Happy Birthday Howie Phillips Lovecraft!

Let's all take a moment to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the birth of the godfather of horror...

Visceral Visionaries: G. Edwin Taylor

An accomplished Chicago-area artist, G. Edwin Taylor is someone I've been seeking to profile in Visceral Visionaries for some time now, and it's an honor and a pleasure to showcase him and his work today. Taylor has done it all, from comic books to collectible fine art to film storyboarding to magazine covers, and more. He is a painter and illustrator of unique vision, whose work has the power to intrigue, arouse and terrify...

You talk about your work as a study of the psychology of fear. What do you mean by that?
A lot of my work leans towards the phobias of others. Spiders, Nazis, amputees and clowns have been themes of my art at one point or another. Things that really scare the shit out of some people just put a smile on my face. I get a rush knowing that something that I’ve created is possibly giving someone nightmares. People are too comfortable in this age of a politically correct society. I like knowing that I can shake people up a bit.
There’s a fantastic quote from the original version of Inherit the Wind where Gene Kelly’s character E.K. Hornbeck (inspired by the great journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken) says: “…it is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." I feel that an artist should do the same. To me, safe is boring. Life is not safe. It’s dangerous and mysterious and because of that, life is never boring. I like reminding people of that. In a sense, I’m making people feel alive, probably some for the first time in their life.

Talk about what you mean by describing your work as having the power to alter the viewer's perception of reality. Can you give some examples?
My earlier work was heavily inspired by the German Expressionists and the German Schauerfilmen, specifically The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu, as well as Anton LaVey’s Law of the Trapezoid. I used a lot of angles which caused anger and even rage in certain viewers. One piece that I drew back then even caused vertigo in some of the people who looked at it. Recently, my style has changed. The geometrical backgrounds are no longer present, but if one studies my paintings long enough, they’ll notice the angles are still there. The angles are now much more subtle, but still there.

How much of an influence has Lovecraft had on your work, and how would you describe that influence?
I can go on and on about H.P. Lovecraft. I’ve been an avid reader of his since I was 15. He had a profound influence on my work for the longest time, which is readily apparent in my earlier art. I was intrigued with the idea of Cosmic Horror. Lately though, another writer who was a member of the original Lovecraft Circle has had more influence. My work has turned more towards fantasy recently because of Robert E. Howard. Eroticism is also slowly creeping into my current work and everything is taking on a fantasy, sci-fi, horror pin-up quality. This is going to be an extremely interesting path that I’m undertaking.

Aside from H.P., who are some of your other major influences, particularly from an art standpoint?
Some of my major influences are Clive Barker, Anton LaVey, 1950’s sci-fi and horror films and pin-ups. From an artistic standpoint, my major influences are Caravaggio, Francis Bacon and Ivan Albright. The Italian Master Artist Caravaggio has influenced me through his use of light and shadow. I feel that one needs to study the Old Masters and their techniques in order to grow as an artist.
Francis Bacon is a chosen influence due to his use of atmosphere in his paintings. You can’t help but think you’re staring into a nightmare when you’re viewing his works.
Ivan Albright is the last main artist who influences my style. He is probably best known for his painting of Dorian Gray in the film The Picture of Dorian Gray. While I am not heavily influenced by his painting style, I am influenced by the way he titled his paintings. He felt that the title of a painting should be a narrative and add to the painting as a whole. He once said, "I get tired of titles like 'Young Girl' and 'Winding Path.' Mine are intended to illuminate the pictures. A painting should be a piece of philosophy--or why do it?"

Talk a bit about the work you've done in comic books.
I had a short-lived comic book years and years ago. My story was called “Funeral March” and was called “…One of the most original we’ve seen in decades…” by a major comic book magazine at the time.
My story was one half of a comic called “Shadows”. Due to distribution problems, it ended up being released only in Chicago at the time, and sold pretty well. After months and months of prep work and a whole bunch of sleepless nights, a lot of red tape showed up in my path and prevented me from going any further. It was a shame too, because my story was to become its own series. While I am no longer in comics, that story is still itching to be told in its entirety. It may show up as a series of illustrated short stories. I don’t want to really talk too much about the characters and the storyline (even though all of that is copyrighted just like the rest of my art) because I want it to be fresh for new readers and followers. I will tell this, though: The main character and hero of the story is a Satanist. Not a devil worshiper mind you, but a true Satanist as defined in The Satanic Bible.

