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.

Blood Tide (1982)

I’ve already seen a few monster movies based around the eternal, extremely generalized struggle of good vs. evil—see The Creeping Flesh—and also a few that do the same thing while also contrasting Christianity with pre-Christian beliefs—see Viy—so I was prepared for what Blood Tide had on offer. There is obviously something very Wicker Man about the set-up here: outsiders intruding into an isolated place where the old beliefs still hold sway, maybe inviting a terror upon themselves with their unwariness, maybe being pulled in by destiny—certainly they both have a village full of people who are maybe outside the mainstream and are thus entirely suspicious. Substitute the British Isles with the Greek Isles and have the human sacrifice come with a monster, and you’ve got a pretty good idea. Those themes and the choice of location provides an atmosphere for this movie, one that helps it straddle the line between early eighties horror schlock and maybe a more serious kind of horror schlock.