The Song of Cthulhu

By: Randall D. Larson
Date: Thursday, January 26, 2006

The weird tales of Howard Phillips Lovecraft are among the most potent horror stories of the last century. Told through a careful and precise narrative ambiance, H.P. Lovecraft's tales of the undying manifestations of monstrous, cosmic evil and arcane sorcery did not so much shock the reader but leave him or (occasionally) her numbed with a sense of ominous dread; the mystical feeling on a dark night that those weren't so much starts twinkling down from the heavens but they were eyes... the squinting eyes of malevolent entities winging their way through the cosmos towards a rendezvous with the planet earth. These stories often built slowly, with carefully described imagery and mood, growing toward a final revelation that usually crashed upon the reader with a lasting shudder of horrific portent.

Bringing the brooding, antiquated atmospheres of H. P. Lovecraft's unique species of weird horror to the motion picture screen has not always been a successful enterprise. These tales scarcely found their way effectively into cinema until the mid 1980s, when Stuart Gordon's REANIMATOR jerked the brooding stories into a new and highly graphic cinematic popularity. Despite the relative effectiveness of REANIMATOR (which was successful more due to the manic style and over-the-top humor of its director than its proper rendering of pure Lovecraftiana), HPL's stories did not translate well to cinematic delineation, mostly due to the nature of his writing style. Lovecraft's stories and the literary genre in which he excelled found its effect in the measure of his wordsmithing, the ability to lavish description, shift perspective, and hint at revelation and description without ever become completely explicit allowing well half of the story's effect to manifest itself in the imagination of his readers. Horror films thrive on active drama, visualization, propulsive energy, and linear storytelling. Separating story from words would seemingly halve the effectiveness of these venerated old weird tales.

But cinema has its own appeal, and when Lovecraft's words did reach the silver screen in the 1960s with films like THE HAUNTED PALACE, DIE! MONSTER DIE!, THE SHUTTERED ROOM, THE CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR and THE DUNWICH HORROR, they did so with Lovecraft's gloomy ambiances tuned up, turned up, and energized by the action-oriented movie machine. Images HPL barely hinted at in his short stories are portrayed with crystal clarity on screen, albeit usually with far less effective results (Lovecraft's pantheon of malicious monsters were more often than not indescribable, a difficult concept to visualize in a motion picture!). More often than not, Lovecraft's original horrific inspirations were rendered indiscernible in their cinematic guises, and as a result the films remain muddled and overly trendy in their attempts to make new stories out of their literary sources, or else (as with REANIMATOR) they are successful for reasons having more to do with their own distinctly different style than their close adherence to Lovecraft's unique voice.

A new film, significantly the product of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, has just been released on CD that comes closest, I think, to translating the macabre mood of Lovecraft's terrors to the silver screen. THE CALL OF CTHULHU (see my DVD review here: http://www.cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp) was filmed as a silent movie, as if it had been made with the style and suggestion (via in camera fx and CGI) of the contemporary technology of a 1926 silent movie. It succeeds wonderfully. Viewers can almost detect the dust of pulp newsprint in the murkiness of the film's CGI-enhanced atmospheres. One of the film's strongest facets is its musical score, the endeavor of three composers Ben Holbrook (NUDITY REQUIRED, 2003), Troy Sterling Nies (DIABOLICAL TALES, 2005), and Nicholas Pavkovic (SOMETHING CAME OVER THEM, SNAPDRAGON) each of whom seem to have taken a section of the film and composed independently of the others (not unlike the Universal music factory of the 1940s and 1950s). Because the film is silent, it relied on the music completely to build an emotional disposition for each scene, working with the editing to set the film's cadence and generate a sense of adventure tinged with a true feeling of terrible, anxious foreboding. The soundtrack was issued on CD by the HPLHS and is available, along with the film and a cool insert-poster of the movie art, from www.cthulhulives.org

It fell to Ben Holbrook to compose the film's Opening Titles, and he sets things off with a massive orchestral undulation, as wavelike as the crashing tide upon which the awakened creature pursues the fleeing ship, the Alert, in the film. Holbrook balances his powerful opening tonalities with a softspoken strings and winds motif, creating a mood that is both slightly antiquated, deceptively quaint, and continually reflective of the massive horrors which will lie in wait at the end of the narrator's investigation. Delineating what are seen to be raving cultists dancing to drums in a New Orleans swamp, Holbrook's music builds to a fever pitch, cresting with a huge orchestral climax before meandering back into plaintive melancholia, realizing the cultist's silent madness through music.