I also see you've done some work on storyboards for films. What did this entail?
I ended up getting the storyboarding gig because the producer remembered my comic book and knew that I could pull it off. The feature length film was Present Perfect (from KGB Productions) and was called an un-romantic comedy. I put in hours upon hours drawing each shot. Since I didn’t know how to actually storyboard a film, I ended up studying several books and basically gave myself a crash course beforehand. After that, I did storyboards for several short films. Once in a great while I still get asked to do them, but I inevitably turn them down. I had a lot of fun doing them at the time, but now my passion for it is lacking. This isn’t to say that if I was handed a great script that I’d say no. There is always the possibility that my passion can be re-ignited.

Tell me about being the cover artist for Ghost Magazine.
Sonny B., the publisher of The Ghost (which is a Satanic publication out of Canada), had been a fan of my work for a while. He asked me to do a cover for that fantastic magazine and even asked me to re-design the logo. I was then asked to do the cover to the following issue, and even had a drunken tag team interview with Smokey Deville that took up about 16 pages in that one. It was then that I was asked if I’d consider becoming the main cover artist for The Ghost. I felt honored to be asked, and of course I agreed.

What are some of the works of which you are the most proud?
Actually, I am proud of all of my work. There are a few personal favorites that I have. The main one is my Nazi Stripper Amputee piece titled “The Strumpet of Berlin” in which I explore Nazi and amputee fetishism. It’s a striking piece and a bit controversial. I made a video of the stages of that painting, and posted it on YouTube (Taylor9Art is the channel) and it started getting a steady amount of views. Next thing I knew, YouTube had pulled the plug on it before it became viral. They didn’t delete it or anything, but changed it to being possibly inappropriate for minors and even was exploring possible copyright violations. Several countries had blocked it as well. You know you’re doing something right when your work gets banned from a country.


What projects are you currently working on, or what can my readers look forward to from you in the future?
As of now, I’m currently working on building up my body of work, because I’ll be having a show at Horrorbles in the coming months. The date has not been set yet but readers can keep up to date by checking out the News section on my website: http://www.taylor9.com. I also have “meet and greets” at Film Festivals put on by Horror Society on occasion, because I love talking and meeting my fans and collectors.
Right now I’m planning more work on a series of fetish paintings, of which “The Strumpet of Berlin” is the first one, and yet another series that I’m keeping under wraps for the time being. As a side project, the lovely Miss BJ-C of Day of the Woman is posing for me for a very special (and very saucy) painting which may be offered as a Fine Art Print once it’s complete, and will be unveiled to the public at the Women of Horror 2 Film Festival in Chicago.

Psycho Semi-Centennial: The Man Behind the Madman

Were it not for H.P. Lovecraft, Psycho might never have come into existence. Yes, despite Lovecraft's brand of horror being the complete opposite of what Psycho represents, the godfather of the weird and supernatural can take some credit for it's existence. This is due to his mentoring of the man who wrote the novel on which the film was based: Robert Bloch.

In the early 1930s, the teenaged Robert Bloch was an avid reader of the venerable horror pulp Weird Tales, and Howard Phillips Lovecraft was his favorite contributor by far. The youngster began a letter correspondence with the legendary author, who would later encourage his own burgeoning writing efforts. HPL even featured his enthusiastic fan as a character ("Robert Blake") in his short story "The Haunter of the Dark" (he killed him off in it.) And when Bloch made his first fiction sales at the age of 17 ("The Feast in the Abbey" and "The Secret in the Tomb"), they were to Weird Tales, where his work could appear alongside that of his idol.

By the time Lovecraft passed away in 1937, his young protege was well on the way to succeeding him as America's most gifted horror storyteller. At first, his stuff was heavily Lovecraftian in tone. Yet much later, his most famous work would be nothing like anything Lovecraft would've ever put to paper.

Robert Albert Bloch was born April 5, 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of bank cashier Ray Bloch and his wife Stella Loeb, a social worker. He took to reading tales of the bizarre and fantastic from a young age, and soon began writing some on his own. Genre fiction would always be his great love, and his immense body of work would eventually come to include sci-fi, horror, mystery and crime.

