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The Call of Cthulhu: The Celebrated Story by H.P. Lovecraft [DVD] [2005]

Matt Foyer (Actor), David Mersault (Actor), Andrew H. Leman (Director) | Rated: Exempt | Format: DVD
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Actors: Matt Foyer, David Mersault, Noah Wagner
  • Directors: Andrew H. Leman
  • Format: NTSC
  • Language: English
  • Subtitles: German, French, Swedish
  • Region: All Regions
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3 - 1.33:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: Exempt
  • Studio: Microcinema
  • DVD Release Date: 29 May 2007
  • Run Time: 72 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B000BQTC98
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 57,731 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)

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Product Safety

This product is subject to specific safety warnings
  • Warning: Not suitable for children under 36 months

Reviews

Product Description

The Call of Cthulhu, an all new silent film, is HP Lovecraft's most famous story. It is the only story to feature the celebrated monster Cthulhu and in many ways it encapsulates the ideas that went on to permeated Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The film follows the story's three-part narrative construction, and it moves from the 1920s to 1908 to the 1870s and back, as the story does. The story embodies HPL's nihilistic world view, his cosmic perspective, and his sense that mankind is doomed by its own insignificance. And it's a pretty good globe-trotting adventure story. (Spoiler Warning) In the story, a dying professor leaves his great-nephew a collection of documents pertaining to the Cthulhu Cult. The nephew begins to learn why the study of the cult so fascinated his grandfather. Bit-by-bit he begins piecing together the dread implications of his grandfather's inquiries, and soon he takes on investigating the Cthulhu cult as a crusade of his own. As he pieces together the dreadful and disturbing reality of the situation, his own sanity begins to crumble. In the end, he passes the torch to his psychiatrist, who in turn hears Cthulhu's call. Complete Intertitles in 24 languages: Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Euskera, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
41 of 45 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Dead Cthulhu no longer waits dreaming in R'lyeh. He's on DVD! 4 July 2007
By G. Thomas VINE™ VOICE
Format:DVD
I approached this product with apprehension and unease. An unknown film of one of Lovecraft's most celebrated stories could have been an utter disaster. Luckily it isn't. This is a remarkably loving adaptation of an oft-considered unfilmable story. The driving force behind the film is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society and thankfully they have done an excellent job.
The genius lies in making it a silent black & white production. It does have a truly early-1900's feel to it with a subtle placement of a few canny visual effects to reinforce the illusion. The overly eye-rolling performances of some of the actors are thankfully diluted by the period atmosphere and the brevity of most roles, as dictated by the story itself.
When they finally discover the grim secret of earthquake risen R'lyeh you'll be favourably impressed. It is stylistically reminiscent of the 1933 King Kong and incredibly, almost as effective.

A few minor niggles are far outweighed by the good points and when you consider this is not made by a "professional" studio it's an outstanding piece of work.

If you love the story, I heartily recommend this adaptation.

edit: my copy says "region 0" on the back !
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Great work 7 Feb 2010
By D. A. Smith
Format:DVD
This is possibly the best amateur effort I have seen and an absolutely ingenious way to do this sort of stuff. When Del Toro gets round to the mountains of madness no doubt it will be filled with terrific digital stuff (and I will be the first in the queue) But I can't see how he can improve on the atmosphere of this. There is a genuine feel for the distant past when it was written. Great attention has been paid to the art direction and the score deserves very high praise.
Lovecraft is extraordinarily hard to pull off on screen and I can't wait for the HPLHS next effort.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Arthouse 6 Jun 2008
By Mr. Nicholas W. Le Huquet
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Difficult to rate this movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Its not a popcorn movie, but if you like both arthouse films and H P Lovecraft books you will love this work. If not you should probably give this film a miss. George Lucas should really watch this film in order to understand that less can be more; this film actually benefits from being a low budget movie. Dark, atmospheric and true to the original story, this is a sublime piece of art. For the fan of the 1922 film Nosferatu.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Obey the call 16 Feb 2012
By Micro
Format:DVD
This version of 'The Call of Cthulhu', filmed in fabulous Mythoscope, is a must for any and all H. P. Lovecraft fans. Quite rightly, and as other reviewers have observed, it would be easy enough to dismiss the idea of satisfactorily filming any of the Cthulhu Mythos stories featuring such other-dimensional horrors as Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth and of course Great Cthulhu himself, particularly if you are doing it on a tiny budget with no CGI. But the team responsible for this film have managed it splendidly, and no small part of its strength comes from it being filmed as a silent black and white movie redolent of the early horror classics, which chimes with when the story was written. It's quite possible that some 'every digital effect you can think of' version would not been as powerful. To give one example from when the hapless sailors explore the cyclopean ruins of risen R'lyeh, the sequence where one of the men falls into an "impossible angle" in the masonry and disappears utterly is chillingly effective and - as you discover from the enjoyable and informative 'extra' about the making of the film - very simply achieved.

