Few of H. P. Lovecraft‘s stories have received the film adaptations they deserve, but the author’s signature blend of existential paranoia and incomprehensibly horrifying creatures has directly inspired many of our favorite horror and science fiction movies, from John Carpenter’s “The Thing” to Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (and later, “Prometheus”). Without even stretching, you can see knowing references in everything from Stephen King’s “The Mist” to the recent horror spoof “The Cabin in the Woods.”
But if you do stretch, it only gets more interesting; you begin to find traces of the author’s Mythos in places where you’d least expect it, in films that indirectly conjure those same pangs of inevitable madness and doom. Were these directors truly inspired by Lovecraft, or did they tap into that vein unconsciously? In most cases, we can only guess. Either way, here are a few of the most indirectly (as far as we can tell) Lovecraftian films. If you’d like to learn more about what to look for as you watch, the TV Tropes page on Lovecraft is a good place to start.
1. Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
This classic Tennessee Williams adaptation tends to be remembered mostly for its taboo-shattering portrayal of homosexuality, but there’s something much darker at work here. At the movie’s climax, a man’s penchant for sex tourism catches up with him in the worst way: A gang of impoverished teenagers (including many of his former conquests) chases him to the ruins of an ancient temple on a desolate hilltop, where they ritualistically murder and devour him. The only witness to the incident is his cousin (Elizabeth Taylor), whose account is so outrageous that she’s declared insane. These elements alone ought to be enough to trace it back to the Mythos, but the movie’s true Lovecraftian roots begin to show much earlier, in its characters’ grim observations about the terrifying ambivalence — if not outright hostility — that humans encounter when they look into the face of God. Plus, the play from which the film was adapted ends on a much less optimistic note, leaving the audience to wonder whether Taylor’s character will end up on the lobotomy table.
Interestingly, “Suddenly, Last Summer” really may have been directly inspired by Lovecraft. Williams’ first published work was a story called “The Vengeance of Nitocris,” which ran in Weird Tales when he was just sixteen years old; Lovecraft’s stories regularly appeared in the same publication, so Williams would surely have been familiar with them. And not too long ago, a St. Louis journalist plugged some of Williams’ writing into that “I Write Like” app and H.P. Lovecraft came up as the closest match. Without any proof, however, we hardly dare add it to the canon.
2. 3 Women (1977)
This cult film is perhaps the least textually inspired example, but it was created in a particularly Lovecraftian way. Haunted by a strange dream, director Robert Altman hammered out a treatment and went into production without a finished script. The result is a menacing existential drama about three dangerously incomplete women — two of whom (Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall) want to be the same person, and one (Janice Rule) who paints unsettling underwater murals that feature a primordial race of amphibious humanoids.
If the latter was a character from Lovecraft’s fiction, we would hear in the artist’s own words all about the otherworldly inspiration behind these paintings. Instead all we can do is sit in the dark as Altman’s women remind us how inadequately we understand the basics of identity or reality. It’s worth noting that Altman had already dipped a toe into this murky pool back in 1972 with “Images,” another very loosely scripted film about a female author’s descent into madness:
3. Melancholia (2011)
Science and mental illness — two of Lovecraft’s specialties — intertwine diabolically in last year’s Lars Von Trier film about the end of humankind. As a rogue planet threatens to collide with Earth, the morbidly depressed Justine (Kirsten Dunst) transforms from a hopeless family burden into a doomsday prophetess. “Life is only on Earth,” she warns, “and not for long.” And yet, if we truly are alone in the universe, what is the source of all her uncanny knowledge? Perhaps the planet Melancholia itself, which seems to bear down on us with eerie sentience.
The idea of vast, alien intelligences operating beyond human perception is at the heart of nearly every classic H.P. Lovecraft tale, from “The Whisperer in Darkness” to “The City of the Great Race,” and so is the impression that humankind is nothing special, and that our world could vanish in an instant at the whim of these ancient beings. The furtive actions of Justine’s scientist brother-in-law (Kiefer Sutherland) suggest a scientific conspiracy to protect Earth’s people from realizing just how vulnerable they are, and [SPOILER] his cowardly suicide in the face of Armageddon can’t help but remind one of the famous quote from “The Call of Cthulhu”:
The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
