Lovecraft is unfilmable. Just face it

Lovecraft is unfilmable. Just face it.

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He wasn't THAT ugly.

what are some flicks about guys who name their cats offensive slurs?

>you will never have a Lovecraftean masterpiece with the set pieces of Crimson Peak because Del Toro can't go a single fucking year without dropping a film

with the whole bullshit about "universes" I'm surprised it hasn't been picked up yet, if anybody was going to try it out, it was Universal.

Maybe they're up to it since the Mummy failed, although I don't know how much of a hit they took from that one

I think they broke even thanks to China, which means they'll still want to take at least one more crack at getting their Universal Monsters shared universe off the ground.

Crimson Peak was way too over the top for HPL. Weird horror is about subtlety, not fuckign Dark Shadows/Dark Souls bullshit.

aesthetic ass picture

Some of his stuff is unfilmable, like his descriptions of non-euclidian architecture. Sailor being eaten up by a geographical fault that is an acute angle that behaves as an obtuse.

The style of Crimson Peak is oddly enough better suited for Poe. The Fall of the House of Usher, for instance.

Lovecraft is more like... maybe The VVitch? I could see The Dunwich Horror filmed like that, or The Colour out of Space

When did this 'Lovecrafts stories are such intelligent and subtle masterpieces' meme start?

Would you guys consider blame! Lovecraftian?

I guess when legit good writers like Robert Bloch, William Burroughs and Jorge Luis Borges said he was good or paid homage to him in their work.

Bloodborne got it pretty right.

Don't they literally film that exact scene in one of the black and white student films?

Lovecraft IS filmable, but cannot be done by anyone who is not at least as intelligent as Lovecraft was.
The adaptation should stick as closely as possible to the source material. No additions, and whatever is removed (and, given the change of medium, inevitably not every detail could be included) must be chosen extremely judiciously.

In the Mouth of Madness was pretty good though.

Nah, its just that the modern audience demands a more kinetic pacing and a more levity filled atmosphere.
Gothic horror simply is not something that the masses are looking for.
That said...True Detective pretty much did Lovecraft type of shit, minus the ugga bugga monsters, and it fucking worked.

I think Fuller would make a pretty interesting visual experience for a Lovecraft story

Crimsom Peak wasn't Lovecraftian at all...it was literally Mario Bava inspired pastiche, it was literally full on Gothic horror kinda like A Cure For Wellness.

lovecraft sucks and /lit/ has sucked past the first few months it was alive

prove me wrong

Lovecraft was a highly intelligent man with one of history's truly original imaginations. His writing was far from perfect, and highly inconsistent, ranging from utter dreck to true masterpieces such as The Shadow over Innsmouth. He was constantly improving as he got older, though - it's a shame that he died young.
When we read Lovecraft, we make allowance for the weaknesses in the writing because the flip side of the coin is the stunning imagination. There is also much else of interest in Lovecraft - complex sentence structure such as is rarely used these days, attention to interesting topics such as architecture and the 18th century, a refreshing absence of romantic or sexual themes, and so on.
It is true that Lovecraft was usually not subtle, but when we read him we imagine greater stories beyond the actual stories - the stories he would have written had he perfected his craft. What we do have is good enough that we can almost see over those mountains of madness and see the greatness that could have been. And so it is as if the greatness already was.

Most of his stuff is "I looked the creature, I can't describe the appearance because it was so horrible" so you can pretty much make the monster into whatever you want

Besides that, it's really not unfilmable
Matter of fact, The Void is pretty much Lovecraft sans weird racist undertones

Lovecraft stuff is public domain. I suppose the reason why there are no big film adaptions (besides the fact that Hollywood is too pathetic and talentless) is because the jewy producers can't seize the rights and have complete control on the properties.

Fred Ward as 'Harry' Lovecraft, the Marlowe-like private eye, in Cast a Deadly Spell was great.

>Ligotti>>>>>>>>Lovecraft

I think a Lovecraftian horror (as in Cthulu or Yog Sothoth) would be unfilmable. A Lovecraft film, however, is fairly simple. After all, Re-Animator was made into a fairly decent camp-flick.
Dunwich Horror would be my particular choice for an adaption. All they'd have to do is A) Make Wilbur prettier and more sympathetic (but still albino, B) make Yog Sothoth an ever-present threat (but never show it on screen) and C) make Wilbur's twin more sympathetic, but also more monstrous.

This is correct, Lovecraftian horror is only representable through the unknown, therefor cannot be presented through visual art.

I like the short story were the dude is being eaten alive by a ghost dog and he keeps writing on his journals...like he writes the screams while he is dying...

>apples>>>>>>>>oranges

He is Lovecraftian and used Cthulhu myths stuff tho

"The Void is pretty much Lovecraft sans weird racist undertones"

No, The Void is a shitty run-of-the-mill zombie movie with some triangles thrown in.