For those of us in the UK (or Europe) let's hope that the team are going to make a Region 2 version of their more recent effort 'The Whisperer in Darkness' available soon. In the meantime all those Lovecraftians out there who do not yet have this film should obey the call and secure a copy as soon as they can.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars They Don't Have To Pronounce It, They Just Act It 28 May 2008
By David Longhorn
Format:DVD
It was a stroke of genius to make this a silent movie with plenty of period touches. It's tremendous fun, with some genuinely good performances and lots of interesting visuals. Unlike a lot of modern 'so what?' horror flicks, this fil can be watched more than once with real pleasure. The movie manages to cram in a lot of disparate elements plus dollops of exposition and still maintain a good pace. The detailed work on various sets and props is excellent. The Cthulhu idols are fab, and the scene on/in the bayou is great. If I have one slight reservation it's that we don't get enough of the eponymous anti-hero-deity. But that's largely down to Lovecraft himself, and we can hardly blame the HPLHS team for sticking faithfully to the text.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A real treat - Lovecraft served à la Fritz Lang with sauce F.W. Murnau! 5 Mar 2012
By Maciej TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This movie was made with a little budget and unknown actors by people I never heard about - but after the first minute I completely forgot to care about it! I believe that Andrew Lenan (director-producer) and Sean Braney (scenarist-producer) were right on target when they decided to make this film silent and turn it in white and black - exactly as movies were made in 1926, when Lovecraft wrote "The call of Cthulhu". It gives an absolutely unique effect, which, I must admit, caused me to freeze before the screen for the whole 47 minutes...

"The Call of Cthulhu" story, although quite short, is one of the most powerful, most disturbing and most influential things in the whole fantastic literature. Nobody ever tried to film it, because the challenge seemed too difficult - when one thinks about the CGIs necessary to make a credible Cthulhu and a credible city of R'lyeh, it is easy to understand why nobody even tried to make such an attempt.

But all this difficulty was avoided by making this film in the style which both Fritz Lang ("Metropolis") and F.W. Murnau ("Nosferatu") would recognize immediately. Expressions on the faces replacing the words convey a greater sense of fear and impending doom than any special effects. The LACK of details in some scenes is more disturbing than the overdose of pixels in the best Blu-Ray - and the obviously cheap decorations in the city of R'lyeh surprisingly created (at least in my perception) more awe and shock than the best shots of Mordor in "Lord of the Rings". Bottom line, the settings in this film allowed Lovecraftian magic to play in a very powerful and pure way.

The very brief and very vague apparition of Cthulhu was very well done, with the maximum use of his shadow and only a little glimpse of the Great Old God himself.... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Show!
In a book called 'The Satanic Rituals' by Anton LaVey, there is a ritual called 'The Call of Cthulu'. I shall have to perform it some day.
Published 2 months ago by Alex
3.0 out of 5 stars As above
Okayish Cthulhu film. If buying, remember it is a silent movie. I wish I'd paid more attention when ordering it!
Published 3 months ago by G. Hughes
5.0 out of 5 stars Very clever and very well done.
A film of the unfilmable Lovecraft story, this effort is a real cracker. Made to represent the type of production which would have been around in the late 1920s, the film is a... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mr. S. C. Lyons
4.0 out of 5 stars Good as far as it goes.
H.P.Lovecraft is one of my favourite authors and the treatment given here is suitably atmospheric but it would be interesting to see a sympathetic modern rendering.
Published 4 months ago by DT
4.0 out of 5 stars Curious...
This is what happens when people who love their source material get to make a movie about it. Brilliantly inventive use of ancient school techniques harking back to German... Read more
Published 7 months ago by CrazyJools
5.0 out of 5 stars Hear the Call of Cthulhu--In a Brilliant SILENT Film!
The works of venerable horror writer H.P. Lovecraft have, in some ways, become the backbone of the genre, especially cinematic horror. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Michael R Gates
5.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric delight!
This 47 minute film knocks the socks off so many big budget Hollywood flops issued in the last decade. Read more
Published 24 months ago by Adrian Drew
5.0 out of 5 stars Lovecraft would love it.
Its not often you buy a black and white silent movie on DVD and i was a bit curious about what i was getting. Read more
Published on 19 Sep 2010 by N. Shepperson
5.0 out of 5 stars Cthulhu Lives!
This is simply awesome. Made by a film club of enthusiasts, it knocks nearly every studio attempt at Lovecraft for six. Read more
Published on 16 July 2010 by Mr. P. M. D. Navin
5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly good
A modern black and white silent film? Normally this would put me right off, and I'd take no notice of reviewers who said it was good because I'd suspect them of just being too up... Read more
Published on 1 July 2010 by R. Hayes
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