"To understand the movie one must first know H. P. Lovecraft..."

When horror filmmakers want to use a famous (but dead) author to boost their production, they usually pick Poe.  But, once in a great while, H. P. Lovecraft got the nod.  That was the case in the now-cult Seventies Necronomicon flick...  

By RON WAITE

Long Before there was a Stephen King and many years after Edgar Allan Poe and Fitz-James O’Brien there was the undisputed Master of the Macabre, Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937). His work inspired many including Robert Bloch and countless writers and filmmakers. His work appeared primarily in the pulp magazines of the day, most notably Weird Tales. While he was alive, Lovecraft stated that he never wanted his works adapted to the screen. Well, too bad for him as many of his stories did materialize on film and certainly a large number of movies were inspired by his writings.

It is regrettable that his type of horror does not transfer well to the screen. It is a psychological, gothic fear that works well in one’s own imagination but seldom translates into convincing special effects. There have been exceptions such as Re-Animator and From Beyond. On TV two of the most memorable TV's Night Gallery episodes were based on his work. Pickman’s Model starring Bradford Dillman, and Cool Air with Barbara Rush and Henry Darrow.

American International Pictures saw the potential of Lovecraft stories and set to work on The Dunwich Horror with Sandra Dee, Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley, Lloyd Bochner and Sam Jaffe. Produced by Roger Corman and directed by Daniel Haller, it wasted no time in treating the audience to one of those distorted dream sequences perfected in such films as Fall Of The House Of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, and The Trip. With music by Les Baxter who had scored Macabre, Usher, Pit, Tales Of Terror, The Raven, Master Of The World and others, they managed to set a mood in glorious Technicolor.

The soundtrack album released with the film included such tunes as "The Necronomicon," "Devil Cult," "Strange Sleep." and my personal favorite, "Sensual Hallucinations." While the film did not enjoy the success of a Star Wars epic, today it is regarded as a classic and has a devout cult following. For me, though I didn’t like it at the time, over the years--more than 30 now--it has retained its mood and I have a new appreciation for it.

To understand the movie one must first know H. P. Lovecraft. He was as odd as any of his characters and there are plenty of books and web sites to check into. Lovecraft wrote: "All my stories are based on the fundamental lore that the world was once inhabited by another race who, in practicing black magic, lost their foothold on Earth and were expelled, yet they live on the outside waiting to take possession again." The basis for many of his stories deal with beings who are out there waiting, lurking beyond, invisible to the naked eye, existing on different planes. To explain his detailed summary of The Evil Ones would take more space than allowed in this article.

Lovecraft in his brilliance concocted The Necronomicon, which many people believed to be an actual book of black magic and lost arts. In fact, he coined the word and made up an entire history for the book and its passage through time. HPL was not just your average hack writer of ghost stories. His knowledge of science and astronomy and many subjects dear to him weaved the intricate patterns in his mythos, and Necronomicon was perhaps one of the most brilliant words ever conceived by an author. Many have tried to decipher it. Was it Greek or Latin or just plain nonsense? There’s a Lovecraft "scholar" named S.T. Joshi (brilliant in his own right) who breaks down the word into Greek and Latin and English and says it simply means "book concerning the dead."

By 1928-1929, Lovecraft was well on his way producing short stories based on those Evil Ones who once ruled the Earth. There were, appropriately enough, 13 stories which include "The Dunwich Horror." which was fifth in the series. Lovecraft was a New England native and proud of his roots. His stories take place in the region of Rhode Island, much as Stephen King stories take place in Maine. For Lovecraft fans, we know that his beloved Arkham is really Salem, Kingsport is Marblehead, and Dunwich most likely is Hampden. Wherever the location one could always be sure of a frightful time in some decaying old house with shuttered windows or a crumbling grave where the dead don’t stay dead.

Critics of the day were appalled by the poster for this film where a demon from hell is devouring a naked woman. The year was 1970 and for many it was a time of trouble and turmoil, the leap from the Sixties into the Seventies, the Beatles broke up, man landed on the Moon, the Viet Nam war and hippies. AIP was making pics, as they always did, aimed at the youth market and ever since 2001: A Space Odyssey boasted "The Ultimate Trip," movies attempted to give their audiences new and more morbid subject matter. What could be weirder than HPL?

With James Nicholson and Sam Arkoff backing production, producer Roger Corman hired Daniel Haller to direct. Haller had an impressive list of credits and was at one time a set decorator so it allowed him to have a good eye for setting and mood. And Haller had directed another film based on Lovecraft’s "The Colour Out Of Space," which was renamed Die, Monster, Die!  and starred Boris Karloff and Nick Adams (1965).

The eerie music was handled by Les Baxter, as I stated previously, and his credentials with AIP were already impressive and extensive. The actors were no less impressive and they landed Sam Jaffe to play Old Whatley. Jaffe, you may recall, was the Einstein-like scientist in the classic sci fi film The Day The Earth Stood Still . He also played a Nazi holocaust survivor in the first Night Gallery episode as well as countless TV, film and stage roles.

Joanna Moore played Lavinia, mother of "the horror" and institutionalized as she had gone "completely mad." Wilbur, her son, was aptly portrayed by Dean Stockwell. Dean’s list of credits is very impressive, starting in movies such as Anchor’s Aweigh with Frank Sinatra (1945) up to the present where he’s made at least four films this past year including Face To Face. He was Capt. Binghampton in the remake of McHale’s Navy as has done TV work ranging from Wagon Train to Night Gallery to Quantum Leap to The Drew Carey Show. He’s appeared in over 100 films and at least 40 TV shows.