Following Lovecraft's death, Bloch continued writing for Weird Tales, and also started contributing to lots of other pulps, including Amazing Stories. He wrote several tales within Lovecraft's own Cthulhu Mythos. Yet by the 1940s, he had begun experimenting with a different kind of horror from that of his mentor, weaving in elements of crime fiction to create a series of stories based on the cases of Jack the Ripper, the Marquis de Sade, Lizzie Borden and others.

As his career blossomed in the 1950s, Bloch became a major force in the world of genre fandom as it then existed. He was a prolific writer, authoring 29 novels (beginning with 1946's The Scarf) and countless short stories that appeared in magazines and anthologies. He would eventually capture the Hugo award, the Bram Stoker award and the World Fantasy award for his writing, and serve as president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Bloch also branched out into the world of filmed entertainment, crafting screenplays and contributing stories that would be used on TV and in the movies. He wrote scripts for the Boris Karloff-hosted horror TV anthology Thriller, and penned the scripts for the classic Star Trek episodes "Catspaw", "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Wolf in the Fold" (which dealt with Jack the Ripper). His stories also inspired movies like William Castle's The Night Walker (1964), Strait-Jacket (1964), The House That Dripped Blood (1970) and Asylum (1972).

Yet it would be Bloch's first adapted story that would become by far his most famous, and forever enshrine him in the pantheon of iconic horror wordsmiths. It began as a kernel of an idea in his 1957 short story "The Really Bad Friend", which appeared in the pages of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. Then, in 1959 he wrote the novel Psycho, based loosely on the real-life case of another famous murderer, Ed Gein.

Psycho was the ultimate development of the approach Bloch had been developing for over a decade. It was a different kind of horror story, taking place in modern urban and suburban settings, with contemporary characters, and dealing with situations based in reality, instead of the supernatural. Yet this was no crime or detective story, as previous tales of this type had been--Psycho was a horror novel, of a very different kind.

And just as it was a landmark in horror fiction, it would be adapted in 1960 by screenwriter Joseph Stefano into something that would have just as groundbreaking an effect on horror film, if not even more so. As directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Bloch's novel became one of the most well-known horror stories of all time, and his character Norman Bates--though very different from the character as presented by Bloch--would be immortalized as horror's first thoroughly modern movie "monster", and the prototype of the movie slasher.

Bloch enjoyed great notoriety from the success of Psycho, and his profile in the world of horror fandom was certainly raised to dizzying heights. He would take part in the founding of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) of America. He continued writing prolifically, evening penning two sequel novels to Psycho (unrelated to the movie sequels) in 1982 and 1990.

In 1994, the 35th anniversary edition of the novel Psycho was published--a run of merely 500 copies, all autographed by Bloch. Mere months later, on September 23, 1994 Robert Bloch passed away in Los Angeles, California at the age of 77.

Just as his mentor had done some 30 years earlier with his stories in Weird Tales, so did Bloch revolutionize the horror genre with Psycho. For all his vast body of work, Robert Bloch will forever be identified by far with his 1959 novel, and rightfully so. It stands with the likes of The Maltese Falcon, Lord of the Rings and 1984 as one of the 20th century's most important genre novels.

TRAILER TRASH: H.P. Lovecraft Edition!

Heeding The Call of Cthulhu...

Earlier this week, little Zombelina and myself had the opportunity to take part in something really fun and special, thanks to the incredible Avon Theatre in Stamford, Connecticut. We got to witness, on the big screen, the unusual and stunning silent film The Call of Cthulhu, based on the seminal short story by H.P. Lovecraft.

It was all part of the impressive lineup at the Avon which I blogged about a few weeks ago. And as for The Call of Cthulhu, this was a film that had originally been brought to my attention by friend and Lovecraft fanatic RayRay. Although made in 2005, it is a silent, black and white feature, painstakingly made to resemble the films of the 1920s--the idea being, what if someone had adapted Lovecraft's story when it was first published?

The result is an enthralling 45 minute movie, with some astonishing 1920s-era special effects, and makeup and lighting that would make F.W. Murnau proud. To top it all off, the film was introduced by noted film critic and writer Maitland McDonagh (one of the Cyber-Horror Elite, incidentally), who also took questions afterward. She was terrific, and I look forward to more of her Critic's Choice selections at the Avon.

