one from Tom and Jerry. The new characters introduced during the heist are interesting to and we also get some insight into old favorites who choose to show up.

    The biggest surprise of them all, however, is the developments between Harry and Murphy. Without spoiling, we finally get a resolution on their long running "will they or won't they" dance which has been running since Storm Front. We also get an explanation for why Murphy has held off so long in becoming a Knight of the Cross. Sadly, the resolution to that plot line was profoundly unsatisfying to me and my least favorite part of the book.

    Skin Game is a very fun novel and one I heartily enjoyed reading. Sadly, it's not a book without flaws. As a big fan of Karrin Murphy and Molly Carpenter, I was disappointed to be both women sidelined in favor of male characters Butters and a surprise return to action.

    Given both characters are male, I wanted to see the women of the Dresden Files kick ass and instead got a bit of a bro-fest. Given we were left with a cliffhanger regarding Molly, her small role in the book was doubly-disappointing. Worse, Karrin Murphy gets put through the proverbial ringer in this book and we don't get to see her rise from it the way we do in other books.

    Very disappointing.

    Despite this, I would recommend picking up Skin Game. It's a nice antidote to the high stakes drama of previous books and takes things back to a street-level (only BIGGER) level I enjoyed. If Jim Butcher can throw these sorts of books in-between the ones with global world-changing events, I'll be most pleased.

8/10

Maleficent is one of the many Wicked-inspired movies which attempt to re-invent an already-famous fairy tale into something new and different. Oz: The Great and Powerful was Disney's first attempt to cash in on this idea and I wasn't terribly fond of it. The Oz movie introduced a large number of subplots which will never be followed up on because, well, it's a prequel to the MGM Wizard of Oz movie.

Maleficent, at least, isn't a prequel. It's a re-telling of the Disney Sleeping Beauty movie and an already-classic fairy tale. If there's any movie franchise Disney should have a handle of the fundamentals on, it's the one which inspired their logo. Still, I walked into this one with a measure of mixed feelings. I love Sleeping Beauty and I love Angelina Jolie but it's all too easy to try to capitalize on the success of a classic without capturing its essence.

Young Maleficent is adorable, really. I want to adopt her.

    In this version of the tale, the titular character is a winged satyr-like figure who is one of the many fairies living in the Moors. Living beside the humans who inhabit an expansionist human kingdom, she is the fairies' chief protector. The King of the neighboring human kingdom invades but is defeated by Maleficent, driving him mad with revenge. Lacking other relatives, the King promises his kingdom to whoever can kill Maleficent.

     I won't share the rest of the story with you but it results in Maleficent becoming quite vexed at humanity and the King's successor in particular. Mad enough she decides to lay a curse on a small baby girl named Aurora involving sleep, spinning wheels, and a wall of thorns. This is where the story diverges quite spectacularly from the original 1959 animated movie.

    Angelina Jolie, as always, is absolutely wonderful as Maleficent. Given she has free reign to develop a mostly one-note villain, she does a wonderful job highlighting Maleficent's sense of betrayal and outrage at humanity's treatment of the fae. Not to mention her own personal reasons for despising Princess Aurora's father.

Angelina Jolie's scenes with her real-life daughter, make the mother-daughter subtext even better.

    Much has been made of other reviews to the potential sexual metaphor for what happens to Maleficent about 1/3rd into the movie but it's not something that's blatantly obvious. It's a good metaphor for adults but kids will accept the action as what it is. Either way, the scene is powerful and goes a long way to justifying her later revenge.

    In many ways, this is a very feminist movie with both Aurora as well as Maleficent being the stars. The two characters have a very strong relationship and it's rare to see a movie about the relationship between two women. Unfortunately, the original Sleeping Beauty was pretty feminist too with the evil figure of Maleficent counteracted by three older-looking women. Here, the three fairies are portrayed as complete nincompoops and I can't say I was too pleased with that.

    Despite being one of the few early Disney heroes with a personality, Prince Phillip had that excised here and is reduced to the role of a bit character. I don't think this was a major deterrent to the movie but I, honestly, think they could have removed him completely without losing anything. King Stefan, by contrast, is a figure who seems to have a character arc but we never actually get to hear much in his way of reasoning. Then again, I suppose ambiguity isn't necessary. His reasons make sense, even if they're evil.

The succubus-like form of Maleficent suits Angelina Jolie. We need more monster-girls (and boys).

The best thing in this movie (after Angelina Jolie) is the movie's special effects. The Moors are beautifully animated and are about the most entrancing fantasy special effects I've seen since the original Lord of the Rings trilogy. Every single one of the fairies is beautiful to look at and I salute the creators for making this movie the visual spectacle it is.

In conclusion, Maleficent is a fun fairy tale which is suitable for the whole family. Fans of the original Sleeping Beauty may be vexed by the changes, especially if they liked the three fairies, but there's nothing to get too upset over. I also liked the twist on "true love's kiss" even if I've seen it before and recently too (by Disney, no less).

8/10

    There's something to be said for B-movie horror, even if it's often designed to gross you out, titillate, and kill people (sadly most often women) in gruesome fashions. I'm not sure that something is positive but it's to be said. Stuart Gordon is one of my favorite masters of B-movie horror for the ridiculously over-the-top Re-Animator series. While I can't recommend the Re-Animator series due to some truly shocking scenes, except for perhaps the final film Beyond Re-Animator, I will say I recommend this particular work.

    Why?

    Because we all have our guilty pleasures and this is one of mine.

It's the little touches I love, including Paul's Miskatonic University sweatshirt.

Possibly the most faithful adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadows over Innsmouth, Dagon follows a group of dotcom millionaires getting shipwrecked off the coast of Spain. Walking to the town of Imbocca, they find themselves immediately under suspicion by the mysterious townsfolk within. If you have read the Shadow over Innsmouth, you already know what the secret of the town is. What Dagon does, is they manage to make the story relevant to a modern audience and add dramatic tensions as our heroes find our the town's dark history.

I can't help but wonder if the role of Paul (Ezra Godden) was originally intended to be played by Jeffrey Combs. The character of Paul looks, dresses, and even acts like Jeffrey Combs' trademark characters (excepting Weyoun). It's the kind of role which would be played by Cillian Murphy now if they could afford him. He's a surprisingly nuanced character for someone playing an obnoxious millionaire. In the midst of all the chaos and insanity he experiences, we get some real character moments. I really believed he was the sort of guy who never expected to become rich and has found himself rendered purposeless.

This throne tells you everything you need to know about the movie's camp factor.

I liked this unexpected statement on classicism and values. Many people may spend their entire lives pursuing wealth but few expect to actually achieve it. Those that do often find themselves directionless and either pursue more wealth or try to find something new to motivate themselves. This contrasts heavily with the inhabitants of Imbocca who find themselves impoverished and end up being seduced by otherworldly forces in hopes of enriching themselves. The original story contained this later element and contrasting it against Paul's unmotivated wealth (implied to be earned by sheer dumb luck) is highly effective.

The movie also has a more respectful tone to Christianity than the original Shadow over Innsmouth (not surprising given Lovecraft's atheism and its role in his stories). If not for the gore, nudity, and let's be frank--everything else, this movie might have been used in my Sunday school. The town's rejection of Christianity for material wealth and primordial alien gods is the kind of lesson they taught when I was a child--before church started dumbing down the lessons when I reached adulthood.

This is not what Deep Ones look like.

