H.P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft (1890-1937) is undoubtedly the 20th century master of weird, bizarre horror fiction. Whenever Cthulhu, tentacles, or the medical re-animation of corpses is mentioned, the true genre fan’s mind immediately zooms to Lovecraft. One horror aficionado in particular who has practically made a career of specializing in Lovecraft is Stuart Gordon.
The writer/director is perhaps most famous for 1985’s Re-Animator, but he’s also brought From Beyond and Dagon to the big screen. Now it’s time to share the Lovecraft on the small screen with Dreams in the Witch-House, adapted by Gordon and Dennis Paoli, and directed by Gordon. The one hour mini-movie debuts on Showtime tomorrow.
Walter Gilman (Ezra Godden, who also appeared in Dagon), a graduate student studying inter-dimensional string theory, rents a room in a run-down boarding house in old New England. He thinks he’ll have peace and quiet to study, and the price is right. His room is little more than a rat-hole, to put it mildly his neighbors are weird, and the noise never stops. One of the more noisy nuisances is a crying baby, but as it turns out the infant’s single mother Frances (Chelah Horsdal) is a beautiful damsel in distress. After taking care of her rat problem and loaning her a few bucks to pay her rent, Walter finds himself attracted to her.
Not long after banishing the vermin, poor Walter is suddenly plagued by completely insane and totally nightmarish dreams — namely, rats with human faces who have terrible things to tell him, and a wicked witch who can bend his will to do her evil bidding. After one horrible night of sleepwalking,
I must admit that at first, Dreams in the Witch-House seemed somewhat goofy. The colorful characters were a bit over the top, and the man-mugged rat wasn’t all that scary. But then, little by little, Gordon’s masterful storytelling drew me in. Adding to the experience is the super-creepy music by Richard Band — chanting, whispers and screams are mixed in the score to hair-raising effect.
I was riveted to the screen as Dreams in the Witch-House’s horror mounted and the suspense deepened. The moments of gore were quite effective, and I was knocked out by the one-two punch at the end.
The strangeness of Lovecraft isn’t for everyone (I confess, I am decidedly not a fan), but Gordon does an admirable job of bringing the story into modern times and at just under an hour the story is tightly paced and wholly enjoyable.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson
Want to see Stuart Gordon’s Dreams in the Witch-House? Tune in to Showtime on Friday, November 4 at 10:00 p.m. local time. The episode will also repeat throughout the weekend. View clips from the show [1] on Showtime’s website. Also, be sure and visit the Official Masters of Horror website [2].
Want to read Dreams in the Witch-House in its entirety? This very cool H.P. Lovecraft website has it online! Click here to read it [3].
Links:
[1] http://www.sho.com/site/mastersofhorror/movie.do?content=dreams
[2] http://mastersofhorror.net
[3] http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/dreamswitchhouse.htm