I encourage you to seek out The Call of Cthulhu on DVD, it's worth it for any Lovecraft enthusiast. As for me, I'm gearing up for next Wednesday at the Avon, when I'll be watching Friday the 13th with Betsy Palmer!

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I don't usually take the time out to mention my other blogs, but I'd like to direct your attention to an interview I was honored to give to the amazing singer/songwriter/musician Emma Wallace over at her blog, Emma's Music. The interview is in connection to my music blog Standard of the Day, and is all about the great American songbook. It's a subject I'm passionate about (yes, I do like more than just horror stuff), and that I rarely get an opportunity to talk about. I'm quite proud of how it turned out, so please check it out!

North 40: Finally, a REAL Horror Comic

If you're a fan of horror, and a fan of comics, and you're NOT reading North 40 from DC's Wildstorm imprint, then you need to rectify the situation immediately. Very often, horror comics simply don't work because it's tough to generate the right atmosphere. Movies can nail it visually, and books can nail it in the written word, but for some reason it becomes a tougher task when you mesh the two elements. But North 40 nails it, and then some.

I've gotten through the first three issues of the six-part miniseries that have come out so far--actually, more like tore through them ravenously. Aaron Williams' writing, particularly from a dialogue-perspective, is utterly engrossing, and the meticulous artwork from Fiona Staples is appropriately moody and expressive. Staples is a particularly fine choice, as she has also done the Trick r' Treat comics adaptation, tentatively set for release next month.

The level of quality here is impressive, with a meshing of top-notch writing and art not seen in horror in recent years outside of the best work of Steve Niles. As good as Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead can be at times, North 40 is a far superior work. Not only is Williams' writing more disciplined and tighter, but the artwork is in an entirely different league altogether. Marvel's recent Dead of Night miniseries featuring Man-Thing came close, but didn't pack this much punch. The recent Evil Dead series was a snooze-fest. And don't get me started on the George Romero abortion, Toe-Tags...

North 40 tells the story of a Lovecraftian terror (seems to be quite popular these days, doesn't it?) unleashed in a small redneck town. But there are a few drastic departures from your typical Cthulhu-inspired shenanigans here. For one thing, Williams takes the action out of snooty New England and deposits it in Midwestern Conover County, a place of trailer parks, greasy spoons and good ol' boys.

In Williams' tale, two bored teens unwittingly release the terror by reading from an ancient tome found in the library (ain't it always the way?). Everyone in the county falls unconscious, and when they come to the following day, the whole town seems to have been turned into bizarre monsters, with just a handful of townspeople instead bestowed with different super powers to help them combat the monsters. In this way, the book becomes an interesting hybrid of horror and superhero comic genres.

This is also where another of the book's strong points comes into play: The characters, all vividly created and completely engaging. Robert and Dyan, the slackers who start the whole mess; "good girl" Jenny, reborn as queen of the zombies; the attitudinal Amanda, recruited by a mysterious benevolent crone to be the town's resident good witch; Luanne, who gains powerful telepathic abilities from the incident; Wyatt, who basically becomes Superman thanks to it; and the badass, cantankerous Sheriff, my personal favorite. And then there's that terrific narrator--I could almost hear the voice of Sam Elliott in my head...

If I could nitpick anything at all with this book, it would be that occasionally a bit of confusion arises as Williams shifts from one scene to another--with so many characters doing so many different things in so many different places, it can sometimes get a bit unwieldy. But this is a minor quibble, as Williams' writing is also the book's prime selling point.

I'll be looking forward eagerly to future issues of North 40, and I encourage you to get on board as well. It may not be getting all the hype of some of the other less deserving titles, but this is one quality horror comic well worth looking for.

Retro Review: Howard Phillips Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space

H.P. Lovecraft is a minor passion of mine. While others may have finished reading his complete works, or know his various stories and lore more completely, I have a deep and abiding appreciation for his writing. His style, his influence, his prolixity are unmatched in horror fiction.

It appears to me our modern society does not appreciated him nearly enough, yet each time I think so I run into websites set up by such outfits like the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Such electronic encounters give me ease when it comes to Lovecraft's legacy.

My very first foray into Lovecraftian horror was fortunately also one of his best pieces, The Colour Out of Space. This science fiction-horror short story, written in 1927, was far ahead of its time, and after one reads it it is easy to see the tremendous influence it had. It is also, in my humble opinion, one of the few Lovecraft stories which would translate rather easily to film, if anyone had the intestinal fortitude to try it. Simply, it is the story of what happens to a quiet New England farm after a meteor falls on it.