The real heart of the film, though, is in the character of Barbara (Raquel Merono). Barbara is the actual protagonist of the movie and one of my favorite ladies of horror. She is proactive, defiant, and iron-willed until the movie's end. The character's distress at the end of the movie forfeits this movie any feminism points (and in a major way!) but I enjoyed Ms. Merono's performance the entire way through. The fact she's easy on the eyes doesn't hurt my reception of the performance either.

Less effective but still enjoyable is the character of Uxía Cambarro played by Macarena Gomez. The eerie pale-skinned brunette personifies the temptations of Dagon (implied to be related to Cthulhu somehow) and the absolute batshit crazy his influence can drive a person to. She could have played this part subdued and menacing but decided to ham it up to the point of creating a run on pork. This is probably the best choice as the character's utter crazy is always watchable. Someone should find this woman and put her in a movie with Tim Curry (a Call of Cthulhu adaptation?).

This is closer.

The movie's gore factor is considerable with an actual, straight from Conan nubile maiden human sacrifice, as well as human faces being skinned to create ceremonial masks. That's not getting into the body-horror elements. Rather than attempt to replicate the excessively large eyes and other qualities of the "Innsmouth look" which would just make the townspeople look like anime characters--the movie instead goes for cephalopod themes. After I got used to it, I think I came to prefer it since I've always preferred Illithids to Deep Ones. Some of the appendages make no sense but I assume combining human and Cthulhuoid D.N.A is difficult.

In conclusion, Dagon is a story which is very-very much in the B-movie fold. It's got a great deal more nuance than the majority of them but don't expect to see the material rise up above its blood and nudity quotient. However, in a world where Game of Thrones is a massive success, maybe Dagon is for you.

*cough*

As it was for me.

7.5/10

    Given I'm in a Lovecraftian mood, reading Charles Stross'The Apocalypse Codex and writing Cthulhu Apocalypse 2: With Strange Aeons, I decided to write up a review of yet another B-movie I'm quite fond of.

    Beyond Re-animator is the third movie in Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator series but also a "soft reboot" of the franchise which offers a perfect jumping-on point for anyone who has no prior familiarity with the series. It's also a good deal more serious than the original Re-Animator movie, drastically toning down the series' trademark humor for something closer to the original Lovecraft story (which was, itself, quite funny).

    The premise is Herbert West, the Frankensteinian resurrector of the previous movie, has been locked away for his numerous crimes against medicine. A young medical student named Howard Phillips (hehe-cute) comes to work at the prison in order to gain access to Doctor West's insane but effective medical procedures (represented here by the glowing green goo you find in glow-sticks).

So, who let's a guy found guilty of medicine-related crimes work in the infirmary?

     Herbert West has been refining his re-animation technique in prison without much difficulty and has discovered part of the reason why the dead people he resurrects come back wrong. There's an electrical impulse component (which is meant to be a soul but Herbert West doesn't believe in the supernatural so he doesn't refer to it as such) that he's cracked the secret of. Unfortunately, Herbert doesn't see any problem switching around these amongst his patients.

    Bruce Abbott's Dan Cain, a major source of the series' humanity, is replaced by Jason Barry's Doctor Phillips. This is a wise move as while I enjoyed the Dan Cain character, there wasn't much room to take Herbert West and his relationship. Doctor Phillips has idealized Herbert West in his head, assuming he's a sort of avant-garde physician other people don't understand, and while this is true--he misses the fact West is a clinical psychopath.

    Jeffrey Combs steps back into the role of Doctor West as if he never left it. The major source of Herbert West's appeal is his complete immunity to human suffering and how situations go from merely horrifying to completely surreal as his research progresses. He's the sort of fellow who looks at a zombie apocalypse and thinks, "Hmm, this experiment needs work." Here, his mentor-like role to Doctor Phillips is actually interesting even if Doctor West is aware it's going to go south the moment a woman enters into the picture.

Yeah, as you can imagine, things go to pot quickly.

    Jason Barry's Doctor Phillips mixes the right amount of confidence for a golden boy new doctor who thinks he's found the secret of immortality with, well, a guy who is unknowingly in way over his head. Much like Dan Cain, Doctor Phillips twigs to the fact there's something wrong with Doctor West's formula far earlier than Doctor West himself. Which, if the latter did, would end the franchise. His relationship with the character of Laura Olney is skin-deep but doesn't have to be for what's expected of them.

    Elsa Patakay's Laura Olney has the somewhat thankless role of playing Doctor Phillip's love interest and the object of affection for Warden Brando. Thankfully, Laura Olney gets a more dignified role than Barbara Crampton's Megan as she's not required to be molested by a zombie head (there's a reason the first movie is infamous). I actually liked the Laura Olney character, who was intelligent as well as sexually aggressive. Ms. Olney just has the horrible luck to become interested in a man connected to Herbert West.

    There are a few other characters such as the lecherous warden and a speed-balling inmate who will, at some point, undoubtedly mistake Doctor West's formula for drugs but the majority of the cast exists for one purpose--to be turned into zombies. I've always been a fan of West-style zombies as you can never tell if they're the way they are because there's something unnaturally wrong with them (due to soullessness, Mythos properties of the formula, or something) or if it's just brain damage from being, well, dead. The movie walks the line between the supernatural and the scientific, which I appreciate.

    After all, in H.P. Lovecraft's writing, they're really just two sides of the same coin.

My enjoyment of the movie is helped by the fact Elsa Patakay is like a Spanish Kristen Bell.

    The Re-Animator movies are going to win no awards for acting, special effects, or writing but they're entertaining and fun. This one is the best, IMHO. While not quite as awesomely funny (or cringe-inducing) as the original, it also avoids the copious sexism of its predecessors. Which is impressive given this movie still has an attractive nurse eaten by a clothes-ripping zombie. You can take Herbert West's research more seriously in this film and it's an excellent end to the series if they choose to not make any further sequels.

     Anyone looking for deep insights into H.P. Lovecraft's works or themes will be disappointed. The original Re-Animator serialized short-story was a swerve for the writer as it dealt less with the Great Old Ones or unnameable horror than a scientist who just won't quit his bizarre research. Beyond Re-Animator understands this character trait and plays it for all its comic intensity. The use of a prison for the zombies is inspired as it allows a confined fortified space for when things go to hell. Otherwise, there's not much else to say about the movie. It is what it is and does what it wants to.

    In conclusion, a pretty good B-movie and one I recommend picking up if you want to kill two hours with brainless pop-corn munching Lovecraft-inspired fun.

8/10

    B-movie Lovecraft week continues with the 2007 Cthulhu movie. This puts the in independent, specifically Innsmouth as it's yet another adaptation of The Shadow over Innsmouth. We'll see a third one of these adaptations when I get to doing Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

    I have no problem with this because the TSOI is my favorite of H.P. Lovecraft's works and the one which I think is probably the most cinematic. Of course, what do I know, since Prometheus is more or less In the Mountains of Madness.

    The big difference of Cthulhu is this film isn't really all that interested in re-telling the story of fish people, pagan sacrifice, and the damnation of a person's soul by virtue of his ancestors. Instead, this is actually a story which adopts the Cthulhu Mythos for the purposes of telling a story about homosexuality.

    Hello? What? Why has a portion of my audience left? Oh right, because the subject of discussing homosexuality (especially male homosexuality) is still horribly taboo on the internet. However, in my case, I salute the creators of this movie for doing something very clever. They've managed to take something which was a metaphor for a specific thing (miscenegation) and turn it into one for something else (small town life).

Yeah, I think something weird is going on in this town. Just not sure what. Hey, why not ask those people over there!

