Dagon (2001)

If we’re talking about Lovecraft adaptations, we’re eventually going to circle back to Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna, who were the first ones to really make effective cinematic use of ol’ Howard’s stories in Re-Animator and From Beyond, capturing the eldritch universe while infusing it with horror-comedy sensibilities and carnal undertones—they get the original work, and they also make it their own, what a novel concept! The two of them would periodically venture back into Lovecraftian territory in the nineties, and at the turn of the millennium produced an adaption of one the major works in the Cthulhu Mythos, 1931 novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth (while borrowing the name from the related short story “Dagon.”) As a story of unspeakable Elder Gods and the mutating effect they have on humans that come into contact with them, it contains many of the recurring motifs of the Mythos (including some of the Really Questionable ones that we’ll get into), and like the previous adaptations directed by Gordon and written by frequent collaborator Dennis Paoli, those themes are filtered their own parallel preoccupations.

Creature Classic Companion: From Beyond (1986)

With the cult success of their film Re-Animator, director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna (alongside co-writer Dennis Paoli) cemented their status as the top cinematic translators of HP Lovecraft’s influential horror stories—which was really not that hard to do, considering that there was only a handful of Lovecraft-based films before them (such as Die, Monster, Die!), and none of them were particularly notable. Maybe the atmosphere of boundary-pushing and the increasing sophistication of special effects found in eighties horror films is what made adapting Lovecraft’s existential abominations seem more attainable, and the Gordon/Yuzna line of movies do capture the sense of strangeness and dread that defined those stories that the ones made in the shadow of Hammer-style Gothic horror did not. At the same time, the other things that define Stuart and Yuzna’s movies are a comedy streak and a perverted parody of sexuality that are very much not found within the more repressed words of Lovecraft’s pulp fiction—they get the spirit of the thing, but bring plenty of their own spirit as well.

The team’s immediate follow-up to Re-Animator, once again distributed by Charles Band’s Empire Pictures (it’s funny to consider that Gordon’s style of film, while vastly superior, is not entirely dissimilar from Band’s usual effects-based schlock, stuff like Ghoulies and the roughly 400,000 Puppet Master and Evil Bong movies) and starring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, adapted a lesser-known early story by Lovecraft, one whose simple story proved rife with possibility. From Beyond leans less in the overt comedy direction of it predecessor—although it certainly indulges in some ridiculousness, which is always part of the appeal of these movies—but goes more towards the mind-bending otherworldly implications. Just beneath the surface of our rational reality are inexplicable things, and if we were to get a glimpse of what is lurking just outside our senses, then sanity goes right out the window—that’s the recurring theme of Lovecraftian fiction, and this movie uses it as a vehicle not just for very eighties gory and gooey practical effects, but to really get into some of its creators’ other pet themes as well, producing a rather joyously disgusting deep dive into madness.

Creature Classic Companion: Society (1989)

So ends a month spent with Arrow, and let’s cap it off with the type of movie that makes you appreciate the existence of these specialty services, because you know most mainstream streamers wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot pole.

There’s a particular strain of eighties movies, genre movies especially, which are almost entirely about how the eighties were terrible, and specifically railed against the wealthy and the corporate culture that seemed to increasingly dominate everything during the Reagan era. Robocop is probably the highest profile example, but you also have John Carpenter’s The Live and Larry Cohen’s The Stuff all espousing the same kind of anti-authority stance—and in using genres and styles that were considered disreputable to mainstream consensus feels like an appropriate punkish way to do so. Horror with B-movie sensibilities, ultra-violent action, and an emphasis on gross special effects have a visceral anger to them, and thumbing your nose at the idea of good taste probably felt like the most subversive way to get your point across. Society is another example of this from the tail end of the decade, and it acquired a strong cult following among horror aficionados by taking things as far as they could go.

This is the first film directed by Brian Yuzna, who was mostly known for producing the movies of the late Stuart Gordon, including such favourites as Re-Animator and From Beyond (which he co-wrote.) Apparently after Gordon and him co-wrote the initial version of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids(!), Yuzna wanted more independence, and was able to secure financing for whatever he wanted as long as he also produced a sequel to Re-Animator. Taking that sweet deal for all it was worth, he picked up an intriguing script about a Beverly Hills teen becoming increasingly suspicious of his rich family’s secret life, but felt that the cult/slasher angle of its ending was not his speed, and so altered the twist into something else entirely—a monster movie, but more than that. What was produced was one of the most audacious and disgusting of all eighties horror movies, one that left an indelible impression on everyone who stumbled upon it during the heyday of practical horror effects.