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[Best of 2018] What Lovecraft Adaptations Can Learn from Cyanide’s “Call of Cthulhu”

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There was once a time when knowledge of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, much like the insane truths that inspired the Mad Arab’s Necronomicon, was a secretive burden carried by a small legion of nerdy horror literature fans and tabletop gaming enthusiasts. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of Lovecraft adaptations since as far back as the 1970s, but with the exception of Stuart Gordon’s ridiculously entertaining films, none of these really resonated with mainstream audiences.

Of course, since the rise of internet culture and a resurgence of interest in both tabletop role-playing games and Howard’s literary works, figures like Dagon, Cthulhu, and even Shoggoths have become household names. In gaming especially, it’s hard not to run into copious amounts of Lovecraft references when playing anything from Terraria to The Elder Scrolls series. Once an incomprehensively terrifying elder god, Cthulhu has now been immortalized and watered down in the form of plush toys and Funko Pops. Every day we’re treated to new trailers and images of Lovecraft-based/inspired media, and in some ways, it seems that the Mythos has never been so alive.

However, in a world so full of homages to H.P. Lovecraft, it seems ironic that the writer’s unique brand of existential cosmic horror still lies deathly dreaming at the bottom of the proverbial media ocean, with very few instances of media that managed to capture exactly why his work was so terrifying. That’s why I’d like to take a moment to talk about Cyanide Studio’s Call of Cthulhu, and what other Lovecraft adaptations can learn from how the game handled the Mythos. Neil already provided us with an in-depth review, so I’ll only be discussing the story here, but in case you haven’t played the game yet (which I think you definitely should), beware some minor spoilers!

An official adaptation of Chaosium’s homonymous tabletop RPG, Cyanide’s game puts players in the (gum)shoes of private investigator Edward Pierce, a traumatized World-War I veteran compelled to take on a new, mysterious case. Pierce’s investigation leads him to Darkwater Island, off the dreary coast of Massachusetts, where he must piece together the events that led to the fiery death of the infamous Hawkins family. Naturally, Lovecraftian shenanigans ensue, with unnamable creatures and ancient cults slowly pushing the unfortunate investigator towards the limits of what the human mind can handle.

This probably isn’t going to end well.

It’s a familiar setup for anyone who’s even remotely familiar with Lovecraftian tropes, but things change as the game goes on. What really sets it apart isn’t necessarily how it emulates specific story moments or ideas from the Mythos, but how it uses these same ingredients to prepare an all-new horrifying and unpredictable tale that would feel right at home in a 1920s weird fiction magazine.

Sure, there are a few characters and plot threads that don’t quite go anywhere (at least during my playthroughs), but the fascinating mythology behind Darkwater Island’s whaling history and the ominous associations with both real life and other works of fiction like Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick make this story feel like much more than just another adaptation. While dimensional shamblers and tentacle-adorned cultists are well-trodden territory for Lovecraft enthusiasts, prohibition-era conspiracies and the terrifying effects of eldritch whale meat are wholly original story threads that help lead us to a truly apocalyptic finale.

Back in 2005, the now-defunct Headfirst Productions released their own take on the Mythos with Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. While it remains one of my all-time favorite games (despite some frustrating segments and a huge list of technical issues), the developers approached the narrative like many filmmakers do, turning the story into a best-of compilation, stitching together several elements from the mythos into a smorgasbord of Lovecraftian insanity. This can work, as I believe it did in that game (although it mostly appeals to folks who are already familiar with the mythos), but most of the time this method leaves us with movies, comics, and games that adapt only the most superficial elements of Lovecraft’s literary universe. This kind of narrative almost always ends up ignoring the nuances that made silly creations like octopus-faced dragons scary in the first place.