Set in the dark, ancient, and inevitably creepy woods surrounding Lovecraft's fictional Arkham, Massachusetts, the story unfolds through the voice of a big-city surveyor recounting his adventure of seeking out the lay of the land for a future reservoir project, curious about what the few locals left in the tenebrous region name as the "blasted heath."

"Blasted heath" you say?

"There was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse, but only a fine grey dust or ash which no wind seemed ever to blow about. The trees near it were sickly and stunted, and many dead trunks stood or lay rotting at the rim. As I walked hurriedly by I saw the tumbled bricks and stones of an old chimney and cellar on my right, and the yawning black maw of an abandoned well whose stagnant vapours played strange tricks with the hues of the sunlight."

Our narrator is unable to get to the bottom of the cause of the blasted heath, beyond what appeared to have been some mysterious sequence of events some fifty years earlier. But alas, there was an old, some say crazy, man by the name of Ammi Pierce who could recount the tale in its entirety. And as a result of hearing old Ammi Pierce's tale, our narrator returned forthwith to Boston, resigned his position, and swore never to drink the water in Arkham under any circumstances. And that's just the first three pages.

What Ammi related to the unnamed narrator is that in June of 1882 a meteorite fell on his friend and neighbor's farm, a man by the name of Nahum Gardner. Up until that time the Gardner farm had been a series of fertile gardens and orchards. The object was studied by professors of the nearby Miskatonic University in Arkham, and found to be plastic in nature, and of a nearly indescribable colour to the eye. Tests revealed the meteor acted very strangely, never cooling, and displaying unknown colours when placed in a spectroscope.

While Lovecraft, as was ofttimes his wont, never revealed the precise nature of the meteor, suffice it to say that there was some sort of beforehand unknown alien life, the nature of which could not be understood by humans. Lovecraft had, for a layman, a rather good grasp of science, and understood that alien life would be so different as to likely be unrecognized by even the best scientific minds. This is what he gives us a taste of in "Colour."

Lovecraft writes at some length about the various tests performed on the mysterious object, including various acids and bases, and that the reactions are peculiar.

Lovecraft also understood, perhaps better than others at the time, the concepts of pollution and leeching, which are important to the story, as the residue of the meteor plays havoc with the Gardners' harvest in 1882. The leeching and poisoning of the earth and the water also has a far more insidious effect on the family themselves, in addition to the flora and fauna. Lovecraft had the inkling that objects from outer space might be unhealthful to the Earth.

The story progresses steadily with ominous overtones, from the high of Nahum's near celebrity for the rock to have fallen on his farm, to the failed harvest, to finding queer tracks in the snow that winter, to a neighbor shooting a woodchuck that was apparently terribly and indescribably deformed, to plants growing in monstrous shape and colour. This ever present, furtive, baleful atmosphere of dread is Lovecraft at his best, and builds to a terrifying crescendo. And the next spring and the following summer would be for the worst, at least for Nahum and the rest of the Gardners. Madness, decay, blasphemy and much worse lurked just behind the period at the end of each sentence.

Just about every insidious alien invasion movie, [as opposed to overt invasions, like Independence Day or V, which owe their inspiration H.G. Wells], from The Blob to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, from It Came From Outer Space to The Thing From Another World, from Lifeforce to The Thing, all owe their existence to The Colour Out of Space. Which says a lot, as it is a mere 15 or so pages, depending on the printing.

I strongly suggest to any lover of horror and science fiction to read and reread Lovecraft. And if you have never read any of his stories, I suggest that you make The Colour Out of Space your first. After that you will be inextricably hooked.

Musical Tributes to the Great Old Ones and Other Gods

As you might be aware, I love H.P. Lovecraft. And when one loves Lovecraft, you sometimes feel like you possess something no one knows or cares about. And then you decide to punch in Cthulhu into Google video, and whammo, you find fantastic musical paens to the evil gods you worship. Enjoy.

