Interesting info about the actual color the movie used for The Color: The color used in this film to represent The Color is magenta, which doesn't exist as single wavelength of light as part of the spectrum of visible light (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet; also known as "Roygbiv" to join the seven initials). Rather, it is an extraspectral color, that is only perceived by humans in a specific interaction of the optical rods in the eyes that detect red and blue in specific circumstances to create the magenta in the mind. Since red and blue are associated to evil and good, it means that The Color is apart from evil and good to come from another universe where these concepts cannot be applied.
HPL's story was really great and he mostly wrote about horror and existential dread -- encountering things that are beyond human comprehension that will drive the person mad. There is no way to adapt HPL's stories to a visual medium just because so much of the content is supposed to be beyond anything humans can understand. This movie is one of the better adaptations. Remember, you are not supposed to understand the horror because if you really did, you would go insane. Also, remember that HPL wrote in the 1920s.
I was so hyped for this movie. Lovecraft and Nicholas Cage? Better combo out there? Don’t think so. And honestly, with all its flaws that it might have, I still think it’s so amazing. Especially the typical overacting by Cage and the Body Horror is soooo good. The last 20minutes of this movie are a fever dream.
See I think Nick Cage only overacts when he thinks that the role requires overacting cuz he's done very serious roles and done it so convincingly and even if he has an overacting scene usually it makes sense for that scene there's like only a couple of films where he just purely overacts for the sake of the movie and I think that was Willie's wonderland and the Nick Cage film that I can't remember the name of where basically he plays himself in an action movie. And here he starts off serious proving that he can do a serious role and also in here as the movie goes on he goes into his overacting phase which makes sense since the color like most HP Lovecraft monsters drive you insane just by the sight of them.
Lovecraft is hard to adapt, but I think they did a great job here. Cosmic horror is the idea that what is happening in the story is bigger than humans can comprehend. It puts us in our place as a miniscule spec in the scope of the universe, and when the horror happens, it inevitably descends into madness. Nicholas Cage was the perfect actor to represent that.
Annihilation (2018) should be on your watchlist, the book is quite Lovecraftian already, but the film adaptation with it's changes coincidentally steer it back into a re-imagining of Color out of space, I just headcannoned it's the A budget version of the Color out of space.
I recommend watching IN the Mouth of Madness (1994) which is a very HPL-esque movie. Also, for another Cage movie -- Mandy or Willy's Wonderland are awesome! I also highly recommend READING some HPL; maybe start with The Call of Cthulhu.
Magenta was used to represent the color out of space because it is a color that doesn't exists as its own wavelength in the light spectrum. Our eyes and brain combines the wavelength of red and blue to create magenta. I thought that was clever. Mind you, a f*ck ton of colors are non-spectral, so it's not *that* amazing of a fact but oh well... Also, the color out of space wavelength affected the family in different ways; it made the dad smell a bad odor, made the daughter nauseous, made the mom oddily distracted, the younger son hear voices, etc. And yeah, it completely messed with time, which is a bit more obvious on a second watch (especially with the various phone calls). The movie has flaws, but it's easily one of the best Lovecraft adaptation put into film ever made.
Don't worry about being baffled and confused guys; it's Lovecraft, you're supposed to see it from the humans perspective, who are also, indeed, baffled and confused XD
A lot of Lovecraft are essentially horror mysteries with the mystery "answer" being something of indescribable eldritch extranormal nature. Essentially characters are continually punished for their curiosity. There aren't a lot of character arcs or traditional plot structure. The stories are written to tantalize you to also want to know the answer and then shudder when you put yourself in the hapless characters shoes just in time for everything to go bad.
If you've done this one then you have to look at MANDY, which stands just above but mostly alongside this one as my favourite of his recently, and I'll be very surprised if I'm the only person suggesting this. I honestly thought you'd tackled a Nicholas Cage movie before now.. wow, I've always considered movies made from Lovecraft material to be very director lead in terms of what the movie might actually demand to become a movie. This was a bluray blind buy for me, with some knowledge of how people felt about it, coupled with my own determination to see what I thought about it. I'll rarely take opinion without challenge when it comes to movies, and I'm glad I stuck to my ethos with this one - I take this film as an experience filled with inexplicable chaos arising from an alien contact which is very alien by name and nature. I enjoy Nicholas Cage movies when the movie is worth his input. Sometimes he takes projects which he can phone in, but when he's on form with something he's usually very good and I enjoyed his effort with this.
When this was written science was in its early stages of understanding the invisible parts of the spectrum. Especially radioactivity so things were mushy enough to write horror/sci fi to explain a possible form of alien attack.😮😮
Lovecraft was writing this stuff in the 20s, and the reason people are still attracted to his 'weird fiction' is because he foresaw so much. This one in particular seems to predict radiation sickness 20 years before the atomic bomb was invented.
The crazy thing about the original story is that the effects of radiation poisoning on the human body was realized in 1927, the same year as the publishing of Lovecraft's story. Of course things reach supernatural proportions in the story, but otherwise has moments very close to the effects of radiation sickness. An intangible presence that can't really be seen, corruption of the water and soil, the deterioration of people and animals, and so on.
The original HPL story scared the crap out of me as a teenager. You guys need to watch Richard Stanley’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau” for more insane b-movie madness. And it has 400 pound Marlon Brando!
The visuals in this movie, The Void and Evil Dead Rise is why I hope we continue to see more of a return of prosthetics for horror instead of CGI. I was shocked how low you guys rated. I expected you guys to love it.