Nies' music highlights piano over orchestra. He creates a wonderfully claustrophobic and nightmarish sound design through recurring clusters of pizzicato violin and rapidly-fingered piano notes as the surviving members of the Alert try desperately to evade the awakened daemon pursuing them from the shore of the risen island city. He scored his own part of the swamp scene with a turbulent and drifting mass of violins, while he underlines suggestions of the slumbering eldritch monster who is "neither dead nor dreaming" through a furious assault of percussion, wildly played piano, aggressive violin measures, and awakening synth chords. "The Corpse City" with its jagged edges and towering walls is musically reflected by low tonalities, reflective shards of violin notation, and a rising discord that builds to a strong culmination.

Pavkovic's efforts center around less overtly chaotic moments, providing effective orchestrations that escalate the urgency of the narrator's investigation, through which the story is told. He provides the mysterioso to Holbrook's elegant overturelike surgings and Nies' modernistic suspenses. His material tends to be very restless and threatening, full of rapid rhythms of piping flutes, growling brasses, and jabbing percussions the latter rising, like sunken R'lyeh, to a massive configuration of atonal orchestral sounds, or resonating as a brooding mysterioso that underlines the realization that hitherto unrelated events are determined to be related.

The soundtrack CD groups the tracks by composer, which is not a bad way to sort them. From a gang of relative newcomers, this is quite a powerful score, ideally suited to the style of filming, and makes a suitably eldritch collection of sordid sounds and energetic cadences on disc.

FILM MUSIC FOR LOVECRAFT FROM CORMAN TO GORDON

From this most recent effort to capture Lovecraftian terror on film we go back forty-three years to the first cinematic adaptation of HPL. This was the 1963 Roger Corman film, THE HAUNTED PALACE, which took its title from Edgar Allen Poe but its story from HPL's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, from which it was loosely based. The Poe title was chosen to fit the film into AIP's series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations like THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM and THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER.

Starring Vincent Price, Debra Paget, Lon Chaney Jr., and Elisha Cook Jr., the film told of the descendent of a warlock burned at the stake wreaking his vengeance upon the families of whose who killed him. The music was composed by Ronald Stein, an excellent composer whose prolific output for mostly low-budget horror films like this has relegated him to near-obscurity. Stein provided a Gothic horror score in the classic tradition, written for the lower range of instruments and full of Tchaikovskian overtimes, as the composer put it. Higher trumpet figures contrast with the score's ominousness, lending a sense of power and foreboding to the music. The Main Theme soars mightily above the low end instrumentation and gives the score a largeness that rarely betrays its small size. Percepto Records released his score for HAUNTED PALACE on CD in 2000 (a series of further Stein recordings are scheduled for this year), preferring 15 original soundtrack cues along with 16 cues from Stein's THE PREMATURE BURIAL.

AIP followed the film two years later with DIE, MONSTER, DIE!, a very loose adaptation of Lovecraft's "The Colour out of Space," the story the writer was personally most proud of. Nick Adams plays a science student searching for his lost fiancée, coming upon the castle of the mysterious scientist (Boris Karloff) who has had everything to do with her disappearance in his pursuit of forbidden science. The film's music was the work of British composer Don Banks, a veteran of Hammer horror film scores by 1965 (NIGHTMARE, HYSTERIA, THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN; one of Hammer's best composers, Banks would go on to compose excellent scores for THE REPTILE, RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK, THE MUMMY'S SHROUD, and Amicus' TORTURE GARDEN) and noted for his modern and tonally melodic approach to scoring horror. Banks' DIE! score opens with a traditional horror overture and interlude crashing, melodramatic orchestral scores that segue into violin mysterioso over an eerie keyboard underflow, intruded upon by the crashing "monster chords" as he film's title appears on screen, above the swirling siphon of spiraling fog. Banks uses a fair about of what sounds like vibraphone to give the orchestral texture a weird, otherworldly flavor. The score is mostly moody mysterioso, but there's also a brooding love theme for Steve (Adams) and Susan (Suzan Farmer), with a final cacophony of wild orchestral chords punctuated by rapidly firing snare drum taps as the film fades to End Title.