     The vampire has been reinvented this way repeatedly throughout our cultural history. Vampires have been metaphors for (just off the top of my head): atheists, STDs, homosexuality, foreigners, the upper-class, and mental-illness. The best monsters are ones which can stand-in for any number of anxieties and the fact the creators of this movie decided to go in an unexpected direction is one to be applauded.

    In this case, the premise of the movie is young history professor Russel is contacted by his family's lawyer to inform him his mother has died. Returning for her funeral, Russel finds the entirety of the town alarming and creepy. This is not because they are conducting secret torch-lit ceremonies in the abandoned cannery on the shore, though they are, but the fact he is the homosexual son of the local pastor.

    The conceit of the story is, as far as Russel is concerned, the apparent fundamentalist Christianity of his father as well as the enforced conformity of the town (which forced his gay lover to marry and have children) is as oppressive and alien to him as the Deep Ones' worship of Dagon is to readers of H.P. Lovecraft. While H.P. Lovecraft had opinions of homosexuality common to his day, not even learning of it until adulthood, I rather like to think he'd be amused by this were he to have lived til today.

Tori Spelling as a fish-monster. *pause* I think she's quite nice to look at so I'm not going to make the jokes other bloggers have.

     Indeed, if I ever get time to write about it, I'd love to do an article about how H.P. Lovecraft used the cults to the Great Old Ones to say a lot about more popular religions. The Dunwich Horror is a critique of apocalyptical Christianity, IMHO, and I've always felt there were similar links to Great Cthulhu's cult as a whole. After all, Christianity is a religion which has strong elements of a returning savior who will end the world and binds together billions of people who otherwise have nothing in common. I say this as a Presbyterian.

    So watching Russel explore his town's mysterious past and it's bigotry is quite entertaining. There's only one problem.

    The rest of the movie is bad.

    Not so bad it's awful but this isn't so much a B-movie as a C-movie with a budget to match. In some ways, the limited budget has beneficial effect as it feels slightly more dream-like and surreal in places as if you're following the protagonist with a camcorder. Unfortunately, this isn't up to even television's standards of acting quality with rare exceptions.

A genuinely creepy moment and great use of cheap special effects.

     Of note, the stunt casting of Tori Spelling as a seductive Deep One hybrid barking up the wrong tree caused me to do a double take and made me wonder if she was thrown in for the heterosexual male members of the audience.

    If so, thanks.

     In conclusion, Cthulhu is a film whose storytelling reach exceeds its technical grasp. I'd, honestly, like to see a remake of this film with the same subtext transplanted to a higher budget film with a more established cast. As it is, the movie is worth watching but only as a curiosity. I wish the participants nothing but the best in future endeavors, though.

6/10

    The Apocalypse Codex is the fourth novel in the projected nine-book The Laundry series by Charles Stross. This doesn't include the novels and short-stories which he has been prone to writing and I have enjoyed tremendously. I wasn't too big of a fan of The Jennifer Morgue but I was glad I gave the series a pass on this.

    So what is the premise of The Apocalypse Codex?

    Bob Howard is recovering from the events of The Fuller Memorandum, having taken a serious hit to his sanity score in the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying-game sense. He is still somewhat twitchy from the events of that book but has returned to normal enough that he's able to resume his duties. Fans of the Mo and Bob romance will also note their marriage has recovered off-screen, which I was rather disappointed by.

    Sorry, not a Mo fan.

    No sooner does Bob return to his job duties than he is recruited by a secret branch of the already uber-secret Laundry to do a mission which potentially compromises the entire org-chart. A Christian-themed Great Old Ones cult has potentially compromised the Prime Minister and they need to bring in "outside contractors" to deal with them. Bob isn't allowed to involve himself on any mission where the PM may be compromised but he can monitor the outside contractors who are deniable assets.

    Yes, this is as confusing to Bob as it is to you and me and that's the point. Actually, it was probably less confusing to me than Bob since I'm used to the belief the government does all sorts of duplicitous self-justifying things that disregard the rule of law in favor of raw power. Bob, despite working for the Laundry, seems to assume their rules actually mean something--probably because they're the last bastion of defense against Cthulhu.

    What follows is divided into two distinct parts which surprised me. The first is the book becomes a stinging satire on Dominionist Christianity. The second is that it becomes a Modesty Blaise pastiche which uses a lawyer-friendly magical version of the character and her partner to do a send-up of her. I'll comment on both but, as you can imagine, the former interests me far more than the latter.

    Dominionist Christianity is, for those unaware of the fine distinctions of religion, those branches of of my faith which believe everyone who isn't a Christian is going to Hell. This excludes, btw, branches of Christianity they don't like (typically Catholicism and Mormonism--I imagine it would contain more if Dominionist branches knew about the Eastern Orthodox Church). Dominionist Christianity typically believes Jesus is coming back very soon and that if they don't convert everyone in the world to their cause, this will be a tragedy of epic proportions.

    I do not hold with Dominionist theology (to say the least).

    Charles Stross gives the Dominionist branches of theology both barrels by explicitly comparing it to a cult of Cthulhu (or, technically, the Gatekeeper Great Old One introduced in previous books). Given I'm a proponent of the theory that H.P. Lovecraft created much of his mythos to satirize religion, I believe Charles Stross is following in well-trodden footsteps.

    Given some Dominionist branches actively look forward to the end of the world and believe in training their members for the coming in Armageddon, the satire feels especially biting. The scary thing is some of the main villain's doctrines and actions aren't that far from real-life branches of my faith I've met. Despite this, Charles Stross is not hostile to the religion as a whole. He makes a surprisingly sympathetic Vicar character who provides vital help against the forces threatening the world.

    The Modesty Blaise elements involve a Italian socialite turned spy (and witch) named Persephone and her partner Jonathan, who are transparently thin analogues for Modesty and Willie Gavin. The characters are delightfully effective and far more respectful than the Bond pastie of The Jennifer Morgue. I liked them both and hope they show up in future books as they draw a nice contrast against the IT-guy style spywork of Bob Howard.

    The plot moves at a brisk place and never becomes preachy. The book can be read as satire but also as a straight Lovecraftian cult versus investigators as well. The plot moves at a brisk pace and sets up a lot of future events for the series to capitalize later. The secrets revealed about the Laundry and how magic works are also intriguing. There's not much development in the Mo and Bob relationship but since they're married, I'm not sure how much there should be. I do miss her serving as a field agent, however.

    In conclusion, probably my favorite book in the Laundry series so far. I congratulate Charles Stross for winning me back fully.

10/10

    "Do you read Sutter Cane?"

    This is, without a doubt, one of my favorite horror movies of all time. It's a cerebral kind of horror that doesn't get too lost up its own backside. I also think it's a delightful homage to both the works of Stephen King as well as H.P. Lovecraft. So, before I review anything else of the movie, I'm going to tell you--see this movie. Go on Netflix or Xbox Live or even buy it on DVD from Amazon.com if you can.

    You won't be disappointed.

This resulting scene is horrifying AND hilarious.

    The premise of In the Mouth of Madness, named for the H.P. Lovecraft novel Into the Mountains of Madness, is that former insurance investigator, John Trent (Sam Neil), is locked up in a mental asylum. Something terrible happened to him when he went looking for missing horror author Sutter Cane (a hybrid of H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King). The rest of the movie is told in flashback, except for the epilogue which provides a delightful twist ending.