Theres a couple of neat things like if you notice when cage is having his freakout in the car the antenna on the car raises up and that freakout was like being transmitted back in time through the phone which was neat and i think they might have phased through time or something because theres a sculpture of the alpaca monster in the house made by a past family member theres neat things in the movie but yeah ultimately theres better movies and horror movies out there but i do really enjoy the film and like rewatching looking for those kinds of things
H.P. Lovecraft was such a monumental talent. As a person, he was very troubled and held some very harmful views. But his talent and skill for telling an original story in a way no one else could can't be contested. One Nic Cage movie I'd love to see you guys watch is 8mm. Have you done that one yet? If not, it's a good watch.
There's an other Movie based of this shot story called "The Color Out Of Space" its more true to the original its only an hour and a half long and its black and white apart from the colour and its free to watch on TH-cam.
I thought this movie was visually stunning! I loved the atmosphere and also embrace the fact that it goes completely bonkers towards the end. The dark brooding score also deserves mentioning and that morphed monster completely caught me off guard. Exquisite nightmare fuel, IMO! Bottom line: one of my favourite ScFi/Horror movies of the last 10 years!
I love this movie. Unlike any of the cookie cutter, paint by numbers horror out there at the moment. The mother/son merge scene shook me when I first watched it, and very few movies do that these days.
Thank you for the reaction + discussion! In answer to your questions, my favorite N Cage film is "Raising Arizona". Although I haven't seen many others. Still, it's a very good Cohen Brothers film. Favorite HPL story: I read a bunch maybe 10 years ago, but don't remember much. So they're not up there with my favorite literature, but some were interesting. I remember liking some of the scenes in "The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath."
There is a 2015 documentary called "Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau" which is about the director of this film attempting to direct the 1996 film The Island of Dr. Moreau, If you can find it I highly recommend it, the story is kind of an amazing tale ego, eccentricity and utter failure on part of everyone involved including the actors Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer.
Someone already made the comment, but Lovecraft invented the genre of cosmic horror (or at the very least, defined it the most), synonymously called Lovecratian horror. He's most famous for the cosmic pantheon of terrifying gods, most famously Cthulhu. But what his horror MAINLY focuses around is the existential dread of humanity realizing they truly are a tiny/insignificant piece in the grand cosmic scheme of existence. The existential dread of the color of space being it's ability wrap pretty much ANYTHING to it's liking, minds/humans/animals/plants/element, even reality itself. And not knowing WHY it's doing so to, might not have a reason, might just be it's nature. And that alone is also terrifying.
Nice! Thanks for this! This is one of my favorite H.P. Lovecraft horror films from director Richard Stanley, but sadly it would be his last as his girlfriend or someone close to him accused Stanley of sexual assault, putting his career in limbo and that he would never direct another Lovecraft film ever again.
The accusations had nothing to do with sexual assault, but with alleged physical assault. Stanley has countersued for libel and defamation, and a French court (he lives in France) has dismissed the original claims of abuse. The accuser also fled the country rather than appear in court, and has a history of mental health issues and making false allegations against others. Unfortunately nothing of this has been reported by the media.
I don't remember if they state it exactly at the end of the film, but in the story, these events happened 10 years ago, and all the townspeople shun that entire area. But the state made plans, and in a few weeks, theyre going to build a dam that will flood the whole area, and the man made lake will be a resevoir for the general area. Everyone is relieved the weird cursed farming area will be under millions of gallons of warer, so they wont have to worry anymore, lol
Also, the director (Richard Stanley) was supposed to do a trilogy, the dreams of unknowns kadath and The Dunwich horror... But.. Turns out that allegedly he was physical and emotional abusive to his wife (the script writer) and the studio decided to cut ties with him
I think this movie is more enjoyable if you allow yourself to just enjoy the "batshit" ride without the camp expectation. I actually love the tone of this movie. I find it hypnotic and mesmerizing. No, it's not squanch because it takes itself very seriously, and I love it more on each rewatch.
Favorite Nick Cage movie - Matchstick Men. Favorite HP Lovercaft (inspired) movie - In the Mouth of Madness The plot points of the movie follows the novella almost exactly. There's a few tweaks here and there, but almost every beat is spot-on. The characterizations changed a lot in the movie, though. For one, the novella takes place in the 20's in rural New England, so it's more hillbilly and less hippy. Also the story is told from third person accounts and reports so it's more like you're hearing creepy rumors of what happened to the family. So in the movie they basically added the human elements of what it might be like to experience all the weird shit that they went through. If you know the idea behind the plot then a lot of the randomness makes sense, and the novella is more heavy-handed with its heady concepts. Basically this Colour is some sort of completely alien thing. So alien that exists outside our understanding of the universe, so it's more light than being or whatever. And when it crash lands on this farm it starts to slowly infect and mutate everything around it in various ways. Until one day it just flew away and took all the color in the area with it. This same director's first film is another great Sci-Fi Horror from 1990 called Hardware. You should totally check it out.
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this, but apparently, the reason why they chose the color purple, is because purple technically doesn’t actually exist. At least, not in the way other colors do.
Haven't even heard of this movie tbh but always down to watch it with you guys, you're amazing. Your videos give me that very much needed boost of serotonin. Cheers from Spain!
It's a weird movie but can't deny it has some good effects. The scenes with the mother and little boy all merged is burned into my memory. Anyway, you asked for Nicolas Cage recs ---> you guys should check out his latest movie, Renfield. He makes for a surprisingly brilliant Dracula!
This is one of those movies I was hyped to see, but now wish I hadn't. As in, I just found it disturbing on so many levels. But maybe that's the point of Lovecraft! And that makes this a pretty good adaptation.