Everything good in Lovecraft was just shit he stole from better authors, so little sense in calling it Lovecraftian.

Anyone who says that Lovecraft is unfilmable hasn't actually read his stories. They're filmable, you just need a crazy man behind the camera.

It's not really about being intelligent or subtle, but unfilmable. Their strong points of his literature just cannot be translated into a visual medium so all you have left is the weaker, less original elements left and that's why pretty much all the adaptations of his work are either shit, or only vaguely similar to the original story, or both.

>His writing was far from perfect, and highly inconsistent
That's an understatement. Like you said, some of his earlier work is practically unreadable.

When people say "unfimlable" they don't mean it literally.

They just mean any attempt would be shit.

Give a bunch of super talented animators and artists LSD and set them loose in a room with octopuses painted on the walls.

It's the only way

Cth is the most filmable monster because it is the most descript.

i think guillermo del toro or david lynch could.

this was very close

That's not ALL his stories though. Some have pretty concrete narratives and don't go that far out there. You could totally film The Shadow over Innsmouth and make it work.

Man I hate Sup Forums mods

>Del Toro
>Lovecraft
>IMAGINE Tom Cruise's In The Mountains of Madness

Fair enough. It'd make a good action/suspense thriller.

Course the ending was hokey as fuck.
I'm glad I don't have to.

>You could totally film The Shadow over Innsmouth and make it work.

They did, and the movie was called Cthulhu. The only bad part about it was that the acting was bad, but otherwise it got the story right.

>>Course the ending was hokey as fuck.
Cthulhu didn't think he'd have to deal with the power that is boats.

Well said.

There are some parts of Lovecraft, the best parts, that can't be filmed.

How in the h**k would you translate something like "...and the tiles were cut in bizarre-angled shapes which struck him less as asymmetrical than based on some unearthly symmetry whose laws he could not comprehend" into a film? You can't.

You're thinking of The Call of Cthulhu. Cthulhu doesn't appear in Shadow over Innsmouth.

Actually, a ton of his stuff could be very easily translated to TV or film. Most of his short stories don't really go into 'horror beyond comprehension' tier.

Shit like Pickman's Model, Cool Air, Cats of Ulthar, Music of whats-his-name, etc... could all be done in pretty standard Twilight Zone style anthology shows.

>ywn watch an adaptation of At The Mountains of Madness directed by Del Toro starring BASED Ron Pearlman

why live?

Many years ago my dad told me about a Lovecraft story about a town in which all birds avoided a particular building. It was implied (or even told) that the Necronomicon was stored in the attic of that building.
Does anyone know which story this is? I never found it. It wouldn't be unlike him to mix up different Lovecraft and Poe stories, though.

We're talking about Shadow Over Innsmouth, not Call of Cthulhu.

SOI is the one that's moderately exciting where he's being chased around the projects by fish people and then the Navy blows it up and then years later he realizes that no he is the fish people all along.

He was the demons?

The Haunter of the Dark
that's a cool dad

You'd have to work around a lot of stuff, like the whole backstory being told to the character by a drunk, and the final reveal which aren't really cinematic at all.

True Detective S1 is the best Lovecraftian style thing you could get

Doing it in the style of The Void/In the Mouth of Madness is just way too cheesy

>and the final reveal which aren't really cinematic at all.

You could change that part in the script and go all Sixth Sense on the audience where even the MC couldn't piece it together.

Thank you! I wasn't sure if the building was a church but I guess it really was. I've been looking for it for a long time.

Yes, but they're not his better, nor more characteristic and personal stories (except maybe for Music of Erich Zann which is pretty good, but I doubt that'd make a good movie either. The moment you actually hear the music, it loses its power).

Lovercraft reads cheesy.

Read it out loud if you dont believe me.

No, you could do both of those things straight, you just have to have the imagination to pull it off. The backstory is told by a drunk? Just do an extended flashback or flashbacks starting after the scene where the narrator and Zadok are sitting by the water.
The final reveal? Show the narrator looking at himself in the mirror uneasily. Show him going to the doctor because something strange is going on with his skin. Etc. Then in the last scene show him starting a journey back to Innsmouth, maybe getting into a bus or something. Cut to end credits.

Name one (1) good audiobook that is Lovecraft-style.

It was a chuch and iirc the item was the Shining Trapezohedron.

The Message podcast was okay

Sure thing. Good to see that my voluminous knowledge of Lovecraft was finally of use to someone besides myself.

THe call of cthulhu silent movie was breddy gudd

Not really.

>leave lovecraft kino to me

I guess it could work, but I would be extremely wary of making any additions or major changes to a Lovecraft story when adapting it. It's highly unlikely they would improve anything. The major problems with Lovecraft, IMO, are rarely his basic concepts or his vision or his plots (with a few fairly obvious exceptions such as the weak ending of The Call of Cthulhu and the unbelievable character behavior in The Whisperer in Darkness) - it's more the execution.

you're welcome

If Lovecraft's wife was pregnant, I could see him writing something like Eraserhead.

