Better the second time around

 

Beagle Horror edition

It was the Sixties. As other young fellows my age were discovering girls, drugs and the realities of a changing age (and all the problems that went along with them), I was discovering the works of fantasy writer HP Lovecraft, thanks to a casual remark made by my Homeroom teacher, Mr Robert Vigil. It was a providential introduction, as it turned out, giving focus to my own writing, which had edged unknowingly into Lovecraft territory. A few days later, I found myself at Pickwick's Bookstore in the College Grove Shopping Center (before there were "Malls") and came across the Beagle Horror editions of Lovecraft's work, including "The Dunwich Horror."

One of the complaints I often hear about Lovecraft's stories concerns his writing style. Admittedly, there is nothing modern about it, not now, not even in his own time. Lovecraft wrote mostly in the early 20th Century (he passed away in 1937) so he was contemporaneous with Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Hammett. However, anyone unfamiliar with the milieu of Lovecraft's writing might think him a contemporary of Poe. Fortunately, I had been a Poe fan for many years, both of the stories and poems, and, later, the many films derived from his work. So, the form of the stories, the intricate narrative style and the breath-by-breath unfolding of the story as it worked to a shattering climax, was not a problem. What was a problem, however, was HPL's cosmic vision, his revelation of a universe inhabited by beings that cared nothing for humans, a cold cosmos we could never fathom, and the idea that humanity itself might be an accident or jape. It was heady stuff for a teenager.

movie poster, 1970

Anyway, a few years passed and I learned that a film was going to be made from "The Dunwich Horror." I was quite excited. I've been a film fan all my life starting when I was in Kindergarten and walked to the Bay Theater in National City with the girls who lived across the street...it was a different world back then. One the sayings the Kidette and I have is, "Everything I need to know about anything, I learned from the movies or TV." Another saying I have, usually stated when contemplating doing something I probably shouldn't be doing is "No, I saw that film, and it did not end well." Often, the Kidette and I will converse solely in movie quotes, which drives many people nuts.

Anyway, the film was coming out in 1970, produced by American International. I had high hopes for it because I had seen the film The Haunted Palace, starring Vincent Price and directed by Roger Corman. Though the title was taken from a Poe poem and the film is considered one of his eight Poe-related films, the plot is actually derived from Lovecraft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" and is very faithful to the novella, which was written in 1927, though not published until 1941 in Weird Tales. Since the film had been distributed by American International, which was producing the new film, I hoped "The Dunwich Horror" would exhibit the same fidelity to its source material. Alas, I was disappointed.

The film, directed by Daniel Haller (Pit & the Pendulum; Die, Monster, Die!) from a script by Curtis Hanson (Never Cry Wolf, LA Confidential) was deliberately recast into the turbulent Seventies. In doing so, writer and director defused much of the atmosphere of the story. Worse, they introduced a love interest (Sandra Dee as Nancy Wagner) for the loathsome and repulsive Wilbur Whateley (played by the non-loathsome and non-repulsive Dean Stockwell). It hit many of the tropes of the counterculture, including several extended psychedelic sequences, but did not include the brooding atmosphere of a decrepit town and the creeping horror that Lovecraft introduced though subtle hints and reveals about Wilbur Whateley's twin brother, who favored the father much more than did Wilbur.

The only characters in the film that struck the right note for me was Dr Henry Armitage (Ed Begley in his last role) and, to a certain extent, Sam Jaffee, who played "Old Whateley," though in the story he was "Wizard Whateley" and was a much more manic, imposing and demonic character. An interesting point to note in the 2009 remake of The Dunwich Horror (The Darkest Evil [or Witches] for the SyFy Channel), Dean Stockwell was back, this time as Dr Armitage, his adversary from the first film. I did not like the Haller/Hanson adaptation, and put it out of my mind for 52 years.

However, a few weeks ago, when I was home alone and looking for something to stream (we cut the cable years ago), I saw The Dunwich Horror offered on one of the streaming services. Things change with time, not the film, of course, but ourselves, our perceptions of things, and the times in which we live, which we have to adapt to, whether we like it or not. I found the film, for the most part, not as bad as I recalled. It was, of course, the same film, but I was no longer the dark-eyed fanboy who expected a faithful adaptation of the work.

At the time, I gave the film an F. Now, I give it a B-, a nice effort to modernize something that really did not need to be modernized. I had  greater appreciation of the psychedelic sequences as an attempt to show a reality that could not be described, and the climax in which we saw the best FX that could be had in the pre-CGI Seventies. Many of the Seventies tropes (e.g., "What do you think of sex?") have not aged well, so have gone from hip and edgy to just dull and dated. Overall, though, I think the film is fairly respectful to the source material, if not very faithful. Over the years, I have learned you have to put up with such things, and even expect them, from Hollywood.

An illustration from Weird Tales, 1929

The Arkham House edition