6:49 Well actually they could have done that but the problem is is that the color is supposed to be hypnotic and magenta not only is not a normal color it also looks very hypnotic to look at and I don't think you can accomplish that in black and white The only other way I could say that it would have worked as if like the entire family saw a different color or multiple phases of colors like their mind is trying to piece together what the color actually is but black and white probably would have been the best way to go because in the book they do say it has hints of blue but they can't recognize what shade it is and the fact that it's a book and it's all from the story that was told by a person who was around the family not the family themselves it's possible it could have been told wrong and it's being told by a person who didn't even know the family because he just met this person who did know the family who's retelling him it like it's as this like my father once said that like if a person said one thing on the other side of the room and there was a group of people and it was like a pass it on message eventually the message might be similar but slightly altered or not the same at all so for all we know nobody knows what the color actually was but here black and white would have worked better for the mystery of the color whereas color it actually looks like a f****** drug trip I mean maybe they could have done this in black and white but I have no idea. 19:41 this is actually one of my favorite bits of the entire movie right here They come in in this cop car all badass music playing the cops got a shotgun and they look like they're ready to shoot some monsters but as soon as they get to the door of the house the music like slowly drifts back down to a depressing yet terrifying score which means that they like both in song and in character are realizing they were not prepared for what they were walking in on.
This movie was so awesome. If you want another even better Lovecraft adaptation, check out the HP Lovecraft Historical Society's adaptations of Call of Cthulhu and the followup The Whisperer in Darkness. They're hard to find but worth it.
19:04 well, he was a notorious racist back in 1920s (he regretted his pov before he died). He was raised dressed as a girl by his aunt's and his only escapism from his fear and terror of religion were the books of his grandad, He was raised in a strict Catholic family pushing the fear of God in him. He was notoriously asexual and very prone to sickness, he loved science. His favorite author was poe, ambroce bierce, blackwood and robert chambers, his mother died of siphilis while confusing him with her husband and also emotionally abusing him due to her sickness. His best friend, robert howard (Conan the barbarian) commited suicide. His Jewish wife (he was antisemite) took him to new York where he had a mental breakdown due to the cultural shock and divorced her, his Gods and monsters were a refection of concepts of chaos and the nihilism of the cosmos, as well as metaphors for an uncaring universe. He died penniless and having s lot of self hatred due to his high standards on his writing, he also had nightmares and felt out if time, as if he had been born in the wrong time in history. Yeah.. That's about whats wrong with him him. If you guys ever decide to read his stories, try to read one a day or else it will become too repetitive. His story "the outsider" is a reflection of how he felt about himself. His best stories are Re-Animator (where he created the concept of zombies made by science). At the mountains of madness (were we discover the horrible origin of humanity), the shadow over innsmouth (his fear of his own genetics), color out of space (how do you try to fight a concept?) And The Whisperer in Darkness (an invasion like no other). Funny enough, he thought The Call of Cthulhu was his worst story and wrote it for a paycheck.
'Mandy' by the same production company Spectrevison, starring Nic again may be more your speed! It does have a beguiling slow first act, but the rest is pretty exceptional!💖
Huh I left a comment and came back to add to it but it has gone ? Any hoo great reaction lads . It's a messed up weird nightmare of a movie but thoroughly enjoyable and interesting I have to recommend the 80s version The Curse it's very different but enjoyable and memorable. When you get round to horror again you have to do From Beyond Another HP Lovecraft film from the team that did Re animator. It's one of my favorite 80s horrors it's sooo gooey 😂 The Void a newish HP Lovecraft inspired film one of the best horrors of the last 10years IMO Also due to your hydrologist comments I have to recommend Swamp Thing. The Amazon series it slipped under the radar a couple of years back and is a absolutely fantastic series well worth your time.
Lovecraft was a horror writer, but he was looking for sources of the evil and the only scientific things he could find were the bottom of the ocean and outer space. He was a science fiction horror writer
The thing about him that intrigues is that his brand of horror explores ‘the unimaginable’, like the things from space or other dimensions that we really should be afraid of are the things we cannot fathom.
Sorry I'm late I was shooting alien mutant alpacas 😂 personally I loved the book they took many liberties with the film. In the book the hydrologist narrated the story second hand from the neighbor azra who tells him why the dam was going to be built to flood that valley. It's only a half hour audio book several TH-cam channels have done readings but MSA Matthew channel had illustrations to go with it you should check that out I'd even watch a reaction to see which you liked better. If you do stop by to watch it check out their other Lovecraft readings with illustrations it's almost like a movie I got addicted to that channel and Lovecraft isn't weird. His first story Dagon was badass and the ending of Call of C'thulu was crazy it gets you so hype it makes you cheer like yah get'em and at the mountains of madness was so much better than John Carpenters the thing. I heard they're trying to get it adapted to a film and make a trilogy like lord of rings. Funny considering Lovecraft and Tolkien twain all were close associates. I heard they all collaborated. Thanks for the reaction
