|
Directed by: Elias Ganster Starring: Elias Ganster, Lloyd Kaufman, Joanna Angel, Dan Payne First of all, I had mixed feelings about even writing this review. I don't watch a lot of independent/student/short film, so I don't really know what sort of standard is fair, both in regard to production quality and to acting ability. However, after watching them film, going online, and reading several reviews of the movie from well-established sites, I decided that I could proceed with a clean conscience. First of all, the quality of some of the shorts themselves erased any lingering guilt that might have moved me to mercy. Second, although my review might seem harsh, I assure you that it is much gentler than many of the reviews out there, given that it contains no reference to anal sex or dog feces. I'm not a qualified filmmaker or film reviewer, but I have read a shitload of H.P. Lovecraft stories. Lovecracked! The Movie (as opposed to Lovecracked! The Musical or Lovecracked! The Cereal, I guess) goes back and forth between trying to emulate and trying to parody H.P. Lovecraft's fiction, as if to say "If you're going to fail, and fail spectacularly, you ought to fail in as many ways as possible." As I sunk into the laborious and depressing process of watching the movie, the Lovecraft nerd in me made a feeble attempt to offer an internal running commentary. That isn't right. They should've done something to emulate the lighting described in the story. Why did they change the names? If they wanted to explore that particular theme, they should have done an adaption of "Cool Air" instead of... Etcetera, etcetera. Sooner or later, though, I realized that it was fruitless; a scene-by-scene, motif-by-motif, failure-by-embarrassing-failure recounting of this movie is a waste of time. Even the good shorts, and yes, there were a few good ones, have little if any connection to Lovecraft's fiction, which seems to be the only thing the filmmakers know less well than effective horror and effective comedy. The movie opens with an "investigative journalist" in the first of many so-called comedy bits. He's in search of information on H.P. Lovecraft, positing that the inspiration for his stories might have come from being abused, haunted, or abducted by aliens, and goes around interviewing random people to ask them questions about Lovecraft. This is a stupid premise, since no one would actually interview random people on the street hoping to learn something about an early 20th century pulp horror writer that they couldn't find out by going to Google or Wikipedia and typing in "H.P. Lovecraft." Neither the journalist nor any of the interviewees are convincing in their roles, with the sole exception of Lloyd Kaufman (head of Troma Studios) playing himself and using the interview as an opportunity to plug Troma films. I have to credit him as the only sane cast character in these shorts, because he is the only one who suggests the obvious: watching something that is not Lovecracked! The Movie. Like I said, some of the shorts were good, or at least not terrible, but even these have little or no connection to Lovecraft's fiction. "Alecto" is a pretty good short about a musician who suffered child abuse, and whose long-suppressed rage is awakened when his student plays a particular piece of music. "Witch's Spring" is a forgivable affair wherein a young man is seduced and killed by a witch, and it would be quite alright, except that the protagonist is the kind of stolid, impossibly clueless young dolt who is usually only exists in slasher movies, where he exists for the sole purpose of hazily stumbling into a waiting machete. (I don't think I'd ever be stupid enough to drink an unknown, brownish "witch's brew" offered to me by a self-proclaimed pagan who just wielded a kitchen knife in a provocative manner and dropped a line about how she'd stolen my soul, even if she were an extremely fuckable redhead.) "Bug Boy" is a good black-and-white short about a jilted young man who chrysalises in some sort of revolting slimy cocoon so that he can eat his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, who must be a long-lost cousin to the guy from "Witch's Spring." My personal favorite is probably "Chaos of Flesh," wherein a passerby saves a young girl from being dragged out and decapitated by a lumberjack, only to discover that the blonde little thing in the nightgown is not an innocent little girl, but a monster. There was also a basically straight-up adaption of "The Statement of Randolph Carter," featuring bad props and robotic acting. Along with "Alecto," which has the barest of similarities to the story "The Music of Erich Zann," it was the only short with any connection to Lovecraft's fiction. Then there was the absolute crap, and an awful lot of it, too. "History of the Lurkers," a wordless idiotic tale about a punk-rocker's guitar music luring a bunch of Internet geeks to someplace where they don't do anything important, "Remain," an improbably praised work of stop-motion where an artist gets eaten by a painting that looks like it's made of unprocessed sausage, and some unnamed cartoon bit that looks like something Terry Gilliam might've crapped out if he were in a hurry and had a bad head injury. Worst of all, however, is a clip lifted from burningangel.com's Re-Penetrator, which in its 8-minute abridged form is a medium-core porn spoof of the old horror/comedy Re-Animator, featuring a mad scientist having sex with a beautiful zombie bride who craves cock instead of brain matter and tosses out subtle gems like "Eat my zombie pussy!" This is the point where I dropped any notions of giving the filmmakers a D+ for effort. If you're masochistic enough to watch the special features, the most notable short is "A Voice Inside," a played-out affair featuring a guy who hears mocking voices in his head. When pills don't work, he vomits, smashes his face into a wall, beats his head into a bloody mess with cookware, and finally, the voices totally in control, fucks himself in the rear end with the handle of a claw hammer. Add to this the terrible, awful bits with the journalist running around, and you've got a nightmare that can't be saved by the decent shorts-hell, it couldn't be saved if Hitchcock, Kubrick, Spielberg, Kurosawa, and Scorsese merged together to form some kind of awesome cinematic Voltron determined to keep this movie from turning into absolute tripe. Amateur filmmakers, here's a tip from a Lovecraft fan: The world doesn't need any more tongue-in-cheek Lovecraft adaptions. If it needs Lovecraft adaptions at all, it needs someone who will take the material seriously, put it in its proper context, and get it right for once. There are plenty of great Lovecraft stories that could be effectively adapted to film and don't require a huge special effects outlay: "Cool Air," "The Picture In The House," "Pickman's Model," and others. I could throw decent ideas at you for at least an hour...much more than I can say for this movie. RATING: .5 PROS: Some decent shorts CONS: Lots of terrible comedy bits, little relation to supposed inspiration ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486617/
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2006 10:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 10:48 |
|