More often than not, H.P Lovecraft gets the short end of the stick when it comes to movies made from his work. Most take only the briefest thread of a story and go with it, likely butchering the text to the point that it resides in the world of B movies. That is, until now.

In THE CALL OF CTHULHU, the fine folks of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society have done something big studios have failed to do countless times: Stick to the actual text and make it great. Plus, they do it as a black-and-white silent picture – top that!

Not straying from the actual plot of the original story, which is mainly the retelling of a investigation of a unnamed man into his great uncle’s research, the film first show us his uncle’s encounters with a strange man from Providence, R.I., who is having strange nocturnal visions of a dreamlike city.

Then the man reads about his uncle relaying a tale of a policemen from New Orleans who broke up a weird cult deep in the swamps. Finally, he comes across a old newspaper article, which leads our “hero” all the way to Oslo to find out about a sailor’s experiences with these cults.

The HPLHS has done a phenomenal job with this movie, making it so enthralling and with so little money. Even though the film is low-budget, it does not show. They went to the actual location that Lovecraft wrote about; the house still stands today and looks exactly like it did back in Lovecraft’s day.

What gave me a chuckle is how they pulled off some effects to hide the all-around fact that it now is very much a modern city. The Cthulhu effect alone would make Ray Harryhausen proud. The music in the film is just so spot-on it sucks you into the story even further, matching well with the action taking place onscreen. And if you have foreign friends who can’t read English, there are 24 other languages to choose from in the title cards.

Diving into the extras, we’re treated to a highly informative behind-the-scenes feature, which goes into the processes used to making the film, admitting they had no idea as to how certain things were going to look since they had no idea themselves. Now that’s love for a project.

You also get deleted footage, of which the first two minutes is test footage of the Cthulhu-like puppet. It’s great unto itself to see this creepy little thing move. Then, if you’ve ever wondered what actors say in a silent film, the deleted scenes will reveal all: You can see the actors didn’t take themselves too seriously and had a blast during the shoot. In addition, there are two different sets of still photos that automatically play with music from the movie behind them and a downloadable prop of a news article featured in the movie.

This is a DVD for Lovecraft fans to display proudly in their collection next to their copies of RE-ANIMATOR. –Bruce Grossman

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