Lovecraftian Horror AKA Cosmic Horror is the sci-fi version of horror. It's a beings, entities, gods, forces from beyond time and space, from the cosmos....ancient beyond human understanding....beings beyond human comprehension. Things that break and defy human reason and the understandings of physics and natural order. Creatures of madness, where even witnessing them poisons and shatters people's sanity. Rooms with too many angles. And I don't mean it's a shape like a dice with too many sides. I mean it's like a cube with six sides, but somehow it's got way more corners. You make four left 90° turns, and you end up facing a different direction than where you started. Something is wrong with the very fabric of reality and time and space stop adding up properly. Objects of scales that you can't wrap your brain around. Carvings of ancient unidentifiable creatures having a war, but the carvings are flawless and 10 miles high, hidden in a giant mountain range that you've somehow never heard of. Cults spring up worshiping ancient alien gods. Cultists infected by madness and mutation the more they learn. Cultists gleefully trying to bring about the end of the world drowning at the feet of a tower and god of unfathomable madness who feasts on the sanity of mortals. Monsters that can enter the universe through the corners of a room at the edges of your vision if you're not really watching. Families and bloodlines tainted by interaction with strange gods, or breeding with strange creatures, or encountering strange forces. Lovecraft is where you get Cthulhu, and a whole load of other crazy tentacle monsters, and things with crab claws and weird armor and too many eyes and bodies that are rearranged in ways that don't make any sense. Alien minds that are truly alien, with feelings and motivations that are unknowable to humans. Like ants trying to comprehend a human mind. It's the corruption of nature. The horror of the unknown. The collapse of sanity and reason. Looking into the void and the inability to handle when the void looks back. Pretenders in roughly human skin walking among us. The failure to grapple with scale. Especially infinity and eternity. Whispers in your brain gnawing at your mind. Things in the corners of your eye. The unknowable and indescribable in the most terrifying ways possible. The danger of knowledge. Researching things that you shouldn't research. The more you know, the more you know you shouldn't, and wish you didn't. Literal dangerous knowledge. Where the knowledge itself is a hazard. HP Lovecraft sort of made it his mission to make horror out of the indescribable. He basically tried to make stories about all of the things that you really can't put into words normally. And that makes them also really hard to film. It's hard to film things that defy human understanding. It's sort of the more abstract the medium that we use to tell the story, the better the story is told. Once you start trying to actually visually depict it you bump up against the fundamental challenge of overcoming the base premise of being indescribable and don't knowable and brain melting. You can't really pull those things off completely in a movie. All you can really do is your best attempt at approximating what an impossible color looks like. Annihilation is a fantastic movie, and it's another version of The Color Out Of Space The Thing is basically a version of At The Mountains Of Madness. Then there's Reanimator. As you said, The Blob pretty much fits into the Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror genre. Event Horizon falls into a Lovecraftian area.
Nah, boys. I give this an easy 7.5 - not a great film - but you WILL remember this fondly. This one falls into the "good" category of Nic Cage's bankruptcy films. The ridiculous burst of B-movies he made to recover financially. I love it.
Lovecraft is one of the hardest to adapt because, we need to understand and give explanations to elements of a story. Lovecraft believed that there's thing that can't be measured by human comprehension. Cthulhu for example, he is NOT a God but a Priest for a outer God. Or the idea of Azathoth the blind idiot God that lies sleep in the cosmos, once he wakes up, reality will cease to be, for reality of his dream and we are part of his dream. And what we dream is Reality
![ละลาย (LALALYE) - DAOU PITTAYA ต้าห์อู๋ พิทยา [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wo6r9TgausI/mqdefault.jpg)
Interesting info about the actual color the movie used for The Color:
The color used in this film to represent The Color is magenta, which doesn't exist as single wavelength of light as part of the spectrum of visible light (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet; also known as "Roygbiv" to join the seven initials). Rather, it is an extraspectral color, that is only perceived by humans in a specific interaction of the optical rods in the eyes that detect red and blue in specific circumstances to create the magenta in the mind. Since red and blue are associated to evil and good, it means that The Color is apart from evil and good to come from another universe where these concepts cannot be applied.
HPL's story was really great and he mostly wrote about horror and existential dread -- encountering things that are beyond human comprehension that will drive the person mad. There is no way to adapt HPL's stories to a visual medium just because so much of the content is supposed to be beyond anything humans can understand. This movie is one of the better adaptations. Remember, you are not supposed to understand the horror because if you really did, you would go insane. Also, remember that HPL wrote in the 1920s.
I was so hyped for this movie. Lovecraft and Nicholas Cage? Better combo out there? Don’t think so. And honestly, with all its flaws that it might have, I still think it’s so amazing. Especially the typical overacting by Cage and the Body Horror is soooo good. The last 20minutes of this movie are a fever dream.
Overacting? You mean you've never felt that way about a car/computer/traffic jam/etc.?
Had a blast watching it in the theatre :)
It isn’t “overacting,” it’s expressionistic acting. It’s not supposed to be realistic, there is no “just right acting” and ni overacting.
See I think Nick Cage only overacts when he thinks that the role requires overacting cuz he's done very serious roles and done it so convincingly and even if he has an overacting scene usually it makes sense for that scene there's like only a couple of films where he just purely overacts for the sake of the movie and I think that was Willie's wonderland and the Nick Cage film that I can't remember the name of where basically he plays himself in an action movie. And here he starts off serious proving that he can do a serious role and also in here as the movie goes on he goes into his overacting phase which makes sense since the color like most HP Lovecraft monsters drive you insane just by the sight of them.
Lovecraft is hard to adapt, but I think they did a great job here. Cosmic horror is the idea that what is happening in the story is bigger than humans can comprehend. It puts us in our place as a miniscule spec in the scope of the universe, and when the horror happens, it inevitably descends into madness. Nicholas Cage was the perfect actor to represent that.
Annihilation (2018) should be on your watchlist, the book is quite Lovecraftian already, but the film adaptation with it's changes coincidentally steer it back into a re-imagining of Color out of space, I just headcannoned it's the A budget version of the Color out of space.
As a hydrologist, he didn't give a "dam"
the beginning and end speeches are taken word for word from lovecrafts story
I recommend watching IN the Mouth of Madness (1994) which is a very HPL-esque movie. Also, for another Cage movie -- Mandy or Willy's Wonderland are awesome!
I also highly recommend READING some HPL; maybe start with The Call of Cthulhu.