Preparing Our Children to Wage War Against the Shoggoths

Want to laugh so hard you can't breathe? Head on over to The Onion and read this story about one Charles West, an Arkham, Massachusetts school board member who argues for the introduction of the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon into the syllabus. Here's just a taste:

"Our schools are orderly, sanitary places where students dwell in blissful ignorance of the chaos that awaits," West said. "Should our facilities be repaired? No, they must be razed to the ground and rebuilt in the image of the Cyclopean dwellings of the Elder Gods, the very geometry of which will drive them to be possessed by visions of the realms beyond."

I can only aspire to one day be able to write a piece half as funny as this. Brilliant. Enjoy the hilarity in its entirety:

"Lovecraftian School Board Member Wants Madness Added to the Curriculum"

Thanks to fellow LoTTD member Paul Bibeau for bringing this to my attention.

Lovecraft Freaks Take Note: This Web-Comic Is For You!

Ol' B-Sol back at ya with a truly primo discovery. Web-comics have been around for quite a while now, but I've never been that into the phenomenon, preferring the old-fashioned paper variety. Until now.

Larry Latham's Lovecraft Is Missing is a web-only comic/graphic novel that asks the intriguing question, "What if H.P. Lovecraft's stories were based on real life?" The story takes the form of a bizarre mystery, as an occult scholar and a fellow pulp writer follow the trail of the vanished Lovecraft and the strange secrets he's stumbled upon. The art is striking, including some color work that really breaks new ground with regards to the possibilities of Photoshop. The whole affair has a definite Alan Moore/Kevin O'Neill LOEG vibe to it.

Latham has been publishing the work online, page-by-page, since last August. A recent sample, with all due credit to Mr. Latham:


Gear Live currently has an interview up with Latham wherein he talks about the long struggle he's had bringing Lovecraft Is Missing to fruition, from its incarnations as a CD-ROM game, proposed DC Vertigo title, and animated flick. After checking out this quality stuff, I assure you that you, too, will be scratching your head at Vertigo's uncharacteristic lapse in judgment. I urge all fans of Lovecraft and Lovecraftian horror to check it out!

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And while I'm on the topic of discoveries, I'd also like to take the time out to direct your attention to a fine new blog that you would do well to get in on at the ground floor. It's called Day of the Woman, and its author, the lovely BJ-C, is a horror fanatic/aficionado of impressive rigor. The task she has charged herself with is the exploration of the subject of women in horror, and she's already put up a fascinating bunch of posts on topics such as the fixation on creepy little girls, and the morbid fascination with rape. So head on over and take a look--if for no other reason than to marvel at Camille Keaton's iconic posterior.

A Plea to the Lovecraftians

OK, I have a bit of a dilemma going on. For a while now, H.P. Lovecraft had remained a great undiscovered country for me. While aware that he is the single most influential force in modern horror, I had only glimpsed bits and pieces of his actual writing--I had yet to really delve into it.

And now that I have, I've got a real problem to deal with. And that problem is the fact that H.P. Lovecraft was a passionate racist, white supremacist and anti-Semite, and his work readily reflects it.

My recent foray into HPL comes as a result of the essay submitted to The Vault of Horror some months ago by RayRay, a devout fan of the author since our days in high school together. And while I can't deny the raw and attractive power of his horror writing, I'm having a hard time with the aforementioned issue.

I plan to write a more deeply considered piece on the subject when I've read more of his work and can feel comfortable fully commenting on it. For now, I merely ask those who enjoy his work to help me out. Am I over-reacting?

See, my problem is complex. Yes, racism was more acceptable and rampant in Lovecraft's day, but his level of virulent hatred goes above and beyond even the acceptability such opinions enjoyed in a pre-Nazi world. Not only that, but it's all over the place in his fiction--you can't escape it. Richard Wagner may have been one of history's most famous Jew-haters, yet I can enjoy his music because he never wrote operas about it. But one need only browse through a handful of Lovecraft's pieces to come across his deep-seated hate for blacks, Jews, Asians and immigrants of all kinds. Don't even get me started on his private writings. Saying, "Well, that's how people thought back then," doesn't quite cover it.

So what do I do with this? I invite anyone with an opinion on the subject to leave a comment. Is it possible to enjoy Lovecraft in spite of his racism? Is it right to?

Howard Phillips Lovecraft – A Paean

For as long as this blog allows me to contribute, you will occasionally read statements by me extolling the virtues of H.P. Lovecraft. In fact, I will probably repeat myself many times on the subject. But for now, allow me to begin.