Also in the cast are Lloyd Bochner, who starred in William Castle’s horrific The Night Walker (1964) with a script by Robert Bloch, with Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor, perhaps one of the finest of Castle’s efforts. Ed Begley plays the college professor Dr. Henry Armitage who is an expert on The Necronomicon and just happens to have a copy in the college collection. Perhaps the strangest casting of all is that of Sandra Dee as Nancy, Wilbur’s girlfriend. They sing about Sandra Dee in the movie Grease. She plays the sweet, young, innocent American teen as she did in The Reluctant Debutante, Gidget, A Summer Place, etc. She, too, played on Night Gallery and has appeared in many movies from 1957 on.

Her typecasting as a fun-loving teen was over when she became Nancy Wagner in The Dunwich Horror. Bad enough being the girlfriend of Wilbur Whatley, member of the most feared family in Dunwich, but her nightmare had only started. The plot and the way it was presented, carefully crafted and slowly unfolding, leading to a shocking climax. Too slow for many critics who said the movie simply dragged pointlessly along. To me, it was a bit like The Shining. It moves along at its own pace, develops slowly, all the time drawing you in until you are part of the scene. You feel what’s going on, you sense the doom and despair.

Corman and Haller succeeded in keeping this a Lovecraft story. Except for updating the times they remained faithful to the intent. As the movie opens we see Dr. Armitage walking through Miskatonic University (another fictional Lovecraft invention) carrying the Necronomicon under his arm. This stroll does not go unnoticed by Wilbur who is there to get his greedy little hands on the book. The dreaded tome is housed in a glass case at the university and guess who’s the librarian? Yup, Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee) who takes one look at Wilbur and will gladly do anything he asks.

Wilbur reads aloud from the book, quoting "the Old Ones" aloud, muttering of Yog-Sothoth and others, pure Lovecraft lore. As the plot unfolds, Wilbur and Nancy, her friend Elizabeth and Dr. Armitage end up socializing at the campus coffee house where they discuss the contents of the book. Having missed his bus, Nancy offers Wilbur a ride home, back to Dunwich. Big mistake!

Upon arrival at the mansion Wilbur drugs the unsuspecting Nancy with a cup of special tea and carries her to a spare bedroom in the upper reaches of the Whatley estate. Here she has the first of her bizarre dreams. The scene is truly weird as the innocent Nancy stands horrified amidst crazed cult members dancing and prancing and praying, chanting, lusting after their pagan gods.

Meanwhile Nancy has not turned up for work so a concerned Dr. Armitage and Elizabeth travel to Dunwich to find her. There they meet old man Whatley (Ben Casey's Dr. Zorba himself, Sam Jaffe). He promptly tosses them off his property so they then visit Dr. Corey who had actually delivered the baby Wilbur. During a flashback scene we learn that Lavinia had twins that night. Could this be what caused her madness? They took her away to a padded cell as she mumbled something about "The Old Ones". Dr. Armitage and Dr. Corey exchange stories, but Nancy is in big trouble.

High above along the cliffs is a place called the Devil’s Hop Yard. It is here that a drugged Nancy is secured to an altar as members of the Cult dance around her chanting unspeakable things. The idea is to raise the old one--the devil himself--to join with Nancy in a perverted other-world rape. Nancy’s friend Elizabeth sneaks into the Whatley mansion and goes up a set of ominous-looking stairs to a locked door which she, in true movie tradition, must open. On the other side is the twin, the thing that put its mother into the loony bin. When she opens the door she is greeted by (as Lovecraft explains it), "…squirmin’ ropes…like jelly…ten or twenty mouths…" This was a true example of HPL horror. Things he described usually had a head that was cone shaped, or many tentacles, or were simply "unspeakable". In short the curious Elizabeth’s flesh is stripped from her bones and she is devoured.

There are scenes and plot twists added that weren’t in the original story but they don’t really distract too much. Most viewers had never read the books and screenwriters Curtis Lee Hanson, Henry Rosenbaum, and Ronald Silkosky added more depth to certain characters, like giving old man Whatley a conscious, something he clearly did not possess in the original story. When Wilbur returns to Arkham to grab the dreaded book, the story stays faithful to the HPL version and the horror that is the Whatley twin is set loose on the countryside.

In a truly demented scene Wilbur places the Necronomicon between Nancy’s legs as she’s tied to the altar and begins chanting incantations. Just as the Old Ones are about to burst through into our dimension, Armitage arrives and chants his own verse, a sort of anti-Old Ones speech that not only sends the unseen terrors back to whatever dimension they came from, but causes poor Wilbur to burst into flames.

All’s well that ends well if we can believe Armitage and everyone is happy. While the book should be destroyed, burned into ashes and locked away forever, it is not. And while the music swells and the participants return to their mundane lives the final scenes in the movie show us that Nancy has a baby Yog-Sothoth thingy growing nicely in her womb. Well, ya can’t keep a good Sothoth down I guess.

The Dunwich Horror was filmed in California with the college scenes at the UCLA campus. There’s enough going on here to suspend belief that this is really a mythical New England town, and the film is strange enough in its 1970s sort of way to hold the interest of any horror fan. Lovecraft purists may feel slighted, but if you’re looking for one very weird movie to watch some dark and stormy night, this may be your cup of tea!

Thanks, Ron.  This is one weird film and if anyone wants to get a quick introduction into the horror mythos created by Lovecraft, it's definitely worth a look.

Article copyright © Ron Waite

Return to Archives