I forgot they still haven't done
In the Mouth of madness
My 2nd favourite carpenter film just pipping Halloween to the spot.
Magenta was used to represent the color out of space because it is a color that doesn't exists as its own wavelength in the light spectrum. Our eyes and brain combines the wavelength of red and blue to create magenta. I thought that was clever. Mind you, a f*ck ton of colors are non-spectral, so it's not *that* amazing of a fact but oh well... Also, the color out of space wavelength affected the family in different ways; it made the dad smell a bad odor, made the daughter nauseous, made the mom oddily distracted, the younger son hear voices, etc. And yeah, it completely messed with time, which is a bit more obvious on a second watch (especially with the various phone calls). The movie has flaws, but it's easily one of the best Lovecraft adaptation put into film ever made.
Don't worry about being baffled and confused guys; it's Lovecraft, you're supposed to see it from the humans perspective, who are also, indeed, baffled and confused XD
A lot of Lovecraft are essentially horror mysteries with the mystery "answer" being something of indescribable eldritch extranormal nature. Essentially characters are continually punished for their curiosity. There aren't a lot of character arcs or traditional plot structure. The stories are written to tantalize you to also want to know the answer and then shudder when you put yourself in the hapless characters shoes just in time for everything to go bad.
As soon as I saw the mutant llama, I shouted 'ALPACA HYDRA' and burst out laughing
If you've done this one then you have to look at MANDY, which stands just above but mostly alongside this one as my favourite of his recently, and I'll be very surprised if I'm the only person suggesting this. I honestly thought you'd tackled a Nicholas Cage movie before now.. wow, I've always considered movies made from Lovecraft material to be very director lead in terms of what the movie might actually demand to become a movie. This was a bluray blind buy for me, with some knowledge of how people felt about it, coupled with my own determination to see what I thought about it. I'll rarely take opinion without challenge when it comes to movies, and I'm glad I stuck to my ethos with this one - I take this film as an experience filled with inexplicable chaos arising from an alien contact which is very alien by name and nature. I enjoy Nicholas Cage movies when the movie is worth his input. Sometimes he takes projects which he can phone in, but when he's on form with something he's usually very good and I enjoyed his effort with this.
Mandy is an amazing movie.
Yeeeeeees. Mandy is great.
Seconded. Mandy is maybe one of my top 10 movies ever now.
When this was written science was in its early stages of understanding the invisible parts of the spectrum. Especially radioactivity so things were mushy enough to write horror/sci fi to explain a possible form of alien attack.😮😮
Lovecraft was writing this stuff in the 20s, and the reason people are still attracted to his 'weird fiction' is because he foresaw so much. This one in particular seems to predict radiation sickness 20 years before the atomic bomb was invented.
The crazy thing about the original story is that the effects of radiation poisoning on the human body was realized in 1927, the same year as the publishing of Lovecraft's story. Of course things reach supernatural proportions in the story, but otherwise has moments very close to the effects of radiation sickness. An intangible presence that can't really be seen, corruption of the water and soil, the deterioration of people and animals, and so on.
Somehow this all feels like it would’ve fit into a torchwood or Dr Who episode. Always love seeing Mr Cage nowadays, he never fails to entertain.
The original HPL story scared the crap out of me as a teenager. You guys need to watch Richard Stanley’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau” for more insane b-movie madness. And it has 400 pound Marlon Brando!
He directed it like two week only before he was fired
The visuals in this movie, The Void and Evil Dead Rise is why I hope we continue to see more of a return of prosthetics for horror instead of CGI. I was shocked how low you guys rated. I expected you guys to love it.
The young son with the glasses is the same kid (young Luke) from Haunting of Hill House, so cute!!
Its interesting you say how the hydrologists ending monologue felt out of place thats actually like word for word from the book
I LOVE Richard Stanley movies... although he has only made 3. So glad y'all get to experience his directing
Theres a couple of neat things like if you notice when cage is having his freakout in the car the antenna on the car raises up and that freakout was like being transmitted back in time through the phone which was neat and i think they might have phased through time or something because theres a sculpture of the alpaca monster in the house made by a past family member theres neat things in the movie but yeah ultimately theres better movies and horror movies out there but i do really enjoy the film and like rewatching looking for those kinds of things
H.P. Lovecraft was such a monumental talent. As a person, he was very troubled and held some very harmful views. But his talent and skill for telling an original story in a way no one else could can't be contested. One Nic Cage movie I'd love to see you guys watch is 8mm. Have you done that one yet? If not, it's a good watch.
HP Lovecraft was born in 1890 and died in 1937 so don't think you can accuse him of stealing ideas from other, modern movies.
Mandy next! and Annihilation...
Just here to second both of these.
Annihilation is a film that's in the same ballpark that I'd recommend
You should have a look into Lovecraft as a person. Your right he was a right weirdo but had a interesting view point due to this
He was also profoundly xenophobic and racist. Though I confess I still find his brand of cosmic unimaginable horror quite fascinating.
There's an other Movie based of this shot story called "The Color Out Of Space" its more true to the original its only an hour and a half long and its black and white apart from the colour and its free to watch on TH-cam.
I thought this movie was visually stunning! I loved the atmosphere and also embrace the fact that it goes completely bonkers towards the end. The dark brooding score also deserves mentioning and that morphed monster completely caught me off guard. Exquisite nightmare fuel, IMO! Bottom line: one of my favourite ScFi/Horror movies of the last 10 years!
If you want to see Nic Cage go full over-the-top ham, watch Mandy. It’s so freakin crazy.
I love this movie. Unlike any of the cookie cutter, paint by numbers horror out there at the moment. The mother/son merge scene shook me when I first watched it, and very few movies do that these days.