With their take on Call of Cthulhu, Cyanide understood that Lovecraft isn’t just fish-people and tentacles (not that the game lacks these things), choosing to adapt the same creative spirit of the tabletop RPG it’s based on rather any specific story. In Chaosium’s original playing manuals, game masters would be handed the keys to a treasure trove of Lovecraftian nightmares and tasked with using the mythos as a jumping-off point to tell their own stories. These player-based narratives would usually select the best aspects of Lovecraft’s stories and expand them into something new. After all, you could only face the same few cultists and fish-monsters so many times before they became stale. Over time, by diluting the lore with their own original ideas, players would form unique narratives that still managed to stay true to Lovecraft’s original intentions.

Giant fish monsters are cool but not required!

These distinct tales could tap into intrinsically human fears and anxieties about our tiny place in a cold and uncaring universe without so much as mentioning the Great Old Ones, proving that some horrific entities are scarier when they’re felt rather than seen, and that there’s more to the mythos than the famous alien deities and fishy iconography. That’s not to say that direct and faithful adaptations of the Mythos are a bad idea (I mean, we’re all still waiting on a benevolent deity to deliver us Del Toro’s vision of At The Mountains of Madness), but writers would do well to remember that it’s more important to be faithful to the existential spirit behind these stories rather than the superficial details that most Lovecraftian media seems to go nuts over.

Some reviewers have rightly complained about Call of Cthulhu‘s false promises of an intricately tailored player-driven experience, where every minor action could have huge consequences, but no one can deny that this is one of the few adaptations that dares to look beneath the surface of Lovecraft’s tales, finding exactly what makes them tick instead of just lifting the tried-and-true aesthetics that are usually associated with the author. If anything, the illusion of choice here actually makes for a stronger and more disturbing narrative, with the oblivious investigator reluctantly setting the stage for the cultists’ endgame. Additionally, while some players might find the slow and text-heavy investigations tedious, they’re also strangely faithful to Lovecraft’s appreciation of epistolary storytelling, with the player picking up narrative pieces left behind by other characters.

Overall, the game might feel rather clunky, with several instances of stunted gameplay and outdated graphics, but much like its flawed-but-memorable 2005 predecessor, I feel that it’s destined to gain a cult following, remembered as one of the best Lovecraft adaptations to date, if not necessarily a ground-breaking video game. Hopefully, more filmmakers, game designers, and writers, in general, will take note of Cyanide’s novel approach to translating eldritch horror to modern gaming, and we’ll see some more spiritually faithful Lovecraftian media in the future, before the Great Old Ones finally awaken and decide to consume us all.

Born Brazilian, raised Canadian, Luiz is a writer and Film student that spends most of his time watching movies and subsequently complaining about them.

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‘The Company of Wolves’ at 40: One of the Most Underrated Werewolf Movies Ever Made

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There’s a compelling idea in anthropology that many ancient werewolf legends are derived from our species’ need to rationalize the more animalistic side of humanity – which is why lycanthropy has historically been used to explain everything from medieval serial killers to cannibalism. While I personally think there’s a lot more to unpack when it comes to tales of wolfmen and women, this is still a great example of why so many of our most enduring fairy tales involve big bad wolves.

And in the world of film, I think there’s only one feature that really nails the folkloric origins of werewolf stories, namely Neil Jordan’s 1984 fairy-tale horror classic, The Company of Wolves. Even four decades later, there’s no other genre flick that comes close to capturing the dreamlike ambience behind this strange anthology, and that’s why I’d like to take this opportunity to look back on one of the most underrated werewolf flicks ever made.

The Company of Wolves was originally a short story contained in the 1979 anthology The Bloody Chamber, a collection of deconstructed fairy-tales intended for mature readers penned by English author Angela Carter. With the book quickly becoming a hit as readers became fascinated with its subversion of classic folk stories and (then) controversial feminist undertones, it was soon transformed into a duology of BBC radio-dramas which adapted both The Company of Wolves and Carter’s reimagining of Puss-in-Boots.

These radio-dramas soon attracted the attention of then up-and-coming Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan, who decided to meet with Carter to discuss expanding on her stories and bringing them to life on the big screen. The duo soon realized that a single short story wasn’t enough material for a feature-length film, so they decided to adapt all of Carter’s werewolf tales into a single anthology.

