There was almost no point, really. Not because I didn't have a good time--I did--but because I didn't even need to go in to see the coolest fucking thing I have ever seen in my life. I saw that standing in line outside. Really, it's like if Lemmy walked around outside before the Motorhead concert passing out speed to people in line.
BEHOLD!
IA! IA!!! The guy said his wife knitted this for him. She needs to get a merch booth at next year's festival--she'd make a fucking KILLING. I'd buy one; it's much better than what I wound up with.
You can't really read the text in this picture. Basically it turns out Lovecraft hated Republicans almost as much as he hated black people. Fits the era's Democratic Party like a glove, sorry to say. I do like this, but was pretty slim pickings for shirts--the next-best one had Cthulhu's face forming one of those gay-ass Celtic knots.
I was more interested in a couple other booths; one guy was selling what looked like every Call of Cthulhu RPG supplement ever printed. Really--he had the original-rules stuff, he had the D20 Delta Green stuff, he had everything. Another guy had put special bindings on old anatomy texts so they looked like the Necronomicon. I didn't get anything from either of these booths, sadly--I can't find enough people interested in running a CoC campaign to justify buying any more books, and I just didn't have that kind of money to spend in the latter case.
And here's the last bit--just my pass and this year's program. I liked The Mist, but not enough to stick around for it. Stephen King will do a much better Lovecraft impersonation when he learns his laughable faith in what he pathetically calls "God" will avail him for naught when sunken R'lyeh rises once again CTHULHU FHTAGN! Seriously though, the climax of The Stand? That shit was just fucking embarrassing.
Anyway, on to the movies I did see. I started out with a block of short films, which like all shorts blocks was very hit-or-miss. Only the last one, Forlorn Hope, made any real impression on me.
After that came Night of the Eagle, based on the "classic" novel Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber. It was decent, if at times hilarious when viewed through 21st-century eyes, and more like a really long episode of The Twilight Zone than an actual movie (which makes sense considering the film's writers, Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, both wrote a shitload of Twilight Zone episodes). I liked the movie more than the book, actually (I've always preferred Leiber's proto-D&D-style work), if only because the male protagonist is made more likable. Oh, make no mistake, he's still a prissy condescending sexist who pays the price for his doucheyness, but at least in this version he knows when to throw in the towel on the whole "rational scientific explanation" thing. The ending, however, has been changed and is very, very, VERY abrupt. It's like Beaumont and Matheson couldn't think of an ending, just threw up their hands and said "Oh well, this thing's about at feature length anyhow. DROP THE EAGLE!"
Last, I saw The Colour From The Dark, an Italian adaptation of Lovecraft's story The Colour Out of Space. Basically director Ivan Zuccon took Lovecraft's classic story (considered by the man himself his best), gave it a European exploitation-film sensibility, and made it shit. I really, REALLY hope certain scenes in this movie were supposed to be funny, because they sure as hell were. EVERY DAMN TIME this movie built up anything resembling dread or even basic dramatic tension, along came a line or scene which would just bring down the house in helpless laughter. Many in the standing-room-only audience resorted to open MST3K-style mockery, myself included--much to the displeasure of the two guys sitting in front of me, one of whom subsequently referred to me as "fucker". Fortunately for him I was too busy popping my knees (the screening having taken place in what was apparently the Hollywood's midget theater) to repay his kindness with the reenactment of several Cannibal Corpse lyrics. Whatever, asshole! You saw the same movie I did! And you know damn well it was no silent-film Call of Cthulhu! Prick.
Anyway, I know it sounds like I'm bitching a lot, but overall I enjoyed the festival. I'm planning a return trip next year--hopefully I'll get my very own ski-mask! And if I see another terrible movie, perhaps whoever sits in front of me won't be the director's cousin or something!
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