A horror movie where the black guy survived.
Thank you for the reaction + discussion!
In answer to your questions, my favorite N Cage film is "Raising Arizona". Although I haven't seen many others. Still, it's a very good Cohen Brothers film.
Favorite HPL story: I read a bunch maybe 10 years ago, but don't remember much. So they're not up there with my favorite literature, but some were interesting. I remember liking some of the scenes in "The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath."
Saw this in a theater in Berkeley right before the pandemic. Completely amazing.
Cage is so bold and doesn't let his Academy Award choose his roles. He loves his job a lot!
There is a 2015 documentary called "Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau" which is about the director of this film attempting to direct the 1996 film The Island of Dr. Moreau, If you can find it I highly recommend it, the story is kind of an amazing tale ego, eccentricity and utter failure on part of everyone involved including the actors Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer.
This is a gem most people misseed a few years ago, didn't expect anyone to react to it...great job
Someone already made the comment, but Lovecraft invented the genre of cosmic horror (or at the very least, defined it the most), synonymously called Lovecratian horror. He's most famous for the cosmic pantheon of terrifying gods, most famously Cthulhu. But what his horror MAINLY focuses around is the existential dread of humanity realizing they truly are a tiny/insignificant piece in the grand cosmic scheme of existence. The existential dread of the color of space being it's ability wrap pretty much ANYTHING to it's liking, minds/humans/animals/plants/element, even reality itself. And not knowing WHY it's doing so to, might not have a reason, might just be it's nature. And that alone is also terrifying.
Nice!
Thanks for this!
This is one of my favorite H.P. Lovecraft horror films from director Richard Stanley, but sadly it would be his last as his girlfriend or someone close to him accused Stanley of sexual assault, putting his career in limbo and that he would never direct another Lovecraft film ever again.
The accusations had nothing to do with sexual assault, but with alleged physical assault. Stanley has countersued for libel and defamation, and a French court (he lives in France) has dismissed the original claims of abuse. The accuser also fled the country rather than appear in court, and has a history of mental health issues and making false allegations against others. Unfortunately nothing of this has been reported by the media.
You guys should watch Annihilation. It has a lot of similarities to this movie but better and scarier
I don't remember if they state it exactly at the end of the film, but in the story, these events happened 10 years ago, and all the townspeople shun that entire area. But the state made plans, and in a few weeks, theyre going to build a dam that will flood the whole area, and the man made lake will be a resevoir for the general area. Everyone is relieved the weird cursed farming area will be under millions of gallons of warer, so they wont have to worry anymore, lol
I also recommend Hunt for the wilderpeople, it's a comedy written and directed by Taika Waititi starring Sam Neall(dr grant in jurassic park).
Have you guys ever watched the movie Raising Arizona with Nicolas Cage? If not that's another Nicolas Cage movie you can do, it's funny.
Nicolas Cage rules. Check him out in "Mandy," "Wild at Heart," and "Adaptation."
Good solid cosmic horror. Kinda remember it unlike hundreds of diffrent horrors. One of THE best Lovecraft's adaptations period!
You must not have seen Annihilation from 2018 or you would be hardcore comparing it.
Also, the director (Richard Stanley) was supposed to do a trilogy, the dreams of unknowns kadath and The Dunwich horror... But.. Turns out that allegedly he was physical and emotional abusive to his wife (the script writer) and the studio decided to cut ties with him
I think this movie is more enjoyable if you allow yourself to just enjoy the "batshit" ride without the camp expectation. I actually love the tone of this movie. I find it hypnotic and mesmerizing. No, it's not squanch because it takes itself very seriously, and I love it more on each rewatch.
Natalie Portman movie “Annihilation” was also loosely based on same HP Lovecraft story that this movie is based on.
Lovecraft when adapted in a more pure form can be a limitus test. 😆
Interesting reaction.
Favorite Nick Cage movie - Matchstick Men.
Favorite HP Lovercaft (inspired) movie - In the Mouth of Madness
The plot points of the movie follows the novella almost exactly. There's a few tweaks here and there, but almost every beat is spot-on. The characterizations changed a lot in the movie, though. For one, the novella takes place in the 20's in rural New England, so it's more hillbilly and less hippy. Also the story is told from third person accounts and reports so it's more like you're hearing creepy rumors of what happened to the family. So in the movie they basically added the human elements of what it might be like to experience all the weird shit that they went through. If you know the idea behind the plot then a lot of the randomness makes sense, and the novella is more heavy-handed with its heady concepts. Basically this Colour is some sort of completely alien thing. So alien that exists outside our understanding of the universe, so it's more light than being or whatever. And when it crash lands on this farm it starts to slowly infect and mutate everything around it in various ways. Until one day it just flew away and took all the color in the area with it.
This same director's first film is another great Sci-Fi Horror from 1990 called Hardware. You should totally check it out.
My favorite Nic Cage film is probably Raising Arizona...runner-up would be Wild at Heart.
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this, but apparently, the reason why they chose the color purple, is because purple technically doesn’t actually exist. At least, not in the way other colors do.
Great movie! The image of the mother and son being fused together still hasn't left my mind 😨
Bruh's face at 16:45 though. 😂I prbly looked the same way when I first saw CooS. haha
Haven't even heard of this movie tbh but always down to watch it with you guys, you're amazing. Your videos give me that very much needed boost of serotonin. Cheers from Spain!
The original 1927 Lovecraft short story is well worth reading … only takes about an hour.
Thanks, Shaun! Thanks, Tom! 🟣 #CinemaRules #RichardStanley #ColorOutOfSpace
Here's 2 Nick cage movies might like, Willy's wonderland and Mandy.
