Abstract
Hauser provides a much-needed translation of the definition of the weird from H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 treatise Supernatural Horror in Literature to the medium of cinema. He shows how the discussion of weird cinema has previously been hampered by the imprecise use of the term “Lovecraftian” and then explains how filmmakers have used the specific strengths of the cinematic medium to convey the crucial components of the weird: seriousness, the supernatural, and dread. Hauser references several films as examples of weird cinema and focuses particular attention on the aesthetics of dread in two cases: Angel Heart (1987) and It Follows (2014).
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- 1.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, “Pickman’s Model,” in More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, annotated by S.T. Joshi and Peter Cannon (New York: Dell Publishing, 1999), 219–220.
- 2.
Caetlin Benson-Allott, “Dreadful Architecture: Zones of Horror in Alien and Lee Bontecou’s Wall Sculptures.” 14, no. 3 (2015): 267–78.
- 3.
Some very useful thinking has been done regarding horror in the area of aesthetic philosophy by the likes of Noël Carroll, Cynthia Freeland, Eugene Thacker, and others, and I will return to this conversation at greater length later.
- 4.
Andrew Migliore and John Strysik, The Lurker in the Lobby: The Guide to Lovecraftian Cinema (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2006), 31.
- 5.
Poe influences cinema in such early films as The Student of Prague (1913), Blackwood’s “Ancient Sorceries” is famously the basis for Val Lewton’s classic Cat People (1943), and there is no way to talk about the cinema of cosmic fear without talking about Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) and all of its cinematic adaptations (including Thomas Edison’s 1910 short as well as James Whale’s 1931 classic for Universal Studios). The post-Classical Hollywood weird adaptations include The Exorcist (1973), Don’t Look Now (1973), The Haunting (1963), The Shining (1980), and more.
- 6.
More recent adaptation criticism branches out into other questions regarding the manifold relationships between sources and adaptations. See Thomas M. Leitch, “Twelve Fallacies in Contemporary Adaptation Theory,” Criticism 45, no. 2 (2003): 149–171.
- 7.
S.T. Joshi, preface to The Lurker in the Lobby, 7.
- 8.
See Jason Dietz, “Are Original Movies Really Better Than Derivative Works?,” Metacritic, Last modified April 21, 2011, http://www.metacritic.com/feature/movie-sequels-remakes-and-adaptations.
- 9.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature annotated by S.T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2012), 25. Subsequent citations from this volume appear as in-text pagination.
- 10.
This, I believe, is separate from considerations of references to Lovecraft and Lovecraft’s creations in popular culture. The appearance of Cthulhu on South Park does not indicate that media distributors are willing to spend $150 million or more to produce a truly disturbing “At the Mountains of Madness” or “Call of Cthulhu.”
- 11.
Contrast Scott Hallam’s “Top 11 Lovecraftian Horror Films” (that lists films as diverse as Ghostbusters (1984), Re-Animator (1985), Alien, and Cabin in the Woods (2012)) http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/53204/top-11-lovecraftian-horror-films, with this dizzying but typical discussion on “What is the best ‘Lovecraftian’-style horror movie” thread on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2xmp6x/what_is_the_best_lovecraftianstyle_horror_movie, and with Mike Davis’s list at the Lovecraft eZine, which he helpfully identifies as both idiosyncratic and based on what he sees as the key feature of “Lovecraftian horror” as defined in the Wikipedia entry of the same name https://lovecraftzine.com/movies/mikes-recommended-lovecraftian-movies
- 12.
Joshi has characterized Lovecraft’s tales up to the publication of “The Call of Cthulhu” in 1926 as, “entirely routine and conventional, utilizing supernatural or macabre elements with occasional competence, but without transcendental brilliance.” And though the latter half of the 1920s saw the creation of most of Lovecraft’s masterpieces, “‘The Dreams in the Witch House’ (1932) and ‘The Thing on the Doorstep’ (1933) are two surprisingly inferior tales of his late period.” S.T. Joshi, The Weird Tale (Holicong: Wildside Press, 1990), 177.
- 13.
Mark Fisher, The Weird And The Eerie (London: Repeater Books, 2016), 15.
- 14.
Ibid., 61.
- 15.
Ibid., 61.
- 16.
Montague Rhodes James, “‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’,” Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), 130.
- 17.
Humor, of course, may be present. Characters are apt in some cases to respond to dangerous situations with a certain kind of gallows humor, which is entirely appropriate in the serious telling of a weird tale. For instance, John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is full of humorous lines that do absolutely nothing to derail the onslaught of dread over the course of the film’s 109 minutes.
- 18.
This is all the more true when one considers the Hollywood inclination toward upbeat endings. Even in horror films, the defeat of the protagonist(s) is rarely total. There is usually a “final girl,” as in Carol Clover’s formulation, or the monster is banished or defeated in some fashion. Weird cinema often separates itself from the majority of horror films by its willingness to be bleak.
- 19.
Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart (New York: Routledge, 1990), 23.
- 20.
Ibid., 42.
- 21.
Cynthia Freeland, “Horror and Art-Dread,” in The Horror Film, ed. Stephen Prince (Piscataway, Rutgers University Press, 2004), 191.
- 22.
Ibid., 192.
- 23.
Julian Hanich, Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear (New York: Routledge, 2010), 156.
- 24.
Ibid., 157.
- 25.
Adam Lowenstein discusses this very thing in an essay treating the relationship between cinematic fear and time. See Lowenstein, Adam. “Living Dead: Fearful Attractions of Film.” Representations 110, no. 1 (2010): 105–28.
- 26.
Ibid., 196.
- 27.
This is similar to the kind of narrative strategy used in “dread-inspiring person” films such as The Sixth Sense and The Others.
- 28.
This connection to sexuality is a noteworthy example of how the weird can deviate significantly from Lovecraft’s own weird stories. Lovecraft steered clear of overt references to sexuality in the vast majority of his tales, and an argument can be made that this avoidance of human sexuality as a motive force helps to emphasize the cosmic insignificance of humanity. However, as I pointed out in the earlier section of this essay, cosmic horror is by no means the only route to the weird.
- 29.
Graham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy (Hants: Zero Books, 2012), 80.
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Hauser, B.R. (2018). Weird Cinema and the Aesthetics of Dread. In: Moreland, S. (eds) New Directions in Supernatural Horror Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95477-6_12
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