    I think In the Mouth of Madness is a movie designed for writers as it builds a lot on the creative process and its potential for horror. In a very real way, writers are gods in their tiny little worlds and our characters are subject to our whims. Our creations can, and the best ones do, take on a life of their own to the point we sometimes feel like we're only chronicling their actions as opposed to deciding them.

    We follow John Trent, a skeptical and rational man, into a world which slowly unravels as he has to deal with the increasing sense he's no longer in control over his actions. I won't spoil the movie for you but a major turning point in the story is when he discovers the supposedly fictional city of Hobbes Landing, a stand-in for both Lovecraft's Arkham and King's Castle Rock, is in-fact real.

Hmmm, I think Sam Neil's character may be a trifle uncomfortable.

     Fans of Stephen King will get more out of this movie than most as there's a lot of in-jokes based upon his writing. The movie doesn't rely on King's name brand recognition, however, as anyone familiar with the idea of a horror story will appreciate the town's ambiance. The place is normal enough at first and, of course, this helps build the rising feeling that something just isn't right about this place.

     In the Mouth of Madness isn't a gross-out film and the terrors faced are largely off-camera. Yet, it is the creep factor of the story which makes it effective. Which is more scary, blood and gore or the slow loss of free will due to something completely beyond your control?

    I say the latter.

    Assisting John Trent through his journey into madness is Linda Style's character of Julie Carmen. Sutter Cane's editor, she is a little more open to the increasingly baroque nature of the happenings in the town. Unfortunately, for her, she's just as subject to the whims of Sutter Cane as anyone else and we get to see her deal with some truly shocking revelations. I liked the way Linda Styles and Sam Neil played off one another and would have watched a whole movie about those two alone.

    Jürgen Prochnow plays the small but important role of Sutter Cane masterfully. Who the Old Ones represent (whether his editors or adoring public) is anyone's guess but the ambiguity just make sthe story all the more entertaining. As an artist, Sutter Cane has completely bought into his fantasy of being a god and that means taking his story to its natural conclusion--no matter the results. I also like how his character plays into the fringe occultism myth that Howard Phillips actually had some supernatural insights.

Always look on the brrrrrrighhttt side of life.

    In the Mouth of Madness reminds me most of H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. As the name of the dimension implied, it was a place subject to the whims and imagination of Randolph Carter. As a writer, H.P. Lovecraft understood the terrifying power writers held over characters which in their own way might have their own lives.

   Stephen King, with the Dark Half and Bag of Bones, knows this too. I think this movie might have even had a hand in inspiring my favorite cult-classic video game, Alan Wake. Alan Wake, too, dealt with a writer who discovered the power of words was not all it was cracked up to be.

    The classification of this as a story set in the Cthulhu Mythos may irritate some as the Old Ones are mentioned only toward the end but I think the mythology of Lovecraft underscores everything. Hobbes Landing is a cruel, pitiful, and terrifying place for its inhabitants since they are subject to the whims of a god they do not understand.

    Just like my characters.

10/10

The Litany of Earth is a short novella, roughly 32 pages, depicting the life of Aphra Marsh. Aphra Marsh is an unusual protagonist as she is a Deep One hybrid and trying to make a normal life for herself amongst humans. While short, The Litany of the Earth serves as one of the best deconstructions of Lovecraftian horror in years.

I admit to firm bias as one of the things I was tackling when writing Cthulhu Apocalypse: Death May Die was how to deal with the Othering of other races. I could ignore it and treat monsters as monsters while ignoring the metaphor, I could embrace it fully (which was never going to happen), or I could subvert it. In the end, I chose to subvert it and my decision to make Cthulhu Apocalypsethe first Post-Lovecraftian series of novels.

It seems Ruthanna Emrys has beaten me to the punch.

The Litany of the Earth invokes things like the United States attempts to eliminate Native American culture, Japanese internment, and other real-life atrocities to compare how the children of Innsmouth were affected by their imprisonment post-The Shadow over Innsmouth. She never attempts to compare the suffering of her fictional human-fishman hybrids to that of real-life victims but the applicability is there.

The conceit of the story is that Ruthanna believes the United States motivation for destroying Innsmouth was a mixture of racism as well as hatred for the non-Christian religious practices of the townsfolk. Which, given the time period, would have been a perfectly valid justification for the all-out assault we saw at the end of the short-story. Much as some fantasy stories have depicted things from the perspective of Orcs rather than humans, so is this from the perspective of the Deep One hybrids.

Lovecraft purists may note there's no attempt at moral ambiguity here. The Innsmouth people are depicted as victims and the story ignores the Marsh family's reign of terror over regular humans. This isn't necessarily a retcon as Aphra Marsh spent the majority of her life in an internment camp, so there's no problem assuming she might be looking at things with rose-colored glasses.

What does the Marsh family's crimes have to do with her (and dozens of other Deep Ones held prisoner for decades), anyway? That's a bit like blaming Princess Anastasia for the crimes of Czar Nicholas II and his predecessors.

It's anvilicious but some anvils need to be dropped when dealing with America (and other nation's) racist as well as culturally dominionist past. The fact H.P. Lovecraft is virtually a symbol for authors who were really talented but intolerant is what makes the story interesting.

Aphra Marsh is a likable protagonist but she's not without her flaws. She's pretty angry over her horrible treatment, for one, and takes it out on other people. I liked this element as it shows a very human side to someone who has been treated as less than human her entire life.

We also get some great moments where Aphra is forced to deal with a guilty-feeling government agent, similar racism towards her from other Cthulhu Mythos races, and even a stab at cultural appropriation.

How would you feel if your religion was adopted by a bunch of ignorant rich folk who think it's cool but get the details wrong? The idea even Cthulhu-worship deserves respect and honor is something I found quite intriguing. The only real flaw I have with the novella is it ends so abruptly. I was hoping for much-much more.

I recommend all fans of Lovecraft pick this up and I hope the author expands it into a full-length novel.

10/10

    Finishing up Lovecraft week, unless I decide to review some more Cthulhu Mythos-related movies (it's my blog after all), is the original Re-Animator movie by Stuart Gordon. I mentioned my opinions on the movie in part during my review of Beyond Re-Animator so I'll start us off by reiterating them.

    This movie is very-very funny. This movie is also has a very high squick content, including attempted rape by a severed human head.

    Yes, you read that correctly.

    Part of the appeal of B-movies is they tend to be more willing to go places mainstream Hollywood films do not. Sometimes this is a good idea, other times not. In this case, I'm not going to tell you whether or not this sort of movie is right for you as I think it's going to be largely a matter of taste.

    Specifically, whether you enjoy having bad taste and don't possess any triggers.

The serum which will restore life! Played by the stuff in glow-sticks. Which is an inspired choice, actually.

     I will say, however, that nothing is remotely as shocking as the aforementioned scene (played for absurdist black comedy) and if you're able to deal with that--this movie has much to recommend it. Jeffrey Combs made himself the darling of B-movies forever with his portrayal of Herbert West and Barbara Crampton earns her Scream Queen status by turning what could have been a one-note character into an inspired performance.

    Bruce Abbot's Dan Cain and David Gale's Carl Hill are amazing in their roles too. Even Robert Sampson's Dean Halsey is a character who turns in a great performance. How many other actors can say they've played a multifaceted character after *pause* no wait, that would be spoilers. Really, Stuart Gordon struck gold when he recruited the cast for Re-Animator because it's one of those movies you can tell the cast is having a ball while filming.