With a completed script and a $2.3 million budget, Jordan decided to tackle the project like a hybrid between a theatrical period drama and a schlocky monster movie. Effects-heavy creature features were a hot commodity back in the ’80s, with films like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London proving that there was an audience for horrific lycanthrope transformations, so the director soon recruited a team that could turn this odd collection of feminist folk stories into something commercially viable.

Not exactly a great pick for family movie night.

Shooting would eventually take place almost entirely within the England-based Shepperton Studios, with notable production designer Anton Furst (who would later be known for his work on Tim Burton’s Batman films) helping to bring Jordan’s vision of a darkly romantic fairy-tale world to life. Appropriately enough, production would also involve a real pack of trained wolves (as well as a collection of dyed dogs), though extensive puppetry and animatronics were also used to flesh out the more gruesome parts of the flick.

After a grueling nine-week shoot where budgetary constraints led to corners being cut on props and costumes, The Company of Wolves was finally released in September of 1984 – just in time for spooky season. In the finished film, we follow the strange dreams of a sulky teenage girl named Rosaleen (first-time actress Sarah Patterson) as the film unravels an Arabian-Nights-inspired tapestry of both familiar and not-so-familiar stories about big bad wolves.

From sexually charged cautionary tales to parables about female empowerment, this surreal collection of deranged bedtime stories is much more than the creature feature that the marketing initially suggested. Like a more horror-oriented version of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, The Company of Wolves exudes that same kind of hormonal teenage energy that transports us back to a time when the world was both scary and exciting in equal measure.

That’s not to say that this is an entirely pleasant experience, however, and I’m not just talking about the film’s horror elements. A big portion of the flick’s overtly sexual moments involve the then 13-year-old Patterson coming to grips with her blossoming womanhood and the dangers of predatory men (usually marked with a humorous unibrow), something that naturally makes for some intentionally uncomfortable viewing – especially in the year of our lord 2024.

Obviously, I don’t think it’s my place to dissect (or even judge) the effectiveness of the film’s commentaries on being a young woman, but even as a man I can still appreciate the thought and care that went into crafting this Jungian cocktail of serious themes in a genre-movie package that almost certainly went on to inspire future werewolf movies like Ginger Snaps.

Not the worst wedding I’ve been to.

That being said, what really keeps me coming back to the film is the absurd amount of memorable imagery. From a wedding party being taken over by canines to lonely treks through snowy groves, this is exactly the gloomy world I imagined as a child when reading Grimms’ Fairy Tales – and the dreamy atmosphere is only enhanced by the movie’s overall theatricality.

This also extends to the effects, as it’s easy to forgive decapitated dummy heads and ripped rubber skin when everything is happening in a magical hyper-reality, with a great example of this is being the scene where Grandma’s head unexpectedly explodes like a porcelain doll when it’s knocked off by a wolfman. That’s not to say that the effects are bad, as several of these transformations are downright grisly and likely influenced future lycanthrope effects like those in Underworld and even Trick ‘r Treat (even if the wolf-dogs here often look more cute than scary).

Of course, these aren’t the only things that The Company of Wolves has going for it, as the main trio of Patterson, Micha Bergese and the late, great Angela Lansbury exceptionally bring these exaggerated caricatures to life and the orchestral score is an absolute delight. I also really get a kick out of that bizarre ending implying that the dangers of adult life have literally come crashing into Rosaleen’s bedroom.

The Company of Wolves may not be a perfect film, suffering from some wonky pacing and the classic anthology problem where some stories are clearly much more enjoyable than others, but I’d argue that the flick’s iconic visuals and powerful thematic throughline more than make up for any minor flaws. And while we’ve seen bigger and better werewolf films since then, when it comes to adult-oriented fairy-tales, this is one psycho-sexual journey that is still worth revisiting 40 years down the line.

The Company of Wolves

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