Raising Arizona is my fave Nick Cage movie. Mandy is a very close second 😊
It's a weird movie but can't deny it has some good effects. The scenes with the mother and little boy all merged is burned into my memory. Anyway, you asked for Nicolas Cage recs ---> you guys should check out his latest movie, Renfield. He makes for a surprisingly brilliant Dracula!
This is one of those movies I was hyped to see, but now wish I hadn't. As in, I just found it disturbing on so many levels. But maybe that's the point of Lovecraft! And that makes this a pretty good adaptation.
6:49 Well actually they could have done that but the problem is is that the color is supposed to be hypnotic and magenta not only is not a normal color it also looks very hypnotic to look at and I don't think you can accomplish that in black and white The only other way I could say that it would have worked as if like the entire family saw a different color or multiple phases of colors like their mind is trying to piece together what the color actually is but black and white probably would have been the best way to go because in the book they do say it has hints of blue but they can't recognize what shade it is and the fact that it's a book and it's all from the story that was told by a person who was around the family not the family themselves it's possible it could have been told wrong and it's being told by a person who didn't even know the family because he just met this person who did know the family who's retelling him it like it's as this like my father once said that like if a person said one thing on the other side of the room and there was a group of people and it was like a pass it on message eventually the message might be similar but slightly altered or not the same at all so for all we know nobody knows what the color actually was but here black and white would have worked better for the mystery of the color whereas color it actually looks like a f****** drug trip I mean maybe they could have done this in black and white but I have no idea.
19:41 this is actually one of my favorite bits of the entire movie right here They come in in this cop car all badass music playing the cops got a shotgun and they look like they're ready to shoot some monsters but as soon as they get to the door of the house the music like slowly drifts back down to a depressing yet terrifying score which means that they like both in song and in character are realizing they were not prepared for what they were walking in on.
I love Lovecraft cosmic horror it's cool to see Nicholas and Chong in this movie.
Really wasn't expecting to see Brenden Meyer in this movie
This movie was so awesome. If you want another even better Lovecraft adaptation, check out the HP Lovecraft Historical Society's adaptations of Call of Cthulhu and the followup The Whisperer in Darkness. They're hard to find but worth it.
Dagon is another great adaptation of a Lovecraft story, although it's The Shadow Out of Innsmouth.
@@DigitalBath742 Potato potatoh.That one's a fun gory time, too.
That's a Steeler's style jersey too that Shaun has on. You guys did your research lol
19:04 well, he was a notorious racist back in 1920s (he regretted his pov before he died). He was raised dressed as a girl by his aunt's and his only escapism from his fear and terror of religion were the books of his grandad, He was raised in a strict Catholic family pushing the fear of God in him. He was notoriously asexual and very prone to sickness, he loved science. His favorite author was poe, ambroce bierce, blackwood and robert chambers, his mother died of siphilis while confusing him with her husband and also emotionally abusing him due to her sickness. His best friend, robert howard (Conan the barbarian) commited suicide. His Jewish wife (he was antisemite) took him to new York where he had a mental breakdown due to the cultural shock and divorced her, his Gods and monsters were a refection of concepts of chaos and the nihilism of the cosmos, as well as metaphors for an uncaring universe. He died penniless and having s lot of self hatred due to his high standards on his writing, he also had nightmares and felt out if time, as if he had been born in the wrong time in history.
Yeah.. That's about whats wrong with him him. If you guys ever decide to read his stories, try to read one a day or else it will become too repetitive. His story "the outsider" is a reflection of how he felt about himself. His best stories are Re-Animator (where he created the concept of zombies made by science). At the mountains of madness (were we discover the horrible origin of humanity), the shadow over innsmouth (his fear of his own genetics), color out of space (how do you try to fight a concept?) And The Whisperer in Darkness (an invasion like no other). Funny enough, he thought The Call of Cthulhu was his worst story and wrote it for a paycheck.
I love this concept of a hydrologist action hero. Something like "Goddamn contaminants" BLAM cHk-CHK
One of the few movies that made an a great impression on me, a real HP Lovecraft film
Now you gotta do Mandy... These 2 films FEEL great together
Read "At the Mountains of Madness" by lovecraft, if ever a story needs made into a film it's this.
Favorite Cage movie is still Raising Arizona.
'Mandy' by the same production company Spectrevison, starring Nic again may be more your speed! It does have a beguiling slow first act, but the rest is pretty exceptional!💖
1:28 it's all fun and games until the baseball bat comes out lol
Check out the vintage Nic Cage film, 1984's Birdy, directed by Alan Parker.
lmaooo i fucking lost it everytime you guys made hydrology joke. oh you british people
Maybe this movie would have got more notice if it was titled "The Color Purple"
Huh I left a comment and came back to add to it but it has gone ?
Any hoo
great reaction lads . It's a messed up weird nightmare of a movie but thoroughly enjoyable and interesting
I have to recommend the 80s version The Curse it's very different but enjoyable and memorable.
When you get round to horror again you have to do
From Beyond
Another HP Lovecraft film from the team that did Re animator. It's one of my favorite 80s horrors it's sooo gooey 😂
The Void a newish HP Lovecraft inspired film one of the best horrors of the last 10years IMO
Also due to your hydrologist comments I have to recommend Swamp Thing. The Amazon series it slipped under the radar a couple of years back and is a absolutely fantastic series well worth your time.
Lovecraft was a horror writer, but he was looking for sources of the evil and the only scientific things he could find were the bottom of the ocean and outer space. He was a science fiction horror writer
The thing about him that intrigues is that his brand of horror explores ‘the unimaginable’, like the things from space or other dimensions that we really should be afraid of are the things we cannot fathom.