    Everyone strikes a wonderful balance between treating the horrific events of the movies serious and playing them up for gross-out comedy. There's a reason this is considered one of the better cult-films of the 1980s and I don't disagree with their assessment. Like all great parodies, Re-Animator serves as both a send up of B-movie horror as well as an excellent example of the genre itself.

Herbert really should have stuck with re-animating whole bodies.

     The premise of Re-Animator is a re-telling (better: re-imagining) of the original tale by H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft purists would do well to remember H.P. Lovecraft, himself, wrote the story as a lurid comedic farce and, as such, should cut it the slack it deserves. Which is to remember even cosmic horror writers had a sense of the absurd.

    Stuart Gordon hits all the right notes as an adaptation. The story is modernized and truncated so that instead of taking place across the lifetime of two mad scientists, it takes place over a couple of weeks between two medical students. Frankly, I think Stuart Gordon did Lovecraft one better here as the story makes a great deal more sense if Dan Cain, the saner of the pair, has less time to react to how utterly bat**** Herbert West's experiments are.

    The premise is self-admitted riff on Frankenstein. Hebert West has, through means unknown, created a serum capable of re-animating the dead. Unlike Victor Frankenstein, however, he has no interest in creating new life but (sensibly) wants to bring the dead back to life. The problems are two-fold: One, the serum doesn't work very well. Two, Herbert West is a clinical psychopath who finds zombie resurectees a minor inconvenience.

    What makes this premise so entertaining is that, irregardless of the results, there's just enough logic to Herbert West's actions you can understand why Dan Cain and others want to work with him. After all, from a materialist perspective, Herbert West's formula works. It just, perhaps, need more testing. Which, as this movie lovingly shows, leads to more bodies which can be used for more testing.

I nominate Megan Halsey for the character who gets run through the biggest ringer in all of horror fiction.

    Stuart Gordon makes a wise decision to never clarify whether what's wrong with Herbert West's formula is supernatural or mundane. The Re-Animated's problem might be brain damage or it could be the fact they're summoned from the void where Yog-Sothoth reigns over a universe of impossible angles. Or, hell, if the audience desires to believe it--whether it's a simple case of blaspheming against God's domain.

    Jeffrey Comb's comedic timing is stupendous and really needs to be seen to believe. Bruce Abbot plays an excellent straight-man to Combs, striking a careful balance between enamoring of West's ideas and being an otherwise sane person. Barbara Crampton's character of Megan Halsey overreacts greatly to West at the start but, by the end, was clearly the only rationale person in the movie. Plus, as she's proved in many movies, she's a lovely person to look at.

    In short, this is a funny-funny, squicky-squicky movie and zombie fans will probably get the most out of it.

    Kudos.

8/10

    Is it better to do a bad game or a really good game that disappoints by becoming bad? This is the central matters crux when reviewing Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth which isn't a good game which becomes bad but a great game which is marred by a lot of very poor decisions.

    It is, to my knowledge, the only serious attempt to do a video game set in the Cthulhu Mythos. The only other game to attempt something so daring was Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. I never played Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and an unlikely to do so, but I may catch a Youtube video of it sometime since I've heard it's very faithful to H.P. Lovecraft's themes if not his specific universe.

    Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a game two generations behind on development so individuals expecting state-of-the-art graphics and gameplay will be disappointed.

The Innsmouth look is nicely reflected in the game design.

One thing I think gamers might be interested in knowing is the Call of Cthulhu in the title does not refer to the titular story by H.P. Lovecraft. In fact, it refers to the tabletop role-playing game published by Chaosium. This is important because fans of the latter will note the game is a fairly close adaptation of the adventure module "Escape from Innsmouth."

It incorporates the search for the missing Brian Burnham and the infamous Raid on Innsmouth, which was the one of the few times humans were able to fight back in H.P. Lovecraft's stories. The module was also, I should note, criticized for taking the Treasury Department's raid on a bunch of degenerate hybrids and turning it into D-Day against the Mythos.

The original "Escape From Innsmouth" module.

     Now, I was prepared for a Lovecraft-themed first-person shooter. I'm game for killing the Great Old Ones with guns and explosives. I mean, hell, I love Borderlands. The problem is the game starts with a slow-paced, very enjoyable detective story. THEN it becomes D-Day against the Mythos. Then it switches over to being about defeating invincible bosses by solving puzzles. Then it's back to D-Day.

    Dark Corners of the Earth is a very schizophrenic game.

    The premise is Private Detective Jack Walters is insane and suicidal after an event which we, the audience, don't know about. While he hangs himself in his cell, the story flashes back to the events which have driven him to such a sorry state. Honestly, I can't say I was too impressed with this. While insanity and suicide may work fine in short-story or novella format, it makes it hard to bond with a character over a eight-to-ten-hour game.

The Shoggoth's appearance took me completely by surprise.

    The use of the Cthulhu Mythos is quite well-done, incorporating not only elements from the Shadow over Innmouth but The Shadow Out of Time. The sight of a Yithian for the first time on-screen was something that got my blood racing as a Lovecraft fan. There's also the first Shoggoth I've ever seen in a video game.

    My favorite moment of the game, though, is the fact you actually get to fight Mother Hydra and Dagon at various points in the game. They may be the weakest of the Great Old Ones (in Chaosium's interpretation of the Mythos at least) but they're still members of that body. Getting a chance to fight them was a dream come true.

    The best parts of the game are the first third. The slow detective work and building of your knowledge about the Yithians, Innsmouth, and the various cults related to Mister Walters are intriguing. While horrendously difficult toward the end, the chase sequence in the hotel where Jack Walters is sought by every single Deep One hybrid in Innsmouth is also a triumph of game design.

    Unfortunately, the game has moments where I was completely lost trying to navigate the mostly identical houses, sewer-tunnels, and factory rooms which compromise a majority of the game's shooting sections.

Dagon was another triumph of visual design.

     Shooting Deep One hybrids in the face and bandaging myself up thereafter was nifty at first but quickly became tedious. The fact the game kept taking away Jack's weapons and gave limited ammunition would have been enjoyable if not for the fact the best monsters to fight are the invincible ones.

    One thing I will praise is the game has some truly excellent moments of horror. Things like the encounter with the little girl hybrid (no spoilers), the shredder incident, and Jack's frequent flashbacks to the asylum are quite entertaining.

    They just come too infrequently to really set the mood. I also love the game's incorporation of the tabletop game's insanity mechanic. If Jack looks too much at the Things Which Man Was Not Meant To Know, he'll start hallucinating and hearing voices. If it reaches critical levels, Jack will even commit suicide. That was suicide I could get behind as it happens as a result of the player's actions in the game.

    In conclusion, I think Dark Corners of the Earth was a good game but could have been tweaked to be better. I think players would get their money's worth by playing it, but they should expect some tedium after the first third.

7/10

    Sad Wings of Destiny is that rare thing from Permuted Press, primarily known for its post-apocalyptic and/or zombie affair--a capepunk novel. Capepunk is, for those who are unaware of that term, "superhero novels." The difference between capepunk and a regular superhero novel or comic is that capepunk stories attempt to tell more "serious" tales of superheroism and it's downfalls.

    After all, in novel form, you can only describe someone being hit in the face with a magic hammer oh-so-many times while Spiderman dealing with his love-life and money problems is an eternal source of storytelling angst. My favorite capunk series is Wearing the Cape but I've been exploring the genre for some time now. Technically, long-time favorite of this site, Ex-Heroes also fits into the capepunk genre. Even Confessions of a D-List Supervillain.

