The Corridor (2010): written by Josh MacDonald; directed by Evan Kelly; starring Stephen Chambers (Ty), James Gilbert (Everett), David Patrick Flemming (Chris), Matthew Amyotte (Bobcat), Mary-Colin Chisholm (Pauline), and Glen Matthews (Huggs):
Very good, low-budget Canadian indie that travels through some of the territory of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" before it and Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation after it, arriving at its own destination.
Five high-school friends still live in their Nova Scotia town 15 years later. A personal tragedy brings them together for a wake to be held over the weekend at one of their remote cottages. One friend struggles with mental illness and the varying degrees of acceptance the others have for his condition. So clearly his hallucinations simply stem from his mental condition, right?
Ha! The Corridor preserves enough mystery about what is happening that the explanations offered towards the end of the movie are criticized by people inside the movie. There's something out there in the woods. And there's something messing with everyone's heads. And in a nice twist, the troubled friend is also the one best-equipped to face the mystery head-on -- to keep his head, as Kipling said, while everyone around him is losing theirs.
The acting by the five principals is never less than convincing, the direction solid and unshowy, and the few visual effects about as good as one can expect from such a low-budget affair. Nigel Bennett, one of those Canadian actors who has appeared in everything, strolls through in an atypical role as a hunter. In all, an effective and affecting film of horrors cosmic and human that actually left me feeling a bit haunted at the end. Recommended.
Die, Monster, Die! (1965): adapted by Jerry Sohl from the H.P. Lovecraft novella "The Colour Out Of Space"; directed by Daniel Haller; starring Nick Adams (Steve Reinhart), Boris Karloff (Nahum Whitley), Suzan Farmer (Susan Witley), and Freda Jackson (Letitia Witley):
H.P. Lovecraft's 1927 story "The Colour Out Of Space" is one of a handful of the greatest horror stories ever told, eerily prescient in how it anticipates some of the effects of fallout and nuclear radiation exposure, horrifyingly vivid in its relentless description of the physical and mental disintegration of a family infected by Something From Outside.
I noted the excellent, recent German adaptation here. This 1960's adaptation takes certain liberties with the text and takes a little too long to really get rolling. But roll it eventually does, and quite effectively.
This was from AIP when it was still trying to imitate the British horror of Hammer Studios. The action of the movie has been relocated from the 1880's to the 1960's and from Massachusetts to England. A love interest has been added.
Well, really all the characters have been added -- screenwriter Jerry Sohl has modeled the doomed family in this movie on a sort of amalgam of various doomed families in the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, none of those stories actually being "The Colour Out Of Space," in which a hapless family of farmers have to deal with the titular colour.
Boris Karloff is his usual magisterial self as the patriarch of the Whitley family. He's hiding a secret, one that seems to have infected his wife and his manservant. Brash, no-nonsense American Nick Adams (again, not in the original story) arrives at the behest of Karloff's wife to get Adams' fiancee Susan away from the cursed Whitley homestead. Poor old Nick can't even get a cab to the Whitley property, as the nearby town shuns the Whitleys and that whole area. This may be because the Whitley property is home to a "blasted heath" upon which nothing grows. Among other things...
Patience rewards the viewer with a gripping second half, complete with some fine, disturbing model work when it comes to monsters and disturbing make-up when it comes to infected humans. Adams is fine as a brash but occasionally bumbling hero, while Suzan Farmer has a somewhat thankless role leavened by allowing her some agency in facing the curse on her family. Also, a bracingly short 80 minutes and change! Recommended.
Der Farbe/ The Colour [Out Of Space] (2010): written and directed by Huan Vu; adapted from the story by H.P. Lovecraft; starring Ingo Heise (Jonathan Davis), Marco Leibnitz (Armin Pierske - young) and Michael Kausch (Armin Pierske - old): Deliberately paced, excellent German adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's pivotal 1920's tale of cosmic horror and bodily degeneration "The Colour Out Of Space."
The film-makers relocate much of the action to pre-WWII Germany, with an American prologue in and around Lovecraft's demon-haunted Arkham, Massachusetts.
This transplant is a good idea because the German actors do occasionally have problems with a convincing American accent. On the other hand, Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a much worse American accent than any of the Germans in his portrayal of Dr. Strange, so perhaps throwing brickbats at the German amateurs here is a bit wanky on the part of the cranky wankers of Internet nitpickery.
Another good idea was to film everything in black and white except for the titular colour. This makes for a creepy contrast that rises above the very limited visual effects. The film-makers also compensate for a lack of funds by suggesting and implying rather than showing. This makes the horror more horrific when it comes. Would that all horror movies took such care regardless of budget!
I really liked the increasingly haunted and hollow look of the actors in the Pre-War section. They face a contamination from Outside that no one could be prepared for. Ants in a meaningless cosmos, some of them believe they are being punished by the Judeo-Christian God. Ha ha! As if you're that lucky you poor bastards!
The DVD, procured from our friends at the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS), has the most interesting (and necessary) sub-titling mode I've encountered -- English sub-titles on only when people speak German. Unless you're fluent in German, use it.
In all, this is an impressive piece of horror movie-making regardless of the budget. It's not intentionally 'retro' as the two movies actually produced by the HPLHS are, but the black and white certainly makes it feel partially retro, though the performances are pretty modern. A movie like this or the HPLHS Joints should show aspiring film-makers what can be done without a budget. Highly recommended.
The Color Over Occam (2012) by Jonathan Thomas: Set in and around the New England town of Occam, The Color Over Occam is narrated by Occam city clerk Jeffrey Slater. Slater and his friend Wil run a public access cable show involving their investigations of the supernatural. As the novel begins, they're paddling around the city reservoir -- once farmland but flooded since the 1920's -- investigating claims of "ghost lights" on the waters at night. And they find them. But they're not ghosts.
You see, Occam was renamed from its original 'Arkham' a couple of decades back. And readers of H.P. Lovecraft's seminal horror story "The Color Out of Space" will quickly recognize that demon-haunted reservoir...
Thomas' first novel is a witty, cynical, often satiric addition to the Cthulhu Mythos. The problems of civic politics (and politicians covering their own asses) make for a welcome new spin on cosmic horror. There are points at which The Color Over Occam is quite funny, and not always bleakly (though Thomas does bleak too!).
I think one can read The Color Over Occam without having read "The Color Out of Space." Or perhaps preferably, read or re-read Lovecraft's story AFTER reading The Color Over Occam. Thomas deftly weaves the original into his novel without imitating Lovecraft's prose or narrative emphases.
While there's drollery and a bit of comic over-emphasis at points in the narrative, the text maintains a sense of verisimilitude throughout. How would a small-town government deal with cosmic horror building in its town? How would an amateur ghost-finder deal with potentially world-shattering events? How will Slater deal with his low alcohol tolerance? Why does office work suck so much?
The Color Over Occam compares favourably with several novels I can think of. Its occasionally hapless protagonist and the cosmic but town-centric events he's trapped within remind me of Ramsey Campbell's Creatures of the Pool and The Last Revelation of Gla'aki. The office- and civic-based comedy repeatedly reminded me of William Browning Spencer's hilarious Resumé with Monsters. And the subject matter recalls Michael Shea's fun, pulpy sequel to Lovecraft's original, The Color Out of Time.
But this novel is also its own self with an unusual mix of wit, satire, cosmic horror, and body horror that pay suitable homage to Lovecraft's great original without attempting to mimic "The Color Out of Space" in form, style, or mood. Highly recommended.
