Modern Pulp

March 14 2023

DEAD BUT NOT GONE

Classic horror feature still shocks and thrills.

It was inevitable that we’d get around to this movie. It was only a question of which poster we’d choose. Above you see a bizarre Japanese promo for Stuart Gordon’s cult horror epic Re-Animator. In Japan it was titled Zombio – 死霊のしたたり, and the Japanese means “dripping of the dead,” which is pretty weird. But then so is the movie. It’s an at times darkly comic splatterfest about a medical student obsessed with life after death, and it starts gory and quickly goes places you can’t possibly expect. The source material is H.P. Lovecraft’s tale, “Herbert West—Re-Animator,” first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1922.

The plot is only loosely based on what Lovecraft wrote. The movie follows a medical student played by Jeffrey Combs as he tries to defeat death by using a phosphorescent green re-animating agent of his own creation, and in so doing manages to drag promising fellow student Bruce Abbott and his girlfriend Barbara Crampton into a downward spiral of lies, illicit research, corpse abuse, and worse. It’s even more catastrophic than it sounds. Meanwhile, a pompous and established physician-instructor played by David Gale becomes simultaneously jealous of Combs and lustful for Crampton, with results that are—in a word—totally insane. Well, two words.

We suspect that Re-Animator is one of those movies many have heard of, but not many have seen. There’s more than just gore and that infamous sequence where Crampton is molested by a decapitated head. There are also cross-currents of blind ambition, skewed medical ethics, middle-aged lust for the young, and parental love, as well as overarching questions about human consciousness. It’s a movie about obsession, but on multiple levels. Of course, it’s also a movie done on the cheap, which leads to a few amusing efx, but overall it transcends its limitations, and for horror fans it’s an absolute must. Re-Animator premiered in the U.S. in 1985 and crept into Japan today in 1987.

Japan, Re-Animator, Weird Tales, H.P. Lovecraft, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, poster art, cinema, horror, movie review

Modern Pulp

October 24 2017

SO FAR NO GOOD

Some things are better left undimensioned.

Stuart Gordon’s cult classic horror film From Beyond premiered in the U.S. today in 1986, but we’re sharing this Thai poster because it’s more attractive than the American promo. For the uninitiated, From Beyond is loosely based on an H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name about a scientist who discovers what is today a standard terror motif: if you can see them, they can see you. Lovecraft came up with this idea way back in 1920, spinning a tale about a machine called a resonator that enables humans to see horrific beings that surround us but reside in an invisible adjacent dimension. But once the scientist perceives them, the monstrous entities likewise perceive him—and come calling.

The film starred Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, two alumni from Gordon’s bravura gorefest Re-Animator, released the previous year. From Beyond doesn’t push the envelope as far as the earlier film, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means Gordon tempered his vision a bit. In other ways the films are quite similar. Both play the naked-woman-as-victim card, which can be uncomfortable to watch, since these days such sequences are not benignly received. As always, times change.

In From Beyond the nudity isn’t gratuitous exactly. One of the side effects of the resonator is that it frees the id, which is why you see Crampton go from buttoned up schoolmarm to brazen dominatrix in the promo shots below. Males are similarly affected. We searched for shots of co-star Ken Foree in his banana hammock undies—one of many famous moments from the film—but came up empty, so to speak. Regardless of the cultural shift that has placed movies like From Beyond, with its depiction of sexual assault, on shaky ground in 2017, we recommend it for true horror fans. The viewing may discomfit, but the villain is after all both man and monster, which makes him/it an interesting symbol for our modern age.

Thailand, From Beyond, H.P. Lovecraft, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, Ted Sorel, poster art, cinema, horror, movie review

Vintage Pulp

January 14 2009

LOVECRAFT CHEESE

Never has a writer of such quality suffered so many bad adaptations of his work.

Thirty-eight years ago today in Hollywood, sexploitation producer Roger Corman premiered a film based on H.P. Lovecraft’s macabre story The Dunwich Horror, and it was almost good. Wait, did we really just say that?

*sigh*

Not to get all self-pitying here, but us Lovecraft fans have been so desperate for so long for a truly great HPL movie, we’ll see merit in virtually any lame attempt. But when we are honest with ourselves—really truly brutally honest—we have to admit this movie is a stinkbomb. Lovecraft is simply difficult to adapt. So difficult, in fact, that if you remove Stuart Gordon from the discussion, virtually all the movies based on his material have been awful.

But even if The Dunwich Horror disappoints, the poster is rather interesting, with its implied violation by a hydra-like monstrosity. Incidentally, of special note here is the presence of writer Curtis Hanson, who would go on to direct the great L.A. Confidential. Nice comeback, Curtis. As for us, we’ll just plan on seeing the low budget Dunwich remake slated for release later this year, and hope Guillermo del Toro’s big budget At The Mountains of Madness actually films sometime this century.

H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror, L.A. Confidential, Roger Corman, Guillermo del Toro, Curtis Hanson, Stuart Gordon, poster art, cinema, literature, horror, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 9

1967—ChÃ© Executed in Bolivia

A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed in Bolivia. In an attempt to make it appear as though he had been killed resisting Bolivian troops, the executioner shoots Guevara with a machine gun, wounding him nine times in the legs, arm, shoulder, throat, and chest.

October 8

1918—Sgt. York Becomes a Hero

During World War I, in the Argonne Forest in France, America Corporal Alvin C. York leads an attack on a German machine gun nest that kills 25 and captures 132. He is a corporal during the event, but is promoted to sergeant as a result. He also earns Medal of Honor from the U.S., the Croix de Guerre from the French Republic, and the Croce di Guerra from Italy and Montenegro. Stateside, he is celebrated as a hero, and Hollywood even makes a movie entitled Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper.

October 8

1956—Larsen Pitches Perfect Game

The New York Yankees’ Don Larsen pitches a perfect game in the World Series against hated rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. It is the only perfect game in World Series history, as well as the only no-hitter.

October 7

1959—Dark Side of Moon Revealed

The Soviet space probe Luna 3 transmits the first photographs of the far side of the moon. The photos generate great interest, and scientists are surprised to see mountainous terrain, very different from the near side, and only two seas, which the Soviets name Mare Moscovrae (Sea of Moscow) and Mare Desiderii (Sea of Desire).

October 6

1966—LSD Declared Illegal in U.S.

LSD, which was originally synthesized by a Swiss doctor and was later secretly used by the CIA on military personnel, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and members of the general public in a project code named MKULTRA, is designated a controlled substance in the United States.