    As befitting its comic book roots, Sad Wings of Destiny is a series of novellas Thom Brannan wrote before compiling them into a serialized narrative. This act of serendipity enhances the novel's feel by making it more like a comic book in literary form. A serious comic book, don't get me wrong. There is a decided lacks of Whomps, Whamps, and Whoops in this book (but more than I expected).

    The premise of the novel, named after the Judas Priest album of the same name, is a chronicle of Springheeled Jack and Archon. Two superheroes which are intimately involved in the transformation of the world from a goofy Silver Age one where gods fight silly villains to a dark and edgy Iron Age one where the government distrusts its champions more than they do the bad guys.

    This is a common-enough story arc for comic books, reflecting the fundamental realism that history is filled with people who resent the powerful and either try to control them or reign them in. The actual form this story tells is distinct enough to stand on its own. We also see the character flaws of superheroes who are, by and large, immensely selfless beings but who can persuaded into foolish mistakes by that selflessness.

    I like the character of Springheel Jack the most because, on the surface, he's very much the Batman meets Tony Stark of the setting. A supergenius, billionaire, playboy, and ladies man--Springheeled Jack has got all the answers. Or so he thinks. The man's arrogance seems backed up for much of the novel but is a paper-thin wall for the ruthlessness which belies a man who thinks he can fix it all. Does he go all Ozymandias? Die? Find redemption?

    You'll have to read the book to find out.

    Archon, by contrast, is a hard entity to discuss because he's multiple people at once. Like Firestorm meets Captain Marvel, Archon is a composite entity which makes his character very difficult to understand but intriguing to watch. Heaven is a real thing in this world but there's a distinct feeling its rulers may not be the benevolent beings spoken of so often in Sunday School.

    The supporting cast is awesome too with many memorable characters you'll feel for by the end of the novel. I was especially fond of Lady Sidhe, who was a character who managed to be mysterious, fascinating, reassuring, and a wee bit frightening all at once. I wanted her to be the hero of the novel. The fate of some characters by the end of the novel will make you cry.

    The novel deals with a lot of interesting themes from free will to good intentions to the idea of giving the government more power. Like all Judas Priest-inspired novels should be, Thom squarely comes down on the latter being a very bad idea. Villains the Tyrants are able to take advantage of this and turn the world upside down with ease--a far cry from the ease by which most supervillains were disposed in this world's beginning.

    In conclusion, I think Sad Wings of Destiny is an excellent novel and a great addition to the burgeoning capepunk genre. Anyone who is a fan of superhero comics will likely find the story to be interesting, heartbreaking, and nail-biting at various points. It's more than worth the cover price.

8/10

    Saint Petersburg, FL is filled with hungry soulless monsters. Also, zombies.

    This isn't just me being flippant. Dead Tide is one of those uncommon, if not rare, zombie books which remembers the creatures were created (or, if you desire, adapted) for the purposes of social commentary. Modern adaptations of the zombie often forget the metaphor and simply make them a Maguffin for exploring the effects of trauma on humans.

    Dead Tide is more akin to the original George Romero use of zombies as Saint Petersburg, FL is used as the backdrop for an exploration of the simmering tensions existing in the United States today. When all hell breaks loose during your otherwise-typical zombie uprising (which is an odd sentence now that I think about it), Stephen A. North takes the time to examine how it impacts various classes of people. White, black, rich, poor, classy, and trashy all get their reactions gauged as things go to hell around them.

    The city of Saint Petersburg is done no favors by Stephen A. North as the RL vacation spot is shown to be a place with a lot of ugly lying just beneath the surface of its glitzy atmosphere. In this respect, he successfully replicates what I liked so much about Dead Rising 2.

    In that video game, our heroes were forced to try and rescue greedy-stupid people from a zombie apocalypse happening in a Faux-Las Vegas. Here, the many protagonists struggle to survive a seemingly glamorous town where everyone is ready to throw each other under the bus when the crap hits the fan.

    Stephen A. North deserves credit for also handling the misogyny criticism of so-much post-apocalyptic fiction with a deft hand. At first, it seems like he uses several viewpoint characters to put female characters in typical "damsel in distress" situations but I was surprised to find these are subverted.

    For one, the men ogling the female characters and thinking how they're all "bitches" for ignoring them under other circumstances are portrayed as the creepy weirdos they are. Likewise, when a person is stalked by those self-same weirdos, it's portrayed as a dangerous situation which they have to escape on their own rather than be protected from via a male protagonist. The passive sexism of many citizens is examined and condemned, which I liked.

    One of the more memorable sequences in the book is where a fireman and his female associate come across a man who has apparently killed two jewelry store clerks. He's clearly unhinged and babbling in a way which leaves it unclear whether he murdered the two women or if he just put down their zombies. Either way, the man enjoyed it because they treated him poorly because of his clothes and were attractive women. It leaves our two heroes in a precarious position about what to do since he wants to go with them.

    In fact, the book is filled with memorable apocalypse moments. Other favorites included the suicidal last stand of a cop confronted with a classicist Senator, the accidental shooting of a child during a vigilante killing spree, and the only people who have a grasp on what the hell is going on being individuals who have seen a zombie movie before. The latter adds a bit of much-needed levity as it's my own personal bugbear to have zombies always be something "new and unexpected" in fiction.

    My favorite scene in the book? A terrible moment where a child is revealed to have been bitten and the people who want to put him down find those who love him willing to protect him with lethal force--a perfect tragedy for a Zombie Apocalypse.

    Is the book flawless?

    Sorry, no.

    Readers should be warned the book takes a little time to get heated up and skips around too much at the beginning. Only a few pages are spent every chapter before switching perspectives to another character. While the book helpfully marks whose perspective is being moved to at the beginning of each chapter, it still was very confusing at the start. I would have preferred if Stephen A. North had done longer chapters so we knew each protagonist very well before moving back and forth.

    Nevertheless, I am going to say that Dead Tide ranks up there with The Estuary for my favorite Zombie Apocalypse story. The characters are likable, the storytelling tight, the body-count high, and there's actually something said about real-life (specifically, class and race relations in America). What more could I ask for? In fact, I like it so much, I'm going to give it a ten despite its flaws. Just because its enjoyment factor trumps the bad.

10/10

    Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers.

    That premise makes Edge of Tomorrow sound so much cooler than it is. I'm usually all over military science-fiction, especially when it's not endorsing fascism, but this one gave me bad vibes from the trailer out. Some of my fellow geeks were wary of it because of Tom Cruise, the actor having burned many bridges due to his Scientology advocacy, but I didn't mind his starring role.

    I like Tom Cruise's acting, even if he's played the exact same character since Risky Business. Tom Cruise never doesn't play Tom Cruise, whether he's Lestat, Maverick, Ethan Hunt, or a super-soldier on a dead world ruled by an Apple Ipod. No, what made me wary of the trailer was I knew they weren't going to do anything interesting with the premise.

Tom Cruise joins the Mobile Infantry! Would you like to know more?

     Time travel stories are, after space-travel, THE thing in science-fiction. It's easily the most science-fiction thing you can do because it's impossible with current technology, recognizable to mainstream audiences, and something that opens a bunch of questions by the nature of its existence. What happens if you kill your father before you're conceived? What would happen if you killed Hitler as a baby? And so on and so on.

     The premise is that Tom Cruise's character, Major William Cage, is a horrible human being/public-relations expert (if that's not redundant *rimshot* I'll be here all night, folks!), who finds himself drafted onto the battlefield after a craven act of cowardice turns a superior officer against him. During said battle, he acquires the ability to time-travel back 24 hours every time he dies.

