H.P. Lovecraft’s Arkham Sanitarium

[Mati256]

Have you heard of this Indie film?
I'm a fan of Lovecraft’s work so I'm very excited about it.
They are accepting donations now so I thought of spreading the word, you can check their site at: http://survivorfilms.com/
When you're there, make sure of checking the trailer
The movie is an adaptation of three stories, The Haunter of the Dark, The Shunned House and The Thing on the Doorstep.

[Radiant]

Have you heard of this Indie film?

No, but I've played Eversion...

[Mati256]

Sorry, I don't understand you. 

[Calin Leafshade]

Lovecraft films are pretty much universally bad. Similar to Poe in that regard.

[LimpingFish]

Lovecraft films are pretty much universally bad. Similar to Poe in that regard.

Except for "Re-Animator", "From Beyond", "Castle Freak", and possibly "Dagon".

It's no coincidence that all the above are directed/written/and produced by Stuart Gordon/Dennis Paoli/and Brian Yuzna.

But yes, almost everything else is shite.

[Calin Leafshade]

Re-Animator doesnt count. It's only loosely based on herbert west. It hardly fits the tone of Lovecrafts writing.

[BaptisteTheFool]

Nothing wrong with The Call of Cthulhu (2005) either...

[Radiant]

Sorry, I don't understand you. 

Eversion is basically Super Mario Bros as if it were designed by H.P.Lovecraft. Google it, it's certainly worth playing.

[Eggie]

I always thought Re-Animator was pretty damn faithful to the original story. Just faster and funnier and with a screaming lady.

The team also did a really cool adaptation of Dreams in the Witch House for Masters of Horror

[Anian]

Well Lovecraft more than often is about the mood of dread and even when it's not, descriptions are usually pretty apstract (as in hard to really imagine without filling in some blanks with your own imagination), that's why it's good in written form, but that makes it hard to translate into movies (adaptaions and "inspired by" works are thus more achievable).
I still think Del Torro would've done a great job with the Mountains of madness project.

Games in this case are actually better/easier than movies (to make) because people are more involved in the world of the story (because they have to understand it in order to figure out the game play), I think basically horror is one of those genres where a game is easier to make than a movie.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Call of Cthulhu was actually quite good and moody if you accept the fact that they had a very low budget and opted for a 'silent film' approach.  I think it turned out quite well.  As for the movies Fish mentioned, I think they were good with the exception of Castle Freak which was just bad, bad, bad.  Also, I'm not sure what happened to Brian Yuzna mentally between Bride and Beyond Re-Animator but whatever it was, wasn't good.  Sort of like whatever dementia struck Carpenter post-80s and made him produce such shit as Ghosts of Mars.

To hold strictly to topic, I'll have to check this out as I'm always up to give a new Lovecraft adaptation a try.  For all their faults they tend to be more 'honest' and visceral than most (check out Necronomicon with Jeffrey Combs as HP Lovecraft to see what I mean).


Edit:  There we go.  I went ahead and donated.  At least this way I'll get the dvd early .

[LimpingFish]

Re-Animator doesnt count. It's only loosely based on herbert west. It hardly fits the tone of Lovecrafts writing.

But if you've read Herbert West-Reanimator, you'd know that it's deviates from his norm. It hits most of the same notes the movie does. Miskatonic University, the early animal experiments, the grave-robbing, the clash between West and the college Dean (which, like the movie, culminates in the death and reanimation of the Dean), the killings committed by the reanimated, and now psychotic, Dean...and so on.

Apart from the contemporary setting, injection of humour, and the added sexual angle, it's pretty damn close.

...with the exception Castle Freak which was just bad, bad, bad.

I thought so too, when I first watched it. It's certainly no Re-Animator, but on viewing it again, I felt it was less a horror movie and more a weird gothic melodrama. It struck me as more effective that way.

Beyond Re-Animator is pretty awful, though; like almost all of Fantasy Factory's efforts (Rottweiller...ugh), it's just a shoddy piece of work.