The importance of H.P. Lovecraft to the genres of horror and science fiction cannot be overstated. He is seminal. He is a pillar of all that came after. He was the first of many, and where he was not the first, he was most innovative.

His name – Lovecraft – innocuous sounding enough, is now synonym to both “macabre” and “lurking terror.” Without him there would be no King. No Barker. No Carpenter. No horror as we now know it. [Caveat: there has been a remarkable amount of scholarly writing about H. P. Lovecraft, of which only tidbits I have read. I do not proclaim to be an expert on the man, only that I have come to love his stories and have begun to understand his importance].

And the saddest thing about H.P. L. is that he was completely unappreciated in his lifetime. He was convinced he was a failure. He died penniless. He was forgotten. Yet the list of what was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, even tangentially inspired, is simply vast. There are several board games, a role playing game, video games, and even two Metallica songs inspired by him.

My first exposure to Lovecraft was a paperback collection entitled “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” which was an anthology of several of his stories. I found it while rummaging in the basement at the tender age of about 10, looking for some packed away Lionel train accessories. A basement, dark, musty and cluttered is a rather poignant place to find your first Lovecraft. On the cover was a man in a back tuxedo and cape, similar to what Bela Lugosi’s Dracula was fond of wearing, but with a face not unlike a cross between a Nosferatu and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It scared the bejeezus out of me, and from that point on I associated “Lovecraft” with “scary.” [I was young, and didn’t use big words yet].

I tried to read it, as I liked trying to scare myself [I had already delved into Edgar Allen Poe, the direct precursor of Lovecraft, as well as Stephen King], but I couldn’t get around his dense, spiraling, verbose writing. It was too much vocabulary, too much atmosphere, and not enough action for my young sensibilities. So, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” went back on the shelf.

Now, during the 80’s there were two movies I remember renting from Lynn TV, [the local video store], based on Lovecraft – “From Beyond” and the cult classic “Re-Animator.” I thought both of these movies were great; they were gory, violent, filled with nudity, and at least in the case of “From Beyond,” pretty freaking scary. The IMDB credits H.P. Lovecraft with some 71 films based, one way or another, on his writing. Yet none of these were in critical successes, and although a few were cult classics, most people, [myself included], have not seen them. One future project, “At the Mountains of Madness” is one that all horror fans should be looking forward to. [More on “ATMOM” below]. Therefore, these B movies would be my first official consumption of any H.P.L's material.

Years passed. I grew up, and went to the usual years of schooling. I read many books, and saw countless movies. I collected comics. I developed my tastes, which tend to the fantastical, at times weird, at times dark. I enjoyed visions of the future, both dystopian and utopian, far reaches of outer space, of Mars and Martians, of myths of Earth’s origins, of ancient times and creatures. I read King, Barker, Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Herbert, Tolkien, and others. Then one day, in my late 20’s, I again came across “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and began to read. It was fantastic. I loved it. The first story was “The Colour Out of Space,” a very creepy, yet simple story about what happens to the countryside when a meteorite falls from the sky, written in H.P.L’s anachronistic manner [notice the spelling of “Colour”]. I buried my nose in the book, next trying to get through “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” about a desolate New England town peopled by worshippers of an ancient and malevolent sea god. In the middle I lost the book, and couldn’t find another copy of it in my local used bookstores nor the local Barnes & Noble. Then I got lucky when I found another H.P.L. anthology with “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” in it. I picked it right back up, and devoured the whole thing, and then consumed the rest of the book.

At this point I was ravenous for more. I searched on-line and I found sites with his complete works [I am presently looking for a printed one for my bookshelf]. After-hours at my old office I would print out stories for my ride home on the subway, and in no time I went through them all.

A casual reading of H.P.L. finds that his themes repeat – madness; darkness; lurking; moldering decay; especially dark shadows; backward and decrepit people living in decrepit towns and countryside; orders of ancient and otherworldly beings and gods whose “magic” is more like science we cannot understand. His settings often repeat as well, and are mostly the back country of New England, usually centering on a town called Arkham, the Miskatonic University, and the denizens thereof. This last theme, of otherworldly beings and their super-science, would eventually be named by others the “Cthulu Mythos,” encompassing a series of loosely connected stories about these beings and their worshippers and victims. In my opinion they are the best of H.P.L., and certainly his most influential works.

