A couple of things. First off, to the person who claimed that "The Thing" was Lovecraft inspired, What on earth is wrong with you? The story that spawned it is "Who Goes There" by John Campbell. Tenuously at best, one could claim that the marriage of horror and science are inspired by Lovecraft, but then, another Craft, Mary Shelley Wollstone of said set*, beat him to the punch by a few hundered years. Anyway, The Thing is leaps and bounds better than any Lovecraft mess.
Now, to the original poster, here's a tip. Lovecraft is a very good writer, to a point. Like Bob Ross is a very good painter, to a point. Read the Call of Cthullu, and then be done with the whole "Cthullu Mythos" deal. Because every story is the same. Or better yet, here is a plot diagram that will sound very familiar to anyone who has ever read any mythos story, ever.
SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT
A man (call him guy A) gets a contact from a long lost friend (guy B)of his who went to go study something obscure in a random New England town. A series of messages, increasingly paranoid and disjointed, tell of people acting hush hush, and a strange building of some sort. B then sends one last one claiming he's going to check it out. Communication then ceases. Then, and no sooner, does A decide he needs to go see his friend, since he (B) might be crazy or something. A goes, and nobody will talk to him. (Small town New Englanders being tight-lipped to strangers asking weird questions? What a concept!) He traces what his friend was doing, discovers the building, goes to explore it, and there is some sort of Elder god -big ugly things Lovecraft, in a stroke of genius, never actually described- pops out and either 1) Kills A, or 2)Is sent back to sleep by A.
END OF SPOILERS END OF SPOILERS END OF SPOILERS END OF SPOILERS
And there you have it. Every one, while decent to good on its own, is nothing but rote repetition of all the rest. Save yourself some time to check out LC's non-mythos collections, much of which is quite good.
*I mean Frankenstein, for those unwilling to put up with my verbal chicanery.
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salvagedsoul
18 years ago
Ahh what an uneducated summary of lovecraft. Yes it is true that many of the "cthullu mythos" story share similar themes. Is it possible you are unaware of the many other storys Lovecraft has written about things far and away from Cthullu. Of course this excludes his poetry, essays, and extinseve letters. All of Lovecraft is worth study for his amazing knack to form a philosophical and aesthetic unity found in few other writers. The usage of the description "Lovecraftian" by my humble opinion refers to a hint of the unknown, the supernatural at its purest, the darkest parts of our universe. I find many directors attemting to reach this with cinema and not only by the pure retelling of lovecraft, but by sharing a clear Lovecraft inspriration. Many of the cinematic versions of his story I beleive fail at this, when many other movies succeded at putting the utter feeling of dread, the pure feeling of horror in the minds of their viewers. And in comparing Mrs. Shelly to Lovecraft I think you are very wrong. So you complain (uneducatedly I might add) at the monotonay of Loveraft, but Shelly had it easy to be creative when only writting one real novel with exeption to her letters and journals she has written next to nothing. Her novel was a great addition to our modern idea of horror but far diffenrt than Lovecrafts fiction. Mary Shelly is to H.P. Lovecraft as Mark Twain is to John Steinbeck, same genre different on almost all other aspects. So i guess in closing i will recomend to those intrested in understanding more of a broad vision of Lovecraft read some of the following:
-At the Mountain of Madness
-Dream-quest of the Unknown Kadath
-Cats of Ulthar
-The Unnameable
-Through the Gate of the Silver key
and really continue reading and you will see H.P. Lovecraft continues a great philosophical unity throughout his story but all while stretching the bounds of fiction and human fear.
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