Reel Advice: H.P. Lovecraft's The Tomb

By Steve Anderson Jan 2, 2008, 14:55 GMT

Based on a story by the master of outrageous horror, H.P. Lovecraft, this bloodcurdling film introduces the "Puppetmaster." Imprisoning a group of people in a living hell of darkness and death the Puppetmaster controls the fate of each one. One by one, the captives awake in agonizing pain - some are slightly injured, others are fatally wounded. The survivors are also mentally tortured by the unseen villain, who demands that ...more

Man, what a year 2007 was, huh? I'm personally taking to calling it the "Year of The Taser".  There was that guy at the Canadian airport, the pregnant woman, a whole bunch of others, leading up to mister "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" back at that Kerry convention.

By now you're probably shaking your heads, wondering just what the hell I'm up to, anyway.  Well, I figured it was high time I shook things up just a bit, and in that vein, I'm taking an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.  This year, for the first piece of 2008, I'm doing something nifty: I'm offering up a New Year's Resolution.
I resolve to never again knowingly write about anything that Ulli Lommel does.
 
Folks, I knew this time was coming.  Ulli Lommel has been on my short list for a long time now, and now he's gone and done it.  I've seen seven consecutive films from the man in 2007 - that's one roughly every seven weeks - and not a one of them has been good. 

Oh, sure, I've held out some hope, given the man the benefit of the doubt that maybe, just maybe, the Broken Clock Theory might finally apply to this man's slow death of a career, but no.  Not once in seven films.  Seven consecutive horrible films.

But this one here, "H.P. Lovecraft's The Tomb", was the one that pushed me right over the edge.  I've been watching this man singlehandedly destroy every mythos he got his hands on with his own special blend of incompetence and sheer hubris.  From Poe to the Zodiac to even zombie movies, I've watched him ruin everything he did.  And that was bad enough. 

But when he put his horrible anti-talent to work on an H.P. Lovecraft concept, that was it for me.  That he could ruin the only occasionally coherent work of Lovecraft just enraged me.

Lommel's "H.P. Lovecraft's The Tomb" defies explanation.  He's locked a bunch of people in that all-too-familiar warehouse set of his and let them run around in a vaguely "Saw" kind of atmosphere as they try to accomplish the ludicrous task of figuring out why they're there in the first place and the much more rational task of trying to get out alive.

It sounds ludicrous that that could be an actual movie plotline, but it's Ulli Lommel.  And frankly, considering that it's Ulli Lommel, there is no such animal as too ludicrous.  That's why I'm swearing off the man, frankly.

I've got better things to do and write about than wasting my time with this man and his non-stop parade of garbage.  And you, conversely, have much better things to do than waste YOUR time watching this man's non-stop parade of garbage.

H.P. Lovecraft's The Tomb is now available at Amazon. As of yet, there is not a release date for this version of the DVD in the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
 
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