Well, if we're bringing in movies that aren't based on Lovecraft texts, but are Lovecraftian, then I would certainly nominate 2001 as the most Lovecraftian movie I'm aware of. But this Europa Report seems interesting. That cover image already tells me I'm in for some quality.

Found footage seems like a good movie adaptation of lovecraft diary style

Except for a shitty squid monster it's got nothing Lovecraftian.

I keep coming around to considering it but the reviews drive me away.

>voluminous knowledge of Lovecraft
Does he have any stories with a strong protagonist? The fact that most of his stories lack a proper main character seems like one of the main reason there are no proper Lovevraft movies.

What's your favorite piece of Lovecraft writing?

There's a number of good found footage movies with Lovecraftian elements to them.

Noroi.
Borderlands.
Taking of Deborah Logan.
Le Documents Interdits

>Directed by Judd Apatow

We can make this happen

If you mean strong as in heroic, then I'd say Willett in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and Randolph Carter in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and a few other stories.
If you just mean strong as in artistically central and well-executed, then I'd add at least Pickman's Model, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Shadow out of Time, The Thing on the Doorstep, and The Haunter of the Dark.

Not that guy, but no. HPL was terrible with characters and even worse with dialogue.

Hard to pick just one... off the top of my head, I'd say my favorites are:
Nyarlathotep
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Colour out of Space
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow out of Time
The Haunter of the Dark
Fungi from Yuggoth

This. Lovecraft isn't a look, it's a feel. I think it's better suited for a show though. That way you tell different stories of people connected through a main plot, kind of like Eternal Darkness.

As far as the non-euclidian architecture, American Gods kind of showed that it can be done with how they did Crispin Glover. Fuck, I know he's busy but just put Fuller on it.

>youtube.com/watch?v=lxZpEFJhO6k
>Your plan is a mistake, he repeated
>This world is a mistake, I replied

>Lovecraft is unfilmable. Just face it.
You probably meant "unfathomable".

People don't say it's unfilmable because it's "intelligent and subtle masterpieces". It's unfilmable due to nature of a lot of the stories. See > descriptions of non-euclidian architecture. Sailor being eaten up by a geographical fault that is an acute angle that behaves as an obtuse
How do you even go about trying to film that?
Then there's also the fact that a lot of characterization is in the form of first person narration. In terms of actually showing something happening, a lot of his stories are just people walking around and then going "oh shit" when they realize the truth - a bulk of which happens in the monologue. Take even something like say, the Nameless City: it'll make for a rather boring film since it's just one guy walking around the ruins and seeing pics/engravings of weird creatures and then realizing those were literal representations of its population and not metaphorical.

I think I'd like the ending to be more Prince Of Darkness style, trying to check for the gills, and cut to black just before we get to see it.
And of course, the flashback is the easiest way to do it, but an extended flashback in the middle of a film always sucks.

>but an extended flashback in the middle of a film always sucks
How about Godfather 2?

...

Dreamquest might be fun to see if the director has a vision to make it really feel fantastical and otherwordly, and that this sunset city is worth the journey. But mostly it comes down to nailing atmosphere and attitude. Kadath and Leng have to feel really foreboding, you need to sense the dread coming from the black rock.

yet it works in a video game format. whats your excuse Sup Forums ?

There's an exception to every rule, and the plot on that one lended itself to it. A horror/thriller like SOI would be, would lose a lot of momentum and tension if you insert a big flashback full of backstory exposition.

It only works for a while. I could never finish it because it goes full retard in the second half.
The whole first part of the game was brilliant though. Loved the escape from Innsmouth part.

Because different mediums works differently? You seriously can't be this stupid to think that what works in games can work as well in a live action.

I'm reading The Rats in the Walls and literally just got to that part. Fucking lol

>waaaahhh it wont work in movies because you cannot transpose lovecraftian horror to a visual form
>except in video games you can

nigger you dumb

The mistake is trying to film the actual horror shit. Most lovecraft stories are about the road to encountering something fucked up, discovering something mysterious, or coping with an experience that already happened. It's not about gore.

If you want to do a good lovecraft adaptation it has to be psychological horror. Shadow over Innsmouth would be great because you don't have to show any freaks besides mildely fucked up frogish looking people. The meaty parts of the story is an old sailor telling stories and the great escape of the protagonist where you never actually see anyone but they're trying to get the protagonist.

His shit reads like a fever dream

Not really, the limitations are the same. Lovecraft's monsters look like shit on videogames too.
What worked about CoC was the tension and suspense on the Innsmouth part. That was stealth done right.
After that it was just a lot of crouching and shit DBZ boss fights that had jack shit to do with Lovecraft.