Andrew Leman
| The Call of Cthulhu | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Andrew Leman |
| Produced by | Sean Branney Andrew Leman |
| Screenplay by | Sean Branney |
| Based on |
The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft |
| Starring | John Bolen Ralph Lucas Chad Fifer John Klemantaski Jason Owens D. Grigsby Poland David Mersault |
| Narrated by | Matt Foyer |
| Music by | Troy Sterling Nies Ben Holbrook Nicholas Pavkovic Chad Fifer |
| Cinematography | David Robertson |
| Edited by | David Robertson |
| Distributed by | H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society |
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Release date
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Running time
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47 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Call of Cthulhu is a 2005 independent silent film adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft short story "The Call of Cthulhu", produced by Sean Branney and Andrew Leman and distributed by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. It is the first film adaptation of the famous Lovecraft story, and uses Mythoscope, a blend of vintage and modern filming techniques intended to produce the look of a 1920s-era film. The film is the length of a featurette.
The film adheres very closely to Lovecraft's story, but there are a few changes. The sailors aboard the Emma first encounter the Alert abandoned at sea, rather than crewed by Cthulhu cultists and taken over by Emma's crew after a violent confrontation as in the original story. Additionally, the film depicts the narrator present at the time of his great-uncle's death, who dies peacefully in his sleep, rather than being summoned upon the mysterious death of his great-uncle, who was presumably killed by Cthulhu cultists in the original short story. The narrator (Matt Foyer) notes that Inspector Legrasse, who had directed the raid on cultists in backwoods Louisiana, died before the narrator's investigation began.
In the original story, the narrator does not seem to end in a lunatic asylum or experience any mysterious nightmares himself.
Early on in production, Branney and Leman decided to film it as a black-and-white film. The official site says this was done to show what the film would have looked like had it been made in 1926, when the story was first published. In the DVD commentary the producers admit that shooting in black and white provided many other benefits. When using black-and-white cinematography, a filmmaker does not need to pay particular attention to the materials and decoration of sets, as the colors will not appear in the final product.
The Call of Cthulhu has been selected to appear at numerous film festivals, including the 2006 Slamdance Film Festival and North America's largest, the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival, where it sold out both screenings thanks in part to a glowing review from The Stranger, a local paper.
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Wikipedia