Yes, a new watch-a-thon, featuring me, a hopeless procrastinator, plumbing the depths of cinematic misery for your entertainment.

This time around, I will be watching Lovecraftian and Lovecraftian-tangential films, and as usual they must be films I’ve never seen before (which makes the task trickier and bound for disaster).

If you don’t know anything about Lovecraft’s writings, cosmic horror, the Mythos, or Cthulhu, that’s great — keep it that way. Onwards!

The Haunted Palace (1963) – Tubi

We kick off Part II with a stone-cold classic from AIP that I somehow had never seen before. A shock, I know.

Billed as Edgar Allen Poe’s The Haunted Palace, this film is, in reality, a retelling of Lovecraft’s ‘The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” with just a fraction of Poe’s original poem used to frame the film as opening and closing quotes.

Fans of the story will recognize many familiar elements; Vincent Price plays Charles Ward, who has brought his wife to Arkham to claim an old palace he has inherited from his long-gone descendant, Joseph Curwen. Curwen (who was burned alive 110 years ago) was an infamous warlock who terrorised the town until his fiery comeuppance. He cursed the lynch mob as he sizzled, and true to his word is resurrected through an old portrait that he uses to possess the hapless Ward. Ward/Cullen is aided by his two fellow warlocks, Jabez and Simon, and proceeds to take vengeance on the descendants of his killers. Shenanigans ensue.

The film looks gorgeous — we don’t talk enough about Roger Corman being such an accomplished director (his greatness is often overshadowed by his ‘Shlock-Meister reputation’) — wonderfully lit by renowned cinematographer Floyd Crosby, and the score is great (it really reminded me of Toto’s score for Dune!). Vincent Price is fantastic as usual, as is Debra Paget (in her last screen role). Simon is played by Lon Chaney Jr., made up grayer than week-old sausage meat, and he makes the most of being relegated to being a shadowy jump scare.

The film is dripping in atmosphere, surprisingly faithful to the story, and well worth a watch if you’ve never seen it.

8/10

Intersect (1091 Pictures, February 12, 2020) and Into the Abyss (Brainstorming Films, 2022)

Intersect (2020) – Prime

Billed as a cosmic horror with some Lovecraftian elements, this is a film for those of you who like your stories all timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly. In that regard, it put me in mind of Primer, but the inclusion of a vast, floating ‘Old One’ and lots of shadowy thingies, plus the fact that it mostly takes place at Miskatonic University, lands this squarely in the right setting for this watch-a-thon.

Ryan and his fellow nerds, Caitlin and Nate, have built a time portal under the watchful eye of their science prof, Bill Marshall, played by James (Space Above and Beyond) Morrison. From the outset though we know that something has gone terribly wrong, and the film takes its time explaining just what went wrong and why.

It’s really a film of two halves — the first being the more interesting experimental sessions, the second being concerned with Ryan’s childhood trauma that has left him with missing memories. His flashbacks reach back further and further until we discover the root of his anguish, but I would have liked more ‘what’s on the other side?’ stuff and less of a character-driven piece (remember, I have grown more shallow lately).

Overall, it’s a decent film, with good performances and well directed. The effects are fine, but the whole feeling of impending doom seems to dissipate in the final act. Worth a look though.

7/10

Into the Abyss (2022) – Tubi

Hailing from Argentina, Me Encontrarás En Lo Profundo Del Abismo tells the tale of Bannon, a man trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic city drenched in eternal rains, and razed by gargantuan crustacean entities. Bannon uses what battery life he has left on his cellphone to watch old family videos, and listen to the last voicemail from his wife telling him to meet them in a place far from the devastation.

Unfortunately, his car battery is dead, his rations have dwindled, and he is constantly hunted by screeching humanoids. To cap it all he is hallucinating figures from his past, but when all seems hopeless he stumbles across a gun and a friendly voice on a radio. With renewed passion, Bannon attempts to flee the city.

I was really impressed with this one (although I wasn’t happy that Tubi only carries the dubbed version). The film looks amazing, darkly stark enough to make every shadow sinister, and the director has some fun with aspect ratios. The cast is tiny, but the two main characters, Bannon and Demian played by Martin Rispau and German Baudino respectively, are very good.

The first two thirds made me feel like I was watching someone playing a survival horror game, and the third act questions (or solidifies) everything you thought about the protagonist. The effects are solid and the sound design is on point — worth a look.

8/10

Castle Freak (1995) – Prime

Once again I am afforded the opportunity to correct a staggering omission in my watch history — and so we turn to the only Stuart Gordon flick I had never seen.