1965 also saw the broadcast premiere of a pilot for a TV episode about an occult detective dabbling in Lovecraftian horrors, DARK INTRUDER (aka SOMETHING WITH CLAWS or THE BLACK CLOAK), starring Leslie Nielson. Produced by Jack Laird (who would later produce NIGHT GALLERY, which included several Lovecraft adaptations and pastiches) and directed by Harvey Hart, the telefilm was scored by Lalo Schifrin (BULLITT, DIRTY HARRY, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE) during his earliest days in Hollywood. The score has never been issued on record or CD, though one hopes it may not be so obscure that Schifrin's label, Aleph, might find it worth of release one day, along with other examples of the composer's early craft. Like his later endeavors for THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, EYE OF THE CAT, and his rejected composition for THE EXORCIST, Schifrin's effective moodiness was appropriate for this dark thriller. So much so, that it was partly re-used as library cues for Laird's NIGHT GALLERY.

The late Basil Kirchin composed a jazz-rich score for THE SHUTTERED ROOM (1967), creating a claustrophobic and mesmerizing atmosphere through the atonality of percussive jazz riffs. Kirchin's background was as a big band jazz performer in 1950s England, including performing with the Ted Heath band, known as "the final big band in Europe" at the time, so the compositional style for SHUTTERED ROOM was appropriate for the composer. By the 1960s Kirchin was writing film music, including THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES and ASSIGNMENT K. The film, based on a "posthumous collaboration" between Lovecraft and his overzealous disciple, August Derleth, told of a series of horrific murders which are traced to a creature that inhabits a strange house. The score is anything but traditional horror music instead of crashing orchestral chords to evoke horror, Kirchin provides high-end saxophone trills and shrieks over pounding drums for, while the attack on Ethan is accompanied by a shrill cacophony of blaring trumpets over a miasmic percussion and keyboard wash. The score regrettably has not been issued on CD; Perseverance Records was to have released it on their 2003 DR. PHIBES CD but licensing problems wound up precluding its inclusion.

THE CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR (1968), based without credit on HPL's The Dreams in the Witch House) featured a forgettable score by Peter Knight in his first (of only a handful) feature score.

Far more interesting, musically, was THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970), composed by AIP's resident maestro Les Baxter, who invested the story with a prominent and

powerful score built around a rhythmic riff trumpets over keyboard and drumset. A far contrast to the Gothic scores of Stein, Baxter's approach was very modernistic, borrowing heavily from pop and rock music in his instrumental texture and beat. Despite its electronic overtones, Baxter also incorporated some significant orchestral textures, including a soft woodwind motif that offered a respite from the dominant horror motifs. Baxter's catchy pop score was dominated by synth and piano, which lends the pleasing tune a dominating air of malevolency even in the midst of its likable cadence. The score has been released only on LP, by American International Records in 1970, which Varese Sarabande reissued on LP in 1979. The score begs for a CD release.

The music for the first Lovecraftian NIGHT GALLERY episode, "Pickman's Model," was composed by Paul Glass, one of more than two dozen episodes he would score for the show. Glass also scored Hammer's TO THE DEVIL, A DAUGHTER (1976) as well as episodes of SESAME STREET a far cry from the terrors he would accompany on NG (well, maybe not!) The other NIGHT GALLERY Lovecraft adaptation was the second season's moody tale, "Cool Air" (1971; not a Cthulhu Mythos story, though), scored by Robert Bain, who also scored NG's "The Waiting Room."). Not really a Lovecraft adaptation but an original story by Jack Laird paying humorous tribute to HPL, "Professor Peabody's Last Lecture" was broadcast in Season 1 but had no musical score.

John Strysik's independent 1980 film, THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN, filmed in 16mm (available on Lurker Film's 1998 DVD collection The H.P. Lovecraft Collection Volume 3: Out of Mind with remastered 5.1 sound) received a score by Andre Caporaso, who has gone on to b become a sound recording mixer for a number of TV movies. No soundtrack album was released.

Italian giallo master Lucio Fulci's THE CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980) was only

loosely connected to Lovecraft by its setting of Dunwich, Connecticut. The storyline it told, about a priest who commits suicide and by so doing opens the gates of hell and the demons of the netherworld to rise. Fabio Frizzi, who scored numerous films for Fulci including ZOMBI 2, CONTRABAND, and MANHATTAN BABY, provided the pop-pulsating electronic score. Originally issued as a 10-track LP in Italy by Beat Records, the same company reissued the LP on CD paired with Giuliano Sorgini's score for THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE.