    This is already a variant of time-travel I'm iffy about since it takes an already wildly implausible premise and runs a marathon with it. However, they proceed to tack it onto an alien invasion by a race called the Mimics. Which, despite the name, don't actually mimic anything. It's more or less Space D-Day (they're even invading France) and humanity loses the battle every time Tom Cruise fights in it.

You can't hate a guy who is obviously making this movie to have fun like this.

     I admit to not having read the book Edge of Tomorrow is based on but I am judging the movie on its own merits. There's a lot of interesting places Tom Cruise's character could go in this situation. Can a single man, if he does things perfectly, win a war which is otherwise lost? What is it like to watch your friends and associates killed thousands of times only to resurrect? Would a life consisting of D-Day repeated forever drive you insane?

    It doesn't do any of this. Instead, the story proceeds to crib the rest of its plot from The Phantom Menace.

    I kid you not.

    You see there's this, let's just call it the Droid Control Ship, which controls all of the Mimics. Anakin Skywalker, as played by Tom Cruise, has to make his way to the Droid Control Ship and blow it up. This, despite the fact he starts as objectively the worst soldier in the world. Albeit, one who is functionally immortal (which makes him the best soldier in the world--confused yet?). Once Tom Cruise destroys the Droid Control Ship, the war is over, so his goal is to do it. He has immense trouble with this despite the fact he has an infinite number of video game continues.

Rita Vrataski is a great character. She could play Samus Aran.

    The comparison to a video game is actually quite apt and one that I almost wish was lampshaded within the movie itself. Tom Cruise's experience reflects a video game player who grows in his skill at playing the game and for, whom, death is cheap because he can always reset. This, too, is underplayed. Tom Cruise gets noticeably better due to training by Emily Blunt's character of Rita Vrataski. It's possible for Tom Cruise to die permanently but only in a very unlikely set of circumstances.

    Emily Blunt's character is the highlight of the movie, really, and it's a shame she's not the star. Rita Vrataski is a nice gender reversal of the stone cold badass who takes no **** and puts the mission first. Plenty of my friends have compared her to Commander Shepard and I think this is an appropriate comparison. While there's nothing new about her character, the fact she's a woman with almost no commentary on it (other than how everyone treats her like a marvel--something which annoys her deeply) pleased me.

    In the end, my response to the movie was to be underwhelmed. There's a lot of action, great special effects, and some good character moments but the movie is devoid of tension. After all, we see our hero killed literally dozens of times with no more effect than some lost time. The process doesn't even appear to be painful. There's nothing wrong with the movie, per say, but it's not anything which blew me away.

6/10

"Cathulhu? I've heard of him. He's bad, right?"
"He makes Gozer look like Little Mary Sunshine."
- Winston and Egon

I hadn't intended to review a single episode of a children's show from the 1980s but, struck by whimsy, I couldn't help but revisit it. Very rarely in life do we have the capacity to point to a single thing or incident responsible for your fandom but, in my case, I can point to this episode as when my little mind was warped forever.

Really, Ghostbusters is a surprisingly subversive work which parents completely ignored the implications of (thank God). I mean, the movie starts with the premise of the afterlife warping the souls of individuals until they become hideous monsters then segues into an ancient Babylonian (sorry, Sumerian) god wanting to destroy the world.

Alice Derleth is meant to be an attractive woman. How do I know? She's drawn relatively realistic looking unlike the rest of the characters.

    The fact Dan Aykroyd is one of Hollywood's few eccentrics immersed in the occult NOT interested in bilking the public should have tipped someone off there was something 'off' with his work. The Real Ghostbusters cartoon show rarely showed the same imagination as the movie, written by Aykroyd, but this episode was an exception.

    Why? Because someone was asleep at the wheel since this episode is one long faithful adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Literally, the only change they made to his universe is adding an 'A' to Cthulhu's name (which is a perfectly valid way of pronouncing it anyway) and giving Old Batwings a weakness to electricity. Privately, I would have had the unlicensed nuclear accelerators on their back work fine but what do I know about anti-mystical science?

"Anything that looks like Godzilla wearing an octopus hat shouldn't be hard to find."
- Peter.

    When I watched this episode at the tender age of seven, I knew I was watching something special--something which hinted at a much-larger universe I was only getting a glimpse of. People made reference to a lot of things which they seemed to know about from cults of Cathulhu to Shoggoths to the Necronomicon. It would take until the release of Army of Darkness and my introduction to the Evil Dead series to realize the show from my childhood had been referencing something.

    This lead me to H.P. Lovecraft. So, thank you Michael Reaves.

    So what about the episode itself? How does it hold up to a 33 three year old man versus a 7 year old boy? I.e. "Would a parent enjoy watching this with his child?"

    The answers are surprisingly well and yes.

    The writing is pretty simple, obviously, but Star Wars is a fairly simple tale when you get down to it. **WARNING - SPOILERS** The Necronomicon is a book of spells, different from Lovecraft but fundamentally true, and has been stolen by a bunch of Cathulhu worshipers. The Ghostbusters contact Alice Derleth (hehe), first female Mythos investigator of note, to help with their investigations.

Actual C(a)thulhu cultists! In a children's cartoon!

    Alice is to the Great Old Ones what Egon is to ghosts. They track down the cultists, get ambushed by a Shoggoth. They fail to stop Cathulhu's resurrection with their proton packs and magic invoking Nodens (!!), so they use an old pulp magazine to figure out Cathulhu is weak against electricity (!!!). With the aid of a number of lightning bolts, implied to be assisted by the Elder Gods, they send Cathulhu back to R'lyeh--the cult leader saying that he can never die. Hell, they even do the "strange aeons" quote. **END - SPOILERS**

    Aside from all the Lovecraft shout-outs, this is a pretty decent Cthulhu Mythos story. It wouldn't be out of place with some of the scenarios I've run for the Call of Cthulhu tabletop game. It borrows heavily from August Derleth's interpretation of the Mythos, where the Elder Gods are allied to humanity if not good, but I've never had the knee-jerk reaction to it that other fans have. The very fact Cathulhu will rise again is pretty surprising for a Ghostbuster's episode.

    In conclusion, watch this on Youtube or Netflix it somehow if you have the time. It's by no means a must-see for Lovecraft fans but is a cool sign of how thoroughly H.P. Lovecraft's influence has infiltrated the writing world (there's another more-or-less direct homage to the Big C on "Justice League").

8/10

    Brian Lumley's Titus Crow is a series I owe an immense debt to. While Call of Cathulhu was the first Mythos-related fiction I was ever exposed to at the tender age of seven, it was Titus Crow I picked up in my college town's library which created my love of Lovecraft's mythology. Thanks to Brian Lumley, I picked up the original works by H.P. Lovecraft and devoured them. He's also the guy I owe my desire to write my own Cthulhu Mythos fiction to.

    In short, this will be, by no means, an unbiased review.

    These are by no means "new" works of Cthulhu Mythos fiction but I think they qualify as one of the more definitive works on the subject. Despite this, Brian Lumley's version of H.P. Lovecraft's world is distinctly his own and manifestly not cosmic horror. It's still horror fiction but I'd argue they owe more to the lighter-softer fair of The Dunwich Horror and The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward than The Unnameable. The influences of Robert Howard and Clark Ashton Smith can also be seen.

