By Brian M. Sammons
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu. Director: Henry Saine. Stars: Kyle Davis, Devin McGinn, Barak Hardley.
Welcome back, my friends, to the House of Slithering Cinema. Today, we’ve got an oddity up in the projection room, all ready to go. It is one of the rarest of the rarities, a flick that dares to combine humor with the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft. Very few moviemakers take up the challenge of combining such radically opposing forces. Can you name a single funny line from a Lovecraft story? What about that great joke he had in that one story? Oh, yeah, it doesn’t exist. Just finding a ray of hope in an HPL story is hard enough to do, let alone something that makes you laugh. Now, if you have ever read any of the man’s personal letters, then you know that H.P. Lovecraft wasn’t as grim and humorless as most think, but his tales of terror are steeped in so much bleak dread that little-to-no room is left for levity.
While some films have merged the wacky with the weird of Lovecraft, I can only think of a few that have done it well. There was the black splatstick of Re-Animator, the noir-tinged sarcasm of Cast a Deadly Spell, and…well, that’s all I can readily think of off the top of my head. But then, just finding a good Lovecraft movie is pretty rare, so I suppose a good and funny Lovecraft movie would be, what, super rare?
About now is when I tell you if this new, independent film is one of the good rarities, or is it just another of the many movies that missed the mark? Well, that depends on if you think the “master of dick and fart jokes” (his words), Kevin Smith, would do a good job of making a funny film about the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. Okay, to be fair, director Henry Saine and writer/co-star Devin McGinn don’t completely ape the style of Clerks-creator Smith, but The Last Lovecraft does have about as much of Kevin Smith’s influence in it as it does Lovecraft’s. So, if you like the silly, rather adolescent, Jay-and-Silent-Bob-type of humor, you’ll get more out of this film than if you don’t.
As for me, that kind of sophomoric silliness always tickles my inner fourteen-year-old, so that means the giggles are good, but how about the Lovecraft bits?
Well, the story begins with a secret organization finding the titular “Relic of Cthulhu”. Knowing that the Cult of the tentacled-faced Great Old One will stop at nothing to get this doodad, for it can bring Big Daddy C up from the depths, they have to give it to a special protector: the last descendent of one Howard Philips Lovecraft. Unfortunately, the last of Lovecraft’s line has been made in the mold of the typical Gen-X underachiever, even though he missed that generation by a few years. Fortunately, the slacker does have the typical smartass buddy, who just happens to know a thing or two about H.P. Lovecraft, and, more importantly, he knows a gamer geek (Yeah, the stereotypes are pretty prevalent here) who happens to know even more about the world that Lovecraft wrote about.
Notice that I didn’t say, “The world that Lovecraft created”? Yeah, in this movie, the nameless horrors that HPL wrote about are real. HPL was just someone who learned what man was not meant to know and wanted to warn others by masking the blasphemous truth as fiction. Since some people really hate that often-used idea, I thought I would mention it.
In any event, the trio of misfits must find an old sea captain named ‘Olaf’, who has faced the horrors of Deep Ones firsthand. And by “firsthand”, I mean “lots of fish rape”. As the heroes travel across the desert (If you were the recipient of unwanted fish-man advances, you’d stay as far away from water as you could, too), they must avoid the Cult of Cthulhu, led by the evil general Starscream…I mean Starspawn. Naturally, if they avoided such dangers completely, it would be one boring movie, so along the way, they run into wacky, cultist Deep Ones, Deep-One hybrids, and the aforementioned Starspawn, which really doesn’t look or act like you would expect such a monster to. Perhaps my biggest ‘fanboy’ gripe: this Big Baddie looked more like a reject from the set of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show than a cosmic-born horror. But that is a minor quibble, at best.
Essentially a road-trip buddy movie with comedic elements, there is sadly nothing even remotely scary about this film. If you were looking for Lovecraftian terror, look somewhere else. That said, The Last Lovecraft is surprisingly faithful to the Cthulhu Mythos. One of the highlights of this film was an animated short on the history of Cthulhu and the Elder Things that was great fun. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Great Cthulhu use a Triceratops skull to smash shoggoths to death. Sure, there are a few minor changes and omissions to Lovecraft’s canon, but only the ultra-purists will get their tentacles in a twist over such things.
At just 78 minutes, the movie is a fast ride and, in all honesty, it ends rather too abruptly. While I think the climax could have been handled a bit better, you should take that as a compliment rather than a condemnation. It means that I wanted to see more of our heroes in action, which is a good and rare thing. Many modern movies can’t get over quickly enough for me, but I was sad to see this one end so soon. True, they do set things up for a sequel, but such a thing is cold comfort, at best.
Final Verdict: The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu is a very Lovecraftian film, with a bunch of silliness, some off-colour humor, and plenty of fan service for all the loyal Cthulhuheads to enjoy. Though it’s perhaps not for everyone, I do think that most will find it an enjoyable experience, as long as they don’t take the Mythos so seriously.
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu is available from Amazon.com.
Bio: Brian Sammons is an author and critic of dark things, and an all-around troublemaker. Sadly, you can’t follow him on Twitter because he abhors Twitter.