And in creating this Mythos [though many others contributed to the Mythos, notably Robert Howard - creator of Conan, Solomon Kane, and Kull - and some crossover can be seen in the Conan stories], H.P.L. laid the foundation for modern horror. Unfortunately for him he would not live to see his work find the success he so longed for, due to his untimely demise in 1937.

With the Mythos came the Elder Ones, the Elder Gods, the Outer Gods, the Deep Ones, Cthulu and his Children. We get horrific entities with names like Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Dagon, Shub-Niggurath, Tsathoggua and creatures called shoggoths. We learn that the Elder Ones [another race of alien, interstellar primordial superbeings], Cthulu and his kind, and the Outer Gods vied for the Earth when it was young, and they are still lurking: some sleep below the sea in hidden cities; some dwell in hidden caves under the polar ice; some just beyond the gauzy fabric of this reality.

These things hailed from otherworldly parts known as Leng, R’lyeh, Ulthar, Skai, Kadeth, and Ib in the land of Mnar, and their deeds were memorialized in such volumes as the Necronomicon and the Pnapkotic Manuscripts, not to mention numerous horrific carvings, base reliefs, hieroglyphs, and totems. Pretty rich stuff from a writer making up canon on the fly, without ever working it out into a cohesive system.

Before H.P.L.’s influence took hold, horror was of the Victorian type: Dracula, Frankenstein, and the horror stories of old Europe: vampires, werewolves, and at the core of it, Satan. At times, instead of the devil being at the core, it was the acts of men: Jeckyl and Hyde, as well as the monster of Frankenstein – both examples of men trying to be God and the ramifications thereof. All in all, it was a very structured world, with God on one side, the Devil on the other, man in the middle, and in the end things would shake out. Man’s place in this order was assured.

It is after H.P.L. and the Cthulu Mythos took hold, when the madness and man’s uncertainty as to his place in the natural order, do we truly get modern horror as we know it. With this new paradigm, horror would eventually take new turns. We would encounter the backcountry cannibal families for the first time, waiting in their ramshackle farmhouses. We would experience stories that challenge our sensibilities as to our place in the universe. Killers were motivated [and would not die, or, stay dead] by forces that were wholly unexplained, and not attributable to either God or Satan, but rather unknown alien forces, or at times sheer, simple madness. Men would fall into fearful insanity at their powerlessness to act; at the realization of their insignificance; that the fate of man and the earth are already sealed and it is only a matter of time; that nothing can stop the inexorable march of evil to their doorstep. Man’s place in the universe was not only suspect, it was downright trivial when one became aware of the real forces at work. Some might say that his dreadful vision was influenced by the madness of the mindless slaughter of the First World War.

In my opinion H.P.L.’s magnum opus is the novella “At the Mountains of Madness,” which is probably his longest work. Simply, it’s about an Antarctic expedition [launched by the Miskatonic University] which goes horribly wrong, leading to death and insanity. It is the kind of story that grips you, steadily ratcheting up the tension until you cannot put the story down. It is credited for inspiring the novella “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, which in turn inspired “The Thing.” In “At the Mountains of Madness” we hear of a tale which ties together much of the Mythos, but leaving more than enough unexplained to fuel further wonder. We find out that our ideas of Earth’s origin, and its ultimate fate, is not what we would expect, or anywhere close to what we hoped for. But no such admonition to “Watch the skies” will ameliorate our collective doom.

H.P.L. can be found everywhere in the horror genre. Movies as disparate as Ghostbusters, The Thing, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Pet Semetary, Hellraiser, Hellboy, The Fog, and Event Horizon all owe H.P.L. a great debt for the groundwork he laid, the concepts he pioneered, and the atmospheres – the general creepiness – he was the master of. The same goes for horror literature, as well as comic books. Hell, Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum came from somewhere. Stephen King is practically his latter day protégé, another New Englander publishing the terrible goings-on in the unseen corners of Massachusetts and Maine.

H.P.L. is, with respect to the genre of horror, almost like Shakespeare to the English language – his influence is so wide, so diffused, so constant, you don’t even notice it. It’s like asking a fish to notice the water he is swimming in. But there it is – he is the dark, creepy, lurking atmosphere we all breathe.

I would like to give a special thanks to the Big AB of the Northern Wastes for his assistance in this endeavor.