A similar storyline was latched onto Fulci's vaguely Lovecraftian tale (by virtue of a Cthulhu Mythos prop the ancient Book of Eibon [which was actually invented by Clark Ashton Smith as an answer to Lovecraft's own forbidden tome, The Necronomicon]), THE BEYOND (1981), which otherwise had to do with awakened zombies in New Orleans, hardly typical Lovecraft material. The musical score was also by Frizzi, who creates one of his most disorientating, dreamlike surreal atmospheres throughout the film.

Fulci's THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY

(1981), a vague take on HPL's "Cool Air," was scored by Walter Rizzati. Released on LP by Italy's Beat Records in 1981 under its Italian title, QUELLA VILLA ACCANTO AL CIMITERO, the score was reissued in 1996 in the USA, paired up with Fabio Frizzi's score for MANHATTAN BABY and both scores were married to a third score, Piero Montanari's GHOSTHOUSE, and released in Germany by Lucertola in 1997. CMV Laservision reissued the CEMETERY score on CD in 2001.

Sam Raimi's 1983 horror classic, EVIL DEAD, is not really a Lovecraft story but, like Fulci, adopts some Lovecraftian techniques into what is otherwise an original and highly graphic and over-the-top demon story. In this film, it's a reading of The Necronomicon that awakens the malevolent presence in the house in the woods. Joe LoDuca's excellent score was released on LP and CD by Varese Sarabande. EVIL DEAD 2 (1987) was released by Varese on LP and on CD in 1987 by England's That's Entertainment. Japan's Soundtrack Listener's Club (SLC) issues both EVIL DEAD scores together on CD in 1993. LoDuca also scored the third film, ARMY OF DARKNESS, before moving onto a prolific career scoring the amazingly creative scores for TV's HERCULES and XENA; it was released on CD by Varese. In Japan, All three scores were released together on a 3-CD boxed set from Volcano in 1998.

Further attempts in the 1980s to rejuvenate cinematic Lovecraft horror tales continued

to dispense with the Providence gentleman's slowly-disturbing atmospheres and put in their place the kind of graphic excesses that contemporary horror cinema was then reveling. Few did this better than Stuart Gordon, whose amped-up evocation of Lovecraft's short story RE-ANIMATOR (1985, from Lovecraft's "Herbert West, Reanimator") morphed HPL with bloody barrelful of George Romero, Lucio Fulci, and Herschell Gordon Lewis. It also gave us a terror tale unlike any we'd seen before, a classic in over-the-top gratuity, but retaining an internal logic and a style that succeeded admirably and went on to become a major cult hit. Richard Band's music was an intentional tongue-in-cheek take-off of Bernard Herrmann's famous PSYCHO theme music, given a quirky edge and a remarkably effective dynamic in this much different context. Band, a veteran of low-budget horror scores like THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW, MUTANT, and GHOULIES (and would go on to score TROLL, PUPPET MASTER, DOCTOR MORDRID, and others), received plenty of flack from Herrmann purists, but his evocation of Herrmann came about both due to homage and satire. Given a percussive rock beat with brass replacing some of Herrmann's strings, the witty music lent an over-the-top quality to the film, suggesting that it all should be taken with a similar sensibility. The endearing music balanced the absurdity of the film's extreme graphic violence. The score, performed by the Rome Philharmonic, also contains plenty of fluid orchestral mysterioso and effective suspense material. The soundtrack was released concurrently with the film on LP by Varese Sarabande; but not until 1995 did it find release on CD, on Silva Screen's RE-ANIMATOR/ BRIDE OF THE RE-ANIMATOR. Then in 2003, La-La Land came out with RE-ANIMATOR: The Definitive Edition, which expanded the 6-track Silva material with another ten hitherto unreleased tracks. It's very fun and enjoyable music, although very far stylistically to what we think of when we consider the atmospheric narrative of H. P. Lovecraft's original work.

Band also scored Gordon's next adaptation of Lovecraft, FROM BEYOND (1986),

which gave the composer the opportunity to breathe life into a totally alien, other-dimensional environment as it collides with the real world. To achieve this musical texture, Band abandoned his characteristic use of prominent themes and melody for a perverse and carefully textured atmospheric score based more on repeated motifs than actual themes. The score is an undulated evocation of he weird and mysterious. Enigma Records released 8 tracks on LP in 1986; La-La Land Records issued the score for the first time on CD in 2003 with 13 tracks.