On topic, the problem with adapting Lovecraft is trying to make his "unfathomable" horrors a reality. Once you see Cthulhu as a shonky puppet, it sucks all the mystique from the mythos. Re-Animator works because it's basically a riff on Frankenstein. From Beyond gives us parasitic creatures, rather than cyclopean nightmares. Even Dagon works, because we never see the titular deity on screen (just a couple of randy tentacles). Dagon is actually based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth, which, like Herbert West-Reanimator and From Beyond, seems to lend itself better to cinematic adaptation, rather than the more cosmic of Lovecraft's creations.

You put Cthulhu up there, and he basically becomes Godzilla.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

And moving to games, Call of Cthulhu took more cues from Shadow Over Innsmouth than its namesake or any of Lovecraft's other writings as well.  The entire run-down township with the fish people and everything was handled so well, but then they totally botched the combat and turned the game into essentially a damaged FPS....So much wasted potential on that game that could've been corrected by a proper 3rd person sneaking mechanic and more focus on setting environmental traps/using cover/and melee and stealth kills to keep tension high and the awareness that you are at all times at a disadvantage in Lovecraft's world.  I would also have benefited from a hefty dose of otherworldly puzzle solving and occasional documents littered around (like Resident Evil) to reveal trivia or interesting backstory elements.

Basically, I would've made it like Resident Evil combined with metal gear solid with an emphasis on stealth and avoidance!

[fred]

I had to support this too - been watching a lot of H.P.Lovecraft-based movies lately, so this is great news. Did you guys play 'The Outsider', featured on Newgrounds recently? I thought it was a decent and very atmospheric little adventure game, based on perhaps one of my favorite Lovecraft stories.

[Survivor Films]

Hey everyone!

I'm the director of Arkham Sanitarium - we're trying to go a different direction with this film (you can see my interview at Twitch for my thoughts on why Lovecraft has been dealt a bad hand in the movies).

In writing this film, We've set out to make the most faithful adaptation of HPL's work yet seen - the stories have only been changed where necessary and the movie is set in 1930's Providence and Arkham with all the characters and events you've read about in the stories more or less unchanged.

It's a slower-paced, more intelligent movie than most current horror films - I'm a big fan of John Carpenter's work (The Thing, In the Mouth of Madness, Prince of Darkness, Halloween) and I really wanted to do something with lots of atmosphere and tension.

Mati256, ProgZmax and fred - Arkham Sanitarium wouldn't be possible without fans like yourselves supporting us - thank you! And please continue to spread the word!

All the best!

Andrew Morgan.

P.S. On the game-related side, I really wish Frictional Games would do a Lovecraft game!

[GarageGothic]

I have a fondness for Vincent Price and Roger Corman movies in general, so I must admit I really enjoyed The Haunted Palace which, despite being marketed as a Poe movie, is actually based on Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

[Survivor Films]

On topic, the problem with adapting Lovecraft is trying to make his "unfathomable" horrors a reality. Once you see Cthulhu as a shonky puppet, it sucks all the mystique from the mythos. Re-Animator works because it's basically a riff on Frankenstein. From Beyond gives us parasitic creatures, rather than cyclopean nightmares. Even Dagon works, because we never see the titular deity on screen (just a couple of randy tentacles). Dagon is actually based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth, which, like Herbert West-Reanimator and From Beyond, seems to lend itself better to cinematic adaptation, rather than the more cosmic of Lovecraft's creations.

You put Cthulhu up there, and he basically becomes Godzilla.

There's some fantastic depictions of Lovecraft's creations out there though - one of my favourites is SOTA's sculpt of Nyarlathotep - simply amazing!

On the subject of Cthulhu, we seriously contemplated adapting 'The Call of Cthulhu' for Arkham Sanitarium but decided against it in the end because we didn't want his first 'proper' screen outing to be anything less than perfect - right now, we simply don't have the resources to do him justice. Maybe in the future though...