Leigh Scotts THE DUNWICH HORROR aka WITCHES: DARKEST EVIL (2008) adapts one of the greatest of all H.P. Lovecraft stories—loosely, very loosely—into a fresh concoction involving traveling exorcists/occultists Dr. Henry Armitage (Dean Stockwell) and female sidekick (Sarah Lieving) scouring the Louisiana bayous for the open portal theyre initially alerted to during an exorcism (involving a Sumutran demon & pyramid, the latter recalling the Lament Configuration of Clive Barkers HELLRAISER). Who has been dabbling with opening the portal? Surly, jut-jawed Wilbur Whateley (Jeffrey Combs), thats who! Griff Furst is the academic refuting all this as clap trap till he gets pulled into the escalating shenanigans, which eventually leads to the first extensive use of belly-dancers in Lovecraftian cinema. Couldnt resist tracking down this curio given the one-two punch of (1) Dean Stockwell, the Wilbur Whateley of the 1970 AIP DUNWICH HORROR, in the role Ed Begley played earlier, and (2) Jeffrey Combs as Whateley, savoring yet another eccentric Lovecraft-inspired rube in Combs cinematic rogues gallery. Stockwells Dr. Armitage is an occult detective/warrior here, shooting CGI laser effects from his fingertips more than once, taking us further afield from the source material than even the change of locales from rural Massachusetts to Louisiana flatlands and backwaters (occasionally good use of the locations, which echoes The Call of Cthulhu, but the Whateley mansion looks as out-of-place as the California locales of the 1970 Daniel Haller opus). Alas, its Furst and Lieving—estranged couple bonding anew thanks to joining forces against the Old Ones and the portal (feminist academics, take note!)—who dominate the proceedings, with Furst essentially replaying the pragmatist academic of NIGHT OF THE EAGLE/BURN WITCH BURN being put in his place when confronted by truly occult forces manifesting against him, which writer/director Scott uses as his anchor and frame here. Like the 1970 AIP adaptation and far too many Lovecraft films since, the immediate fusion of satanism and older demonic pantheons & exorcism with Lovecrafts invented cosmos puts me off my oats from the get-go, and incorporating faux-Louisiana-voodoo trappings en route only compounds the heresy. As in the AIP version, theres also some fun to be had with the verbal tongue-twisting with Yog-Sothoth (mispronounced Yog-Soshoth time and time again here), and we just havent come any distance when Leigh Scott is essentially still reliant on the same flashy smoke-and-mirrors approach Daniel Haller did in 1970 to picturing both Wilburs sibling (behind closed doors housing, essentially, an obscured light show; tentacled puppetry with color filters/CGI enhancement, etc.) and its wake once its unleashed. That duly noted, this version opens with the birth of the Whateley twins, which is a grabber for the uninitiated and at least a turn for the initiated, and this is also the only live-action version thus far to include Wilburs unveiling/transformation (one of the original short storys most effective passages), but even that is fudged and far-too-fleeting. Combs gives his all, per usual, but deserves better, per usual. Hell, Ill remember the set of Combs/Wilburs jaw and drawl long after the rest of this fade from memory, and his perverse lip-smacking v-smiling supping of the word brother to Stockwell—well, one must find entertainment in these sorry Lovecraft pastiches wherever one can. Brownie points, though, for including the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred in a post-9/11 cameo, and despite the prosaic trotting out of facsimile Necronomicons (all missing page 751, dammit! Funny, that), further brownie point for an imaginative twist with what the Necronomicon is and where its hidden. Leigh Scott dedication to the genre is commendable; as with Brett Pipers films (I never miss a one of em!), you take these as they come for what they are, and no more. Lovecraft junkies, you know you want to see it—if youve got an all-region player, the still-affordable ebay access to the Australian DVD WITCHES is the way to go, packed with bonus features (including a menu item misspelling Cthulhu)—arguably worth the search for Stockwell and Combs alone, recommended only as fun-but-sad double-bill fodder with the 1970 AIP version.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 10:58:27 +0000
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