Roger Evan's 1987 film, FOREVER EVIL, was a blatant rip-off of EVIL DEAD, and, like Raimi's classic, name-dropped several elements (place-names, Old Ones, an out-of-context Necronomicon) to justify its vague Lovecraftian connections. Marianne Pendido and Rod Slone are credited with its forgotten score, no CD of which exists.

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society filmed THE TESTIMONY OF RANDOLPH CARTER, a direct adaptation of the HPL stories, "The Statement of Randolph Carter" and "Through The Gates of the Silver Key" in 1987, but the results were less than polished. Justin Miller scored the film, which was pulled out of mothballs, reedited with an improved soundtrack, and shown at the 2000 H P Lovecraft Film Festival. A modified version of the film is said to be in the works for 2006 release.

Gordon's producer on the previous two films, Brian Yuzna, tried his hand at directing with 1990's BRIDE OF THE RE-ANIMATOR, recruiting Band to score the film. The music pretty much revisits what had gone before in the first RE-ANIMATOR, but it's still a likable and tongue-in-cheek work, with a pleasing synth love theme. Silva Screen released the score for the first time on CD in 1991, effectively pairing it with the then-first CD version of the RE-ANIMATOR soundtrack LP.

Stuart Gordon visited Lovecraft a third time in 1995, adapting the author's famous short story, "The Outsider" (filmed as a student short film Aaron Vanek in 1994), CASTLE FREAK received an evocative horror score from Richard Band, released on CD by Intrada the same year (a 5 minute excerpt also appeared on Band's self-produced 2-CD sampler, Up and Down. Band's orchestral score is extremely experimental, building a far-reaching soundscape comprised of disharmony and discord. A string quartet is used to build some almost avant-garde music heightening the film's tension. It's full of mysterious passages and effective tonalities, although it lacks a central core with which to hang the score; apart from that directionless approach, the music is wicked and moody and endlessly brooding.

In 1988, director Jean-Paul Ouellette directed an adaptation of HPL's story, THE UNNAMABLE, and followed it up in 1993 with H. P. LOVECRAFT'S THE UNNAMABLE II: THE STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER. Both films were scored by David Bergeaud in the early days of what has become a fairly prolific television and video game scoring career. He scored EARTH 2 (1994), worked on the 1995 revival of THE OUTER LIMITS, and composed the Frank Peretti adaptation, HANGMAN'S CURSE, for USA TV.

1989'S DARK HERITAGE was based on HPL's story, "The Lurking Fear." Directed by David McCormick (his only directorial credit; he is known more often as a film editor; WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT, for example), but no music credit was given.

A 1998 Canadian TV series called OUT OF MIND: THE STORIES OF H.P. LOVECRAFT contained a score by Gaëtan Gravel and Serge LaForest. A British telefilm called ROUGH MAGIK contains mostly metal music and several music videos on the DVD.

Richard Band scored THE RESURRECTED (1992), an adaptation of "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" that Dan O'Bannon directed. Soundtrack CD was issued by Intrada the same year.

Yuzna returned to HPL territory in 1993 with H P LOVECRAFT'S THE NECRONOMICON: BOOK OF THE DEAD, which a poor amalgamation of several Lovecraft stories with the writer himself in the lead role. The score, by Joseph LoDuca and Daniel Licht (CHILDREN OF THE CORN II, BAD MOON, HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE), disappeared along with the movie.

Another version of THE LURKING FEAR appeared in 1994, directed by C. Courtney Joyner for Full Moon Productions, with a score by Jim Manzie (STEPFATHER II, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III, SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT) that neither lurked nor provoked much fear. Another version of the story, called BLEEDERS, erupted in 1997 without much ado and without any credit to HPL. The score is by Alan Reeves.

John Carpenter's IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1995) had little relation to Lovecraft's Antarctic horror novel, "At The Mouth of Madness," and was instead more of an adaptation of Stephen King's Lovecraft influences. The film was scored by the director with Dave Davies and Jim Lang. A soundtrack CD was released by DRG.