    As Brian Lumley, himself, wrote:

    I have trouble relating to people who faint at the hint of a bad smell. A meep or glibber doesn't cut it with me. (I love meeps and glibbers, don't get me wrong, but I go looking for what made them!) That's the main difference between my stories...and HPL's. My guys fight back. Also, they like to have a laugh along the way.

    And why not?

    In a very real way, Brian Lumley's take on the Cthulhu Mythos is a fundamentally humanist one. The Great Old Ones are powerful, immortal, and dangerous but our heroes are courageous and clever. Sadly, the humanist element of the story gets downgraded in favor of introducing benevolent Elder Gods to counter the Great Old Ones but even this is somewhat subversive. The Elder Gods turn out to be the very same species as which makes up the Great Old Ones. The terrors beyond are not so terrifying after all and might someday be friends to humanity.

    Which, of course, may be controversial to some in the same way August Derleth's interpretation of the Mythos (of which Brian Lumley relies heavily upon) has run into with detractors. On my end, having been exposed to both interpretations, I prefer the alien and unknowable Old Ones to the merely evil but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy both. It's why I'm going to be reviewing all of the Titus Crow stories over the course of the next two weeks.

    The first of the Titus Crow novels is The Burrower's Beneath. This novel introduces Titus Crow, Henri de Marginy, the Chthonian race, the Wilmarth Foundation, and more or less recaps the entirety of H.P. Lovecraft's works so newcomers will understand all the references being made. It's a chaotic, but in a good way, novel which deals with big issues.

    Like a tabletop Call of Cthulhu mega-module, The Burrowers Beneath starts with minor threats before introducing the monsters then becomes a globe-trotting war against evil that culminates with a Great Old One being confronted.

    The premise of the novel, as explained above, doesn't really convey the journey or its enjoyment factor. Brian Lumley makes ample use of letters, articles, and history to provide a grand scope of a billion-year-old evil inhabiting the Earth. One which has affected humanity throughout its entire existence and is only now being re-discovered. Everything from Commodus, to Stonehenge, to the early formation of the Earth is tied together in a wonderful little package.

    The Chthonians are great villains and manage to be simultaneously alien horrors as well as monsters which can interact with our heroes. By their introduction, you really think they're the kind of monster which would fit perfectly into Lovecraft's universe.

    Brian Lumley isn't afraid to denigrate his own creations, calling them "the least of the Great Old Ones' races." Which is impressive given they can tunnel across the Earth's interior at massive speeds and cause earthquakes. This is in addition to their power to manipulate other humans to their will.

    Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent de Marginy are the real stars of the book. The Sherlock Holmes and Watson inspirations for Titus Crow and his partner aren't subtle but the book humanizes them in ways I didn't expect. Unlike Sherlock Holmes, Titus Crow is not the world's leading expert on his field and only encounters the Cthulhu Mythos (called the "Cthulhu Cycle" here) for the first time here. We also get some good character bits like the fact Titus needs his nightly brandy or he becomes very cranky.

    Much like Watson, Henri-Laurent de Marginy is also as much the star of the book as the titular character. His amazement and horror at the existence of the Cthulhu Cycle's "truth" (knowing of it only as a perverse mythology before) helps ease the audience into the surreal new world our heroes inhabit. His enthusiasm and horror as the story see-saws between triumph as well as tragedy drives much of the narrative. Our heroes make mistakes while fighting the Mythos and only through sheer luck are they not instantly fatal.

    I give credit to Brian Lumley for remembering to keep the tension tight and the body count high. While one might assume Titus Crow will live, this being his series and all, everyone else is fair game. We also have several logs of unfortunate individuals which form short-stories within the larger narrative and often end in Lovecraftian ways.

    I heartily recommend The Burrowers Beneath. If I have any complaints about the novel, it's sometimes a little too overwhelming in its referencing of H.P. Lovecraft's work and goes in odd directions.

    Brian Lumley attempts to replicate Lovecraft's flourishes and, as a result, the text can get a little purple. Despite this, I think it added to the charm of the volume. The story is available for download separately from Kindle or available in any number of previous editions and omnibuses.

10/10

Yog-Sothoth bless the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. They are a quirky band of Old One worshipers and I have enjoyed a host of their strange doings. This includes Shoggoth on the Roof, their Lovecraftian Christmas Carols, and now enjoys their adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu.

Conventional wisdom held The Call of Cthulhu was unfilmable. Not just because of the difficulty inherent in constructing a city composed of non-Eulicidean geometry but the fact the story is, essentially, a bunch of flashbacks within flashbacks. The entire story could be summarized as a guy reading about a guy reading about a guy reading something spooky. I'd be wrong to summarize the story this way but not inaccurate.

The old movie feel is beautifully captured.

    Really, The Call of Cthulhu is a bunch of separate stories loosely tied together under a single narrator. Which is, given it's original serialized nature, perfectly understandable. It also helps explain why no one has successfully adapted the story until now. The Call of Cthulhu inspired an absolutely kickass tabletop roleplaying game but does it hold up on the silver screen?

    I'd say yes.

    The first thing to note about this movie is it's in black and white. The second is it's a silent film. This does wonders for the work as, to modern eyes, the whole thing becomes greatly more surreal. I imagine this also helped save tremendously on production costs as the monochromatic nature of the movie helps disguise what was undoubtedly a shoestring budget.

    Despite this, I'm actually surprised at how good a lot of the stuff in the movie looks. The fact they manage to make a convincing looking R'lyeh should tell you how much love, care, and effort went into making this film. I may disagree with some of the visual choices, like New Orleans Inspector looking like Poirot, but I can't say anything was bad. At its worst, The Call of Cthulhu is kind of silly but so was the original novella.

Cthulhu is just awesome. Seriously.

    The real triumph of the movie is the soundtrack. The lush symphonic score is moody and brooding throughout, letting us feel like our heroes are slipping into a deep abyss from which they will never escape. The fact it actually sounds like a silent movie from the 1920s helps lull you into the lie this was a movie created when Lovecraft originally wrote his short story.

    Viewers should be warned the movie clocks in about 45 minutes and its high-fidelity to the original short story which hampers the narrative a bit. I also regretted we didn't get to see a fight between sailors and Deep Ones from the original short story but that would have broken the movie's budget in all likelihood. The money was much better spent in creating R'lyeh and the Big C himself.

    In fact, I'm going to praise the filmmaker's Cthulhu now. He's creepy, moves in an unsettling manner, and is great to look at. When the Big C arrives, the entire movie reaches its crescendo and they even manage to do the famous steamboat scene in a way that doesn't diminish his menace.

    Kudos.

The strange geometry of Lovecraft's stories has rarely been so well-represented.

One final thing to comment on, I applaud the HPLHS for also removing the racism from the original work. While it's only a matter of making the degenerate cultists Caucasian, it's something which made me more comfortable with the work.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. Was it perfect? It's not the most must-see work I've ever seen but I think it's a definite thing for hardcore Lovecraft fans to put on their list. My biggest regret about this movie? No commentary or "making of" on the disc.

10/10

Day of the Doctor review

X-men: Days of Future Past review

Star Wars: Empire and Rebellion: Razor's Edge

Update on writing

The Dresden Files: Skin Game review

Maleficent review

Dagon review

Beyond Re-Animator review

Cthulhu (2007) review

The Apocalypse Codex review

In the Mouth of Madness review

The Litany of Earth review

Re-Animator review

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth review

Sad Wings of Destiny review

Dead Tide review

Edge of Tomorrow review

The Real Ghostbusters: Collect Call of Cathulhu review

The Burrowers Beneath review

Call of Cthulhu (2005) review