The Dunwich Horror - Preview Review

I think Leigh Scott wants to be Roger Corman (the good one that did Poe, not the one that produced Carnosaur). With his new spin on The Dunwich Horror, he may well be on his way to small budget film greatness. Scott’s Dunwich Horror isn’t without a few bumps in the night, but I did find it an enjoyable ride. It is also great to see the return to Dunwich for Dean Stockwell. Yog-Sothoth be praised! The Whateley’s have always been an odd bunch. Zecheria (M. Steven Felty) is the patriarch of the clan and his daughter Lavina (Lauren Michele) is pregnant. The old man is silent on who the father is, but when tentacles spring forth and kill the doctor and nurse delivering the bundle of joy we know that dad was not of this world. The child, Wilbur (Jeffrey Combs), grows at an extraordinary rate and is much older than his age truly is. Zecheria and Wilbur’s otherworldly parentage has apocalyptic plans regarding his conception. Dr. Henry Armitage (Dean Stockwell) and his assistant Professor Fay Morgan (Sarah Lieving) are called in on a case of demonic possession and the entity inhabiting the possessed girl hints that the end is nigh.

So the two have to begin a quest to find the Necronomicon and call in Professor Walter Rice (Griff Hurst) of Miskatonic University to assist. Fay and Walter had a romance that ended badly so there’s some tension between the two. It is not helped when Armitage stays behind and sends them out to look for Olas Wormius (Jeffrey Alan Pilars), the last person to know the location of the fabled tome. Armitage isn’t alone for long as the intellectually challenged Wilbur comes to Arkham to find the book himself. H.P. Lovecraft is an author who inspires many with his tales of Cthulhu and elder gods. He’s also a filmmaker or screenwriter’s dream as he doesn’t go into much detail of those evil entities. You don’t get the fan’s ire up when you offer your interpretation of the mythic beasties because Lovecraft’s are usually along the line of “it would be trite and not wholly accurate to say that no human pen could describe” – so he doesn’t. Lovecraft leaves much to the imagination of the reader and that might be why he’s still popular. His singular mythos might also have something to do with that as well. His tales are usually bleak and illustrate man’s futility in battling the elder gods. Lovecraft’s Dunwich Horror is somewhat of an exception since our heroes vanquish the damned thing in the end. What’s interesting about this adaptation of The Dunwich Horror is that it gives Dean Stockwell another go round at the tale. He starred as Wilbur in a trippy 1970s version alongside Ed Begley, Sr., Sam Jaffe, and Sandra Dee. Stockwell now takes on the mantle of Dr. Armitage and actually does well in the role. I do wish more information would’ve been imparted about this character since he appears in several other Lovecraft tales. He was the head librarian at Miskatonic University, but really isn’t given that title in this film (to my memory) and appears to be a traveling ghost buster of sorts. He also has some unexplained magical abilities that I also wondered about. Stockwell is getting up there in years and has an old man’s shuffle every now and again. However, it’s really a casting coup for this production to have him on board. I wish I could say the same for Jeffrey Combs, who himself is no stranger to Lovecraft. His Wilbur is a slack-jawed imbecile who I thought might’ve been Forrest Gump’s intellectually challenged cousin. Combs seemed to take Lovecraft’s description of Wilbur being “goatish” and played him with some resemblance to the barnyard critter. There was really no menace or diabolical cunning in the character. Wilbur is described as also being a “scholar of really tremulous erudition” in the original story and I can’t even imagine Comb’s Wilbur knowing how to read. Griff Furst and Sarah Lieving are no strangers to Scott’s company of actors and they play well off of each other. If anything Scott surrounds himself with returning actors that can actually act, which is something other low budget filmmakers have difficulty doing sometimes and hence his comparison to Corman.

There are some additions to the Lovecraft story as it definitely needs stretching for theatrical length. It also lacks the foreboding that makes the town of Dunwich another character in the story (chapter one of it is devoted to detailing the wrongness of the place). However, it was a decent adaptation though it gets nowhere close to the prose of Master Lovecraft. Scott tries some camera tricks that didn’t work for me, but it was a fun imagining that makes you think of some Saturday matinee at the local horror-plex. Scott by no means has created a classic, but does better with the Lovecraft story and small budget than others have. The Dunwich Horror is coming this fall to the Sci-Fi Channel.