Many of Gordon’s other films (Dagon, Re-Animator, From Beyond, etc) are overtly Lovecraftian, but the connective tissue for this one, scripted by Dennis Paoli, is tenuous at best, its closest point of reference being HPL’s short story “The Outsider.”

John and Susan Reilly (stalwarts Jeffery Combs and Barbara Crampton) arrive at an Italian castle that John has inherited. They are accompanied by their blind daughter, Rebecca. Fairly quickly we learn that John inadvertently caused his daughter’s blindness (along with the death of her younger brother) in a drunken car crash, and Susan cannot forgive him. Compounding their marital strife is the issue of a deformed man chained in the dungeon, the product of a family scandal, who has been malnourished and tortured for several years. Naturally he escapes, and all manner of ghastliness ensues.

Castle Freak is the usual gory romp from the Gordon stable, and I certainly enjoyed it (although not as much as many of his other films). The cast is excellent and the effects are squidgy. As usual, Gordon weaves horror and sex to the nth degree, but in this one I felt that some of the sexual violence was too much of a product of its time. That said, Paoli’s sub-plot involving Susan’s inability to forgive her husband is excellent, and really elevates what might have been a flimsy premise.

Freak-tacular.

7/10

I just got severe whiplash from watching one of the worst films I’ve ever seen followed by one of the best — so here are the next two entries in my Lovecraftian watch-a-thon…

Necronomicon (DRagon Studios, 2023), and The Endless (Well Go USA Entertainment, April 6, 2018)

Necronomicon (2023) – Tubi

Not the somewhat entertaining Jeffrey Combs starrer from 1993, but a demented cash-grab from director Richard Driscoll, known primarily for ultra-low budget dross and tax evasion.

It begins with a promising smorgasbord of tentacles and eyeballs, but then descends into a 15-min CG car chase that looks ripped from Grand Theft Auto circa 2013. Throughout this physics-defying scene, we are treated to some deathly dull narration, before the film lurches into a half-assed story about various types looking for the Necronomicon, that skin-bound tome of spells and assorted ghastliness (written by Aleister Crowley no less).

However, this is where Driscoll recycles about 80% of his previous film, Conjuring: The Book of the Dead, and even slots in scenes from another of his earlier films. Almost as wild as the director’s audacity is the cast list: Tom Sizemore, Michael Madsen, Bai Ling, Lysette Anthony, Sylvester McCoy, Jason Donovan, Robin Askwith — all previous victims of the earlier film. The plot is nonsensical, the direction is garbage, and the whole thing is an embarrassment.

That said — I’m going to recommend you find and watch it, but you MUST put the subtitles on.

1/10

The Endless (2017) – Prime

I followed up the previous turd casserole with a film that flew under my radar when it came out, but I’m so happy I caught up with it at last. The Endless is written by Justin Benson, and was directed by and stars Benson and his collaborator, Aaron Moorhouse. This duo has become one of the most sought after creative units, having wowed their peers with films such as Spring and Synchronic, and their segment in VHS: Viral, and they are now known for helming some of the best Moon Knight and Loki episodes, as well as essentially taking over the Daredevil: Born Again series.

The story concerns brothers Justin and Aaron, a couple of guys living day-to-day with a crappy job, but with obvious love for each other. We learn that several years ago, the brothers had escaped from a ‘UFO death cult,’ but when Aaron receives a mysterious videotape from the compound, they are compelled to return to revisit their past.

I’m not telling you anything else, because you have to go in cold, but let’s just say this is the purest slice of cosmic horror I’ve seen in a long time. The angst it generates in its protagonists (and viewers) through a pervasive sense of dread is brilliantly conceived and filmed by the pair, and the acting ensemble is on point.

I loved everything about this film, and rate it as highly as Annihilation. It even put me in mind of Peele’s under-appreciated Nope — pulling off the same scope on a fraction of the budget.

If you haven’t seen this, I totally recommend it, and then suggest watching the rest of their catalogue (Spring is particularly excellent).

10/10

Phew — what a rollercoaster!

Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos, Part I
You Can’t Handle the Tooth
Tubi Dive
What Possessed You?
Fan of the Cave Bear
There, Wolves
What a Croc
Prehistrionics
Jumping the Shark
Alien Overlords
Biggus Footus
I Like Big Bugs and I Cannot Lie
The Weird, Weird West
Warrior Women Watch-a-thon

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Neil Baker’s last article for us was Part I of It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits. (AprilMoonBooks.com).