John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy

John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors for a number of reasons, not least of which is his soundtracks.  Carpenter films SOUND the same, and you almost feel like they all exist in the same universe some how.  But one of the main reasons I like him is that he’s a fan of Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos.  He’s also the only director to get a film that is, in many ways, a version of “At the Mountains of Madness” off the ground.

It’s that film and two others that I’d like to talk about, the three films that make up Carpenter’s unofficial “Apocalypse Trilogy”.

The first film is The Thing.  Released in 1982, The Thing is actually a remake of an earlier film, The Thing From Another World (1951).  The movie is based on a short story, Who Goes There, by John W. Campbell Jr., written in 1938 and published in Astounding Science-Fiction.  The story is about a remote base in Antarctica and a shapeshifting alien that can absorb and take over a life form.  It’s a great mix of both science fiction and horror.  The reason it’s part of an “apocalypse” is that during the film, Blair, the team biologist (played by DIABEETUS…er…Wilford Brimley) calculates the time it would take for the alien to take over all human life on Earth if it escapes – it’s just about three years.

The primary protagonist of the film is MacReady (Kurt Russell), who is a rough edged chopper pilot.  By the end of the film, we can’t be sure if MacReady is actually human or not, nor if Childs, the only other survivor, might not be the alien. Either way, there’s no escape.  Both are doomed, though one might simply go into hibernation again, to be found by a rescue crew.  It’s this undefined, unknown consequence that really defines these three films.  None of them end on a happy note.

The second film in the trilogy, which are not connected storywise, is 1987′s Prince of Darkness.  This film also mixes science fiction with horror, this time presenting a secret that the Catholic church has kept hidden for millennia. Essentially, the Devil is a self-organizing abstract equation kept in a special glass container.  A team of students from a local university are brought in to study the device after its caretaker dies and it begins to become active.

As the movie progresses, the evil in the container escapes, possessing several of the students.  In the end, a sacrifice by the protagonist’s love interest stops Lucifer from bringing his father (the “anti-god”) into the world.  The movie’s hero is played by Jameson Parker, mostly known for his work on Simon and Simon.  He’s really not a good fit for this role, but that’s ok because the movie also features the late Victor Wong (Egg Chen in Big Trouble in Little China) and Dennis Dun (also from Big Trouble in Little China), plus a cameo of Alice Cooper as a crazed homeless man under the devil’s influence.  The movie ends with a suitably creepy scene that makes you wonder if they really stopped the anti-god or not.

The final film is 1995′s In The Mouth of Madness, Carpenter’s love note to the Cthulhu Mythos by way of Stephen King. The story is about an insurance adjustor who investigates the appearance of the world’s most popular author, who happens to write Cthulhlian stories that are so popular, people actually start to become part of them.  He is revealed to be in a small town that exists only in his books, and the insurance agent, played perfectly by Sam Neill, becomes the unwitting prophet that delivers the final book, the book that will drive the world into madness, to the publisher.

The movie plays with the concept of shared reality, and how much of our perception of the world is based on the rules we all agree to.  Madness is more abstract here, with Neill’s character slowly slipping into insanity as the rules of reality seem to crumble around him.  Carpenter has said the movie is more Stephen King that Lovecraft, but there are parts lifted directly from The Haunter of the Dark, and the Old Ones are clearly Lovecraftian.  This film is probably the most successful mythos film, while not being directly connected to the mythos.

The three films together form the “apocalypse trilogy” because in the end, in all three, the world may be doomed, though only in the third, In The Mouth of Madness, is the world specifically threatened.  These three films, viewed together, are very bleak.  They’re a perfect rainy Sunday companion if you want to get your horror geek on.

 

The Books of Robert

You probably know what the Necronomicon is.  If you don’t, go read a book, philistine!  But assuming you do, either from reading the works of Lovecraft and the mythos or maybe just from watching Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, you know that it’s a book of ancient knowledge that can send a man mad from its eldritch revelations.  But what about the other tomes?  There are so many in the Cthulhu mythos, and many are just as madness inducing as the Necronomicon itself.  Today, I’d like to introduce you to three different works, all by men named Robert.

Unaussprechlichen Kulten

The first work is the mostly scholarly tome of Friedrich von Junzt, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, or as it’s usually translated in English, Nameless Cults.  A better translation might be Unspeakable Cults or Unpronounceable Cults.  This book was actually created by Robert E. Howard, better known for creating Conan the Barbarian.  The book itself is modeled after the real life work of Margaret Mead, noted cultural anthropologist, who traveled the world and wrote extensively about native cultures and their traditions.  The fictional von Junzt did much the same, except instead of local tribes, he investigated cults and their practices.

The book was published in 1839, with a badly translated English version going to press in 1845.  A better translation, highly expurgated (censored, in layman’s terms), was produced by Golden Goblin Press in 1909.  Most of the first editions of the 1839 German work and the 1845 English work were destroyed, but the 1909 version, while uncommon, is not difficult to acquire.  This is why most investigators of the mythos have a copy of this work, or run across it early in their (usually limited) careers.

