While I appreciate Lovecraft adaptations, even bad ones, this one’s got a janky stank to it. It’s like the last gasp of the old 60s Hollywood productions, trying to be hip and adapt some more unconventional kinda materials that the hippies would like, but failing on pretty much every metric as they still use the old templates and techniques that scream LAAAME. At least they kinda tried here. Yog Sothoth, indeeeed!
That opening credit sequence? Apparently the illustrator didn’t know what Cthlulhu was, so when an inquiry was made they said it was like an octopusssy devil. But that takes more to animate, so snake it was! It’s that kind of attitude that just doesn’t cut it here. Even with a creepy Dean Stockwell, who is too normally portioned for this role of obvious degenerate Whateleys. But it does help him score a nice blonde. And when I say score, I mean like totally Cosby her ass with drugs and spells and possible cosmic horrors. There’s multiple levels of fuckery going on here!
While it does stick to a pretty loose script of what the Dunwich Horror kinda is, the telling is just a bit...off. While I can appreciate the old sets and lighting, it’s obvious the set designers and choreographers of the dream sequences had no idea of reference to use visually. I think there’s like American Indian symbols used at one point? Really? Wow. You suck at your job, even if it was pre-internet. I’d say, like pre-color TV kinda shit but I guess that was actually back in the 50s, even if nobody could afford the TVs for it. 1970 was the first year color TV sales exceeded that of black and white ones, so, yeah, that’s kind of an indicator.