As independent video production, CGI, and DVD sales prompted the creation of relatively inexpensive filmmaking, Lovecraftiana suddenly became hot properties, A French 2000 adaptation of THE BEYOND (aka L'ALTROVE), directed by Ian Zuccon, featured a score by Ipnosi); a sequel is rumored to be in the works. In 2003 Zuccon directed an adaptation of HPL's THE SHUNNED HOUSE with little success. It featured a raucous score by metal band Acid Vacuum. David Keith's THE CURSE (1987) was another adaptation of "The Colour Out Of Space," composed by Italian scorer Franco Micalizzi (BLACK DEMONS, SUPER STOOGES VS THE WONDER WOMAN, THE DEVIL WITHIN HER, MY NAME IS TRINITY).

For Stuart Gordon's final (so far) foray into Lovecraftiana, DAGON (2001), Spanish composer Carles Cases (the film was shot in Spain) provided a hauntingly atmospheric score that gave the film much of its inherent power. The film combined two of Lovecraft's tales, the title story and the classic chiller, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" into a moody horror film that was a fairly good amalgamation of Lovecraft's cosmic terrors, while modernizing the story to the present day and including the ample charms of Raquel Meroño's nudity to offset the stygian, aquatic terrors inhabiting the pit beneath the town. Cases score, unreleased commercially, is an excellent and spooky composition. Whispers of synths and chorus maintained a provocatively uneasy mood. Eerie sustained electronic chords and echoes of ghostly voicings cling to the film like the foetid mildew that infests the shunned community of Innsmouth. The score also features a male chorus chanting the signature Lovecraftian paean to the submerged Old Ones, "Ia! Ia!," and the mixture of orchestra, choir, and electronics makes for a compelling and rich musical backdrop to a superior Lovecraft adaptation.

Meanwhile, Brian Yuzna also trekked to Spain to revisit his hyped-up Lovecraft franchise when he directed BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR (2003) the third and thus far final entry in the "Herbert West, Reanimator" series. Band's theme was back in form for film, although Spanish composer Xavier Capellas composed the score, which has thus far not appeared on record or CD.

2003 also saw the release of Edward Martin III's DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH, adapting the Lovecraft novel as a full-length animated feature. I haven't had the chance to see this film yet but its' score, by underground musician Cyoakha Grace O'Manion, with some help from her band Land of the Blind, is said to be a "gorgeous, haunting score... [that] ... complements the visuals perfectly, and gives the whole film a sense of dream awe and dread." (-imdb.com posting) A soundtrack is available on CD via O'Manion's web site, www.cyoakhagrace.com Martin III is also responsible for 2004's INNSMOUTH SPAWN, a short film based on Lovecraft's Innsmouth stories, with O'Manion again providing music, and 2005's THE STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER, scored by Christian Platt.

There have been other, even vaguer connections to Lovecraft in films that are even less closely associated with the author and there are other short films adapting the author with varying degrees of success but they are little known and less available; but I think our exploration of Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos in film music has become comprehensive enough for now.

While many of these films boasted highly inventive, compelling, and interesting musical scores, from a diversity of approaches, none of the film's really seemed to embody the true spirit of H. P. Lovecraft and the unique sensibility of his kind of horror fictioneering. I'll come full circle by recommended you check out THE CALL OF CTHULHU for a taste of authentic cinematic Lovecraft, while recommending many of the others on merits that are purely their own.

For more information on HPL in the cinema, also:

http://www.thelurker.com/  

http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/dcommunications  

Former editor/publisher of CinemaScore magazine, Randall Larson was for many years senior editor for Soundtrack Magazine and a film music columnist for Cinefantastique magazine. He is the author of Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Film Music in the Fantastic Cinema (Scarecrow, 1984) and Music from the House of Hammer (Scarecrow, 1995). In addition to Soundtrax and Music News for Cinescape.com, Randall reviews soundtracks Music from the Movies, writes for Film Music Magazine, and in many other fields.

Where credit's due dept: A few portions of this week's column appeared in slightly different form in my liner notes to the La-La Land CD release of Richard Band's FROM BEYOND soundtrack (2003).

Recommended Soundtrack sources:
www.buysoundtrax.com  
www.intrada.com  
www.screenarchives.com  
www.footlight.com  
www.arksquare.com/index_main.html  (Japan)
www.intermezzomedia.com/  (Italy)
www.moviegrooves.com  
www.moviemusic.com  

For questions or comments, contact the author at Soundtrax@cinescape.com