Now there is good stuff out there, it’s just that there’s precious little of it.
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At this stage it just isn’t worth while setting yourself up for the inevitable kick in the nuts. Howard-Lovecraft’s great friend and fellow fantasist-has been attempted. It is probably unfair, but I do the same when I hear that something of Robert E. As a matter of fact, I had pretty much dismissed the idea before I even looked farther at it. Lovecraft was and remains a hugely important part of my literary life and so it was with more than a little trepidation that I heard that a screen version of The Whisperer in Darkness had been made. If you were forced to do so then this long short story would be best classified along with his masterpieces The Call of Cthulhu and The Colour out of Space, where the horrors of the graveyard were being replaced by the chilling idea of immense gulfs of Space and Time that lie outside our normal and limited understanding of the universe. I’ve never thought that it was a wise move to try to label him. Indeed if that was in fact what he was doing. I didn’t know it then but this was one of Lovecraft’s crossover stories, where he was moving subtly away from outright horror tales and into science-fiction. It was all marvellous stuff that, to this day, can still move me to a feeling of wonder at the unknown vistas stretching before us. Miskatonic University and Arkham sounded strange and mysterious (although little did I guess then that I would come to feel that I knew them as well as I did my own school and town) and then there was that tantalising suggestion that there were strange things in the floodwaters… Floods in Vermont had a sort of romantic faraway feel to them and the mention of New England folklore seemed almost extraordinarily exotic to my mind. It seemed that the writer was hinting at so much more than he was putting on the page. I can still recall the frisson that they gave me. Lovecraft’s superb tale, The Whisperer in Darkness, which was first published in Weird Tales magazine of August, 1931. They come from the second paragraph of H. I suppose that it must be more than forty years since I first read those now-familiar words. Shortly after the flood, amidst the varied reports of hardship, suffering, and organised relief which filled the press, there appeared certain odd stories of things found floating in some of the swollen rivers so that many of my friends embarked on curious discussions and appealed to me to shed what light I could on the subject…” I was then, as now, an instructor of literature at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, and an enthusiastic amateur student of New England folklore. “The whole matter began, so far as I am concerned, with the historic and unprecedented Vermont floods of November 3, 1927. Noyes), Stephen Blackehart (Charlie Tower), Autumn Wendel (Hannah Masterson), Caspar Marsh (Will Masterson), Barry Lynch (Henry Akeley), Joe Sofranko (George Akeley) and Andrew Leman (Charles Fort).‘A Piece of Delirium out of Poe or Rimbaud…’: Starring Matt Foyer (Albert Wilmarth), Matt Lagan (Nathaniel Ward), Daniel Kaemon (P.F. Lovecraft director of photography, David Robertson edited and produced by Robertson music by Troy Sterling Nies production designer, Leman. While interesting in its failures, Whisperer is a complete waste of time.ĭirected by Sean Branney screenplay by Andrew Leman and Branney, based on the story by H.P. It’s not Deliverance country… it’s Ben & Jerry’s country. Actually, none of the performances are bad.Īlso, Vermont hicks aren’t a scary villain group. He wouldn’t have been able to sell it as a gag.
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The silly visualization of disembodied heads, apparently in an attempt to fit in a forties style (along with the black and white), don’t match with the surprisingly good CG aliens. But it’s serious and, sadly, it’s not even good at being serious. Maybe if the film had been made as a comedy, it might’ve worked. He loves low angle shots and he loves panning. Speaking of jarring, it’s also disconcerting when director Branney doesn’t use a low angle shot or pan. Why have CG monsters and electrical effects if you’ve got paper macho sets? It creates a disjointed visual experience and it is often jarring. It’s in black and white, but it’s shot on DV and DV is unforgiving. Maybe they thought it was good, maybe they thought it was bad, regardless, Whisperer is pretty dumb. As in, the stupid stuff is in the original and they just left it in.
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Lovecraft stuff, I’m going to assume the plot problems with The Whisperer in Darkness are from the source material.
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Given the filmmakers are members of an organization dedicated to H.P.