Review of LovecraCked! The Movie

Introduction

Ah, Howard Philip Lovecraft - where would the world of modern literature be without your grandiose, sci-fi tinged works of horror most macabre? Well, there`d be less hacks like Stephen King, that`s for bloody sure. And Rod Serling`s imagination may not have been half as active as it was to create `The Twilight Zone`. You see, old HP (as he was known to his chums) is probably the greatest horror author of the 20th century. Inspired primarily by the witches brew of his dreams and the fantasy literature of Edgar Allen Poe and Lord Dunsany, he created the Cthulhu Mythos, an esoteric universe of characters, themes and settings in which man was plagued by innumerable nameless beasties, which continues to inspire authors almost seventy (count `em) years after he kicked the bucket.

Sadly, his work hasn`t translated very well at all to celluloid. Despite many, many attempts at filming his stories (IMDb lists over sixty credits to the man), few have made a decent stab. Stuart Gordon had a few hearty attempts with `Re-animator`, `Castle Freak`, `Dagon` and more recently `Dreams in the Witch-House`, part of the `Masters of Horror` anthology series. John Carpenter`s Lovecraft inspired `In the Mouth of Madness` was another; rough around the edges, but true to the spirit of our man Lovecraft. Then there was Roger Corman`s hilariously titled `Edgar Allen Poe`s Haunted Palace!`, an adaptation of the much loved novella `The Case of Charles Dexter Ward` starring Vincent Price. Ok, that was once of the rubbish ones, but what a title, huh?

Biff Juggernaut, a micro-budget production company, has decided to take a punt. They`ve created `LovecraCked! The Movie`, a blending together of several independently produced short films apparently "adapted and inspired by the life and writings of HP Lovecraft".

Which could technically mean anything... and it does...

Video

Non-anamorphic 1.78:1 for the links and 1.33:1 for most of the shorts.

As each piece has been filmed independently, there are variances in quality, but for the most part the transfer is fine for an indie release.

Audio

A rather flat Dolby Digital 2.0, which comes over a little tinny at times. There are a few ADR hiccups, but it`s hardly the sort of disc you`re going to run through your sound system to impress your friends, and given its no-budget origins, it can be forgiven.

Features

Despite being a self released DVD (and the distribution situation is unlikely to change), they`ve gone all out to give viewers more than just the film on the disc, so there are a few extras. First up is `The Voice Inside`, a BiFF JUGGERNAUT short which claims to have won a few awards from underground festivals, including "Most Perverted" at the Sick Puppy Film Festival. There are also two other shorts on the disc, `Masturbating Ghost` and `A Matter of Hair`. There`s also a blooper reel, some nasty music videos and of course... what`s a DVD without a trailer!?

While the quality of the extras is risible, they get kudos points for trying.

Conclusion

You`ll be bored, you`ll be bored, you`ll almost be mildly entertained and you`ll be bored again. Yup, sadly, `LovecraCked! The Movie` is a pretty dire attempt at doing something relatively unique, with some lackluster shorts tied together with haphazard faux-guerilla film-making. For the most part crass, poorly implemented and generally tedious, it`s never quite sure if it`s self-parody or playing it straight and you`d be forgiven for thinking the whole shebang was the work of a couple of first day film students let loose with equipment under the instruction to make a Troma film... badly.

First up after the initial installment of the painful running narrative - in which a journalist aping cheap cable TV shows tries to uncover the truth behind HP Lovecraft - is `The Statement of Randolph Carter`, an adaptation of Lovecraft`s chilling mini-short in which a man recalls how he was dragged out to a graveyard in the dead of night with his mentor, yet only he returned. While the short story is generally regarded as masterful, it`s treatment here is staggeringly bad. High camp, hammy acting, horridly grungy visuals and a narrative that is bound to be lost on those unfamiliar with the story. The second short is `History of the Lurkers`, in which Lovecraft`s lurkers are re-imagined as perverts. Overlong, tragically bland, highly amateurish, painfully dull and, well, as bad as it sounds. Next up there`s `Remain`, which has a certain dark artistic flair but running in at only a couple of minutes, it`s hardly worth mentioning as its art school ambiguousness is squashed between longer shorts. Then there`s `Bug Boy`, which tries to ape the effect of black and white film stock, which can`t hide some horrifically wooden acting. It turns out to be as much a pseudo-homage to the body horror of David Cronenberg, as to Lovecraft himself, yet that`s far from a saving grace. Then it`s the turn of `Witch`s Spring` a rather straightforward tale of sacrifice, given a modern spin with the now obligatory amateurish tedium. `Alecto` a dark tale of a violinist and an attempt at using the themes of loneliness and isolation Lovecraft so often turns to in his stories is... watchable. Following that is `Chaos of Flesh` a blink-and-you`ll-miss short that looks the part, but again is unmemorable due to a short running time. Then comes both the highlight and the nadir of the collection, `Re-Penetrator`, a carefully edited snack-size portion of a gore-filled hardcore porn film riffing on Stuart Gordon`s cult classic. The fact that this has been included in a collection of mostly serious shorts is mind-boggling, but stripped of (most of) all the nudey bits, it`s worth a peek in a so-bad-it`s-good kind of way. Finally it`s `And This Was a Good Day`, which is, essentially, a trippy music video in the vein of Terry Gilliam.

To be brutally honest, and that`s how we like to do things round these parts, it`s projects like this that soil the name of low-budget indie cinema; nothing new, little of any good, entirely disjointed with but 15 minutes of overall footage worth checking out. Despite being a package of mostly boring filler, it`s actually received a bit of acclaim from pretentious low-rent film critics praising it simply because it`ll never see the inside of a multiplex - apparently that`s worth more these days than whether or not it`s entertaining. That ain`t the case here. With an incoherent structure and image heavy content, BiFF JUGGERNAUT`s first feature production wears its weirdness with glee, but to get decent attention the fellas are going to have to come up with something better than a stinker like this.