The King in Yellow

The King in Yellow is not precisely a tome, but instead is a play by an unknown author about three characters, Cassilda, Camilla, and the titular King in Yellow.  The first act of the play is unremarkable, but the second act drives those who merely read it insane.  Were it ever actually performed, the world might well end.  There’s no specific information about what’s in the second act, but it’s know that it deals with lost Carcosa on the shores of Lake Hali, and involves He Who Shall Not Be Named (Hastur).  The King wears a mask with the Yellow Sign, which can also drive men mad merely by seeing it.

The play is an invention of Robert W. Chambers based on names borrowed from Ambrose Bierce. There’s always been (intentional) confusion about what the play is actually about – Carcosa may be a city on another planet, or a family name, or possibly a fourth character.  Hali may be a lake, or a city, or the planet.  Hastur may or may not be named explicitly (and the whole “He Who Shall Not Be Named” comes from this – suck it Harry Potter fans, this was published in 1895!).  The Dead Milkmen used the name of this play for the title of their 2011 album.

De Vermis Mysteriis

In English, Mysteries of the Worm, this work has the distinction of being just and hideous as the Necronomicon itself.  In fact, it was De Vermis Mysteriis that was first described as having an edition with human body parts involved – the Necronomicon in Evil Dead is said to be bound in human flesh and inked in blood, De Vermis Mysteriis was said to be made of sheets of human vellum and bound with hasps of human bone.  Ludwig Prinn, the author of this tome, was a medieval wizard, and his lineage eventually made their way to Salem, Massachusetts during the infamous witch trials.  The author himself was also burned at the stake.

This book of ancient evil was created by Robert Bloch, best known for being the author of Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece.  This work has shown up in many other stories, including Jerusalem’s Lot by Stephen King.  The first Hellboy movie also made reference to this book, with Rasputin using it to open a portal to the Ogdru Jahad.  Lovecraft himself referred to the book as, “repeat the most hellish secrets learnt by early man.”

And there you have it, the books of Robert, all equals to the might Necronomicon, and in the case of the last entry, possibly its greater.  There are many, many more tomes that can be found in the mythos, and even the authors above created other works.  Robert E. Howard’s Book of Skelos for example, which appears both in his Conan stories and in his mythos tales, and was referenced in the movie Conan the Destroyer (as the “Scrolls of Skelos”).  The books grew to become more than their original intent as various authors added to their mystery.

Just like the Necronomicon, many people thought these books were quite real based on the detailed backgrounds and the way they appeared in multiple stories by separate authors.  Of course, now you can find books by these names which are collections of short stories by the creators of the fictional works – Chaosium, for example, has a book titled De Vermis Mysteriis which is a collection of Robert Bloch’s mythos tales.  This just further obscures whether there were ever real books with these titles.  Add to that the fact that often the mythos writers would reference actual books, like The Golden Dawn and the Witch-Cult in Western Europe, and you have even more confusion.

 

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus – Lovecraft Inspired?

According to Guillermo Del Toro, who was planning to make a big budget adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, the upcoming Alien pseudo-prequel, Prometheus, has put the final end to his plans.  But the reason why gives us Lovecraft fans hope.  See, Del Toro says that his movie is dead…because Prometheus captures everything he wanted to do with ATMOM.

Basically he’s saying Prometheus is very Lovecraft-inspired.  I can deal with that, and if the guy who has wanted all his life to get Lovecraft on the big screen is saying, “this is it, this is how it should be” then I’m sold.

Not that I wasn’t planning to see Prometheus, but this does give me extra incentive.

 

HP Lovecraft and Nikolai Tesla…MONSTER HUNTERS!

Just an awesome bit of fan art floating around the net.

 

A National Geographic tour of Lovecraft Country

As a part of the “Nat Geo Adventure” series, National Geographic has a Lovecraftian travel guide to New England.

The guide is well thought out and includes visits to Innsmouth, Kingsport, and Arkham, or rather their real life inspirations.  It also details certain locations in Newburyport (Innsmouth), Marblehead (Kingsport), and Salem (Arkham) that were used in Lovecraft’s writings.

I’ve seen other such guides that aren’t as complete.  There are a few published guides as well, but for a freebie this is pretty good.  If you’re planning a trip to New England, say for Pax East, you might want to make a day out of visiting the dark realms of Lovecraft’s stories.

 

The Lovecraft Legacy in Stephen King’s It

As my previous post clearly shows, I love the book IT by Stephen King.  It’s my favorite of all his books, in part because I relate to growing up in a small town as an outcast.  Ben Hanscom and Andrew Black share more than a few similarities.

King is one of my biggest influences, but not my primary influence, not the writer who brought me into the world of horror.  That honor belongs to H.P. Lovecraft.  King is also influenced by Lovecraft, and for a while I have been toying with the idea of cataloging and discussing the references to Lovecraft in King’s It.  Looks like I don’t need to:

Strange Horizons Articles: The Turtle Can’t Help Us: The Lovecraft Legacy in Stephen King’s It, by Margaret L. Carter.

Ms. Carter’s essay is very well written and everything I would have said and more.  It’s one of the better comparisons of King and Lovecraft, one the master of dialog, the other the master of cosmic horror, and worth a read or two.