Monday, October 9, 2017

The Dunwich Horror (1970)

directed by Daniel Haller
USA
90 minutes
2.5 stars out of 5
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This particular attempt to adapt H.P. Lovecraft somehow lost the ominousness and creeping terror that accompanies the majority of his work along the way. A part of it takes place at Miskatonic University, and it's quite funny to see it adapted to the movie's time of release- it isn't some dark, clandestine academy full of cobwebs and secrets, it's a university with young folks, where you can go and browse the Necronomicon basically any time you want. The difference between this and other Lovecraft adaptations is honestly pretty jarring. Watching Ed Begley go on about other dimensions and the Old Ones is perhaps more amusing than it should have been.

It's interesting how many different interpretations there can be of one author's work. For somebody who obviously was very attentive to the way his writing came off, Lovecraft inspired media that ranges from being imbued with insidious horror to films like this version of The Dunwich Horror that are full of bleached, hairsprayed youths; mild women; the importance of upholding the law; and, I should mention, a disproportionate amount of randy nude rituals.

I ultimately wasn't fond of any of this, because even though it's a different approach to Lovecraft than is often taken, it still feels like a failure. It takes all the distinctiveness out of the source material and turns it into a monster movie (produced, of course, by Roger Corman). It's fairly well-made in a technical sense and actually has one of the most remarkably pretty opening credit sequences I've ever seen, but it falls flat as a horror story due to the generic nature of everything it tries to do. Cliche mental patient, cliche orgiastic rituals, cliche triumph of good over evil.

The #1 best thing about this movie is its portrayal of the title subject. I was expecting for this to either never show its monster or to pull out some rubbery octopus thing at the last minute. But- and I advise you to read no further, because not knowing the look of the thing is what makes it so surprising- it does eventually thrust the Horror itself into the viewer's faces, and it's not my favorite imagining of a Lovecraft monster, but for the time and for the ability of practical effects, it's one of my favorites. Only at the (slightly disappointing) end reveal do they show us a solid body, before then it's just a hallucinatory mass of squirming limbs. I appreciated the way that the color went haywire whenever it was onscreen because that lent another dimension to it; it felt like the creature was manipulating perception and reality in the way that original Lovecraft monsters should. This was, however, the only slight high point to an entirely flat and dull movie.

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