2005 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival - Sunday Night

The last night of the festival always has a distinctly different vibe. People are a bit more tired - the merchants, the filmmakers, the festival director - which translates to a more casual atmosphere than the previous two days. It makes for a more laid back evening; the upper screens had a nice "Warm, fuzzy" vibe going . . .

In the most Lovecraftian of ways, I assure you.

I chatted with Craig Mullins and his Uncle Rick off-and-on most of the night. This festival is always "bad" for inspiring me in all sorts of different directions, and Craig's a great guy to bounce the various ideas off of. Definitely going to move forward on at least one of these potential projects. I also get a chance to talk a bit with Edward Martin, he of the many-many-movies. We both live in the same part of town, but my schedule and his don't line up very often, so I haven't been able to help him out as much as I would have liked on his latest project outside of dumping three garbage bags full of old clothes on him for zombie costuming purposes; it was good to chat with him a couple of times throughout the night.

For the first of the evening showings, I caught the beginning of Shorts Block Two.

Arcane (directed by Patnicia Kenny & Max Müller) - Based on 'The Terrible Old Man,' and seeming to draw a slight 'Pickman's Model' influence, this short from Uruguay follows one man of a three-man crew plotting to break into and rob a retired Nazi's home. Lead Eduardo Guerrero did a good job of acting scared through the entire piece, but there wasn't a lot here to grab me.

The King in Yellow (directed by Emiliano Guarneri) - I wasn't overly familiar with this story by R. W. Chambers until I saw Aaron Vanek's The Yellow Sign a few years back, and since then, I've been a big fan of the piece. This well-done Italian short was well-shot and acted. This short was one of the few whose imagery stuck with me after I left the theater.

The Lovecraft Syndrome (directed by David Schmidt) - This was another of the short films whose imagery stuck with me, and not just because I had seen this movie before (David Schmidt shared a copy of it with me months ago). It's always risky to try to 'sell' a so-called 'Lovecraft-inspired' movie to a crowd of folks that seem more accepting of the straight adaptations, but as I listened to the audience as they left the theater, I could tell they 'bought it.' The movie follows graduate student Evie (played by Kathrynne Ann Rosen), who's already suffered two intense personal tragedies. As she loses herself in her studies, she begins to suffer a third. Excellent short. Chris Fuller's music adds just the right texture. This short, along with Read Me a Story, were the two stand-out shorts for me this year (excluding The Call of Cthulhu - this movie is in a category all by itself!). (You can view this movie online here.)

I had originally planned on catching H. P. Lovecraft: The Terror Within at 9:30, but I ended up chatting more with Craig (after spending a few moments with Maelstrom Productions' Eric Morgret and K. L. Young, congratulating them on their success with Strange Aoens: The Thing on the Doorstep, as well as making a point to chat with Richard Temple, the musician behind that film's haunting score), and chose, instead, to watch his Read Me a Story a second time during the final showing of Shorts Block One.

Even though I skipped some of the movies I originally planned to see, and even cut one of them short, I had a great time at the festival. I saw all the shorts, which was great - this is where the best stuff is. This year's batch was a LOT tighter than the previous years' I've seen. I would have liked to have seen a third block (as there had been at previous festivals), but if in an effort to show higher-and-higher quality work, Festival Director Migliore had to condense everything into two Shorts Blocks, it was worth it. (Maybe there just needs to be more shorts submitted!) My only complaint, I suppose, would be that all the foreign-language shorts were placed in Shorts Block Two; it would have been nice to have those broken up a little bit.

I love the festival, and I'm already looking forward to next year's show. (I heard a hush-hush kind-of-rumor that next year's event might break back out into a four-night-schedule like it did a couple year's back; that would be GREAT!)

And I'm going to start saving up NOW . . . for the merchants AND to see about setting up a table of my own to sell my own swag (nothing wrong with wishful thinking, right?).

Until next year, Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Ftaghn!