Classic "squanch" may be
"Return of the Living Dead."
“Uhhhhhhhhhhh wtf are you talking about?”
This makes the The Thing look normal
Knowing (2009) is a Nic Cage film, if you haven't seen/reacted to it, please do. Guessing you've seen the National Treasure films.
OK Now watch Annihilation. Similar concept, but a much better-done movie, in my opinion.
You guys would really enjoy Con Air! I'm not really into action films but the characters
keep you invested all the way through.
happy 100th birthday to shaun
More "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" than "The Crazies"
Sorry I'm late I was shooting alien mutant alpacas 😂 personally I loved the book they took many liberties with the film. In the book the hydrologist narrated the story second hand from the neighbor azra who tells him why the dam was going to be built to flood that valley. It's only a half hour audio book several TH-cam channels have done readings but MSA Matthew channel had illustrations to go with it you should check that out I'd even watch a reaction to see which you liked better. If you do stop by to watch it check out their other Lovecraft readings with illustrations it's almost like a movie I got addicted to that channel and Lovecraft isn't weird. His first story Dagon was badass and the ending of Call of C'thulu was crazy it gets you so hype it makes you cheer like yah get'em and at the mountains of madness was so much better than John Carpenters the thing. I heard they're trying to get it adapted to a film and make a trilogy like lord of rings. Funny considering Lovecraft and Tolkien twain all were close associates. I heard they all collaborated. Thanks for the reaction
Lovecraftian Horror AKA Cosmic Horror is the sci-fi version of horror.
It's a beings, entities, gods, forces from beyond time and space, from the cosmos....ancient beyond human understanding....beings beyond human comprehension.
Things that break and defy human reason and the understandings of physics and natural order.
Creatures of madness, where even witnessing them poisons and shatters people's sanity.
Rooms with too many angles.
And I don't mean it's a shape like a dice with too many sides. I mean it's like a cube with six sides, but somehow it's got way more corners.
You make four left 90° turns, and you end up facing a different direction than where you started.
Something is wrong with the very fabric of reality and time and space stop adding up properly.
Objects of scales that you can't wrap your brain around.
Carvings of ancient unidentifiable creatures having a war, but the carvings are flawless and 10 miles high, hidden in a giant mountain range that you've somehow never heard of.
Cults spring up worshiping ancient alien gods.
Cultists infected by madness and mutation the more they learn.
Cultists gleefully trying to bring about the end of the world drowning at the feet of a tower and god of unfathomable madness who feasts on the sanity of mortals.
Monsters that can enter the universe through the corners of a room at the edges of your vision if you're not really watching.
Families and bloodlines tainted by interaction with strange gods, or breeding with strange creatures, or encountering strange forces.
Lovecraft is where you get Cthulhu, and a whole load of other crazy tentacle monsters, and things with crab claws and weird armor and too many eyes and bodies that are rearranged in ways that don't make any sense.
Alien minds that are truly alien, with feelings and motivations that are unknowable to humans.
Like ants trying to comprehend a human mind.
It's the corruption of nature.
The horror of the unknown.
The collapse of sanity and reason.
Looking into the void and the inability to handle when the void looks back.
Pretenders in roughly human skin walking among us.
The failure to grapple with scale.
Especially infinity and eternity.
Whispers in your brain gnawing at your mind.
Things in the corners of your eye.
The unknowable and indescribable in the most terrifying ways possible.
The danger of knowledge.
Researching things that you shouldn't research.
The more you know, the more you know you shouldn't, and wish you didn't.
Literal dangerous knowledge.
Where the knowledge itself is a hazard.
HP Lovecraft sort of made it his mission to make horror out of the indescribable.
He basically tried to make stories about all of the things that you really can't put into words normally.
And that makes them also really hard to film.
It's hard to film things that defy human understanding.
It's sort of the more abstract the medium that we use to tell the story, the better the story is told.
Once you start trying to actually visually depict it you bump up against the fundamental challenge of overcoming the base premise of being indescribable and don't knowable and brain melting.
You can't really pull those things off completely in a movie.
All you can really do is your best attempt at approximating what an impossible color looks like.
Annihilation is a fantastic movie, and it's another version of The Color Out Of Space
The Thing is basically a version of At The Mountains Of Madness.
Then there's Reanimator.
As you said, The Blob pretty much fits into the Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror genre.
Event Horizon falls into a Lovecraftian area.
Yess.!! I lovee this movie.! It's absolutely insane in the best way.! haha. Wicked video. 💋
Con Air is my fave Nic Cage movie. If you want another Lovecraft movie check out John Carpenters' In The Mouth of Madness.
It's a bit similar to Annihilation. Or more accurately, Annihilation is similar to this since this was first (the original story).
Thanks for the video!!
See you later!!
Stay safe.😊
Happy 30th Anniversary to JURASSIC PARK
Nah, boys. I give this an easy 7.5 - not a great film - but you WILL remember this fondly. This one falls into the "good" category of Nic Cage's bankruptcy films. The ridiculous burst of B-movies he made to recover financially. I love it.
Lovecraft is one of the hardest to adapt because, we need to understand and give explanations to elements of a story. Lovecraft believed that there's thing that can't be measured by human comprehension. Cthulhu for example, he is NOT a God but a Priest for a outer God. Or the idea of Azathoth the blind idiot God that lies sleep in the cosmos, once he wakes up, reality will cease to be, for reality of his dream and we are part of his dream. And what we dream is Reality
Shaun, were you trying to say stream of consciousness?
Please oh please watch Mandy - if you’re looking for a mad Nick Cage movie, it’s a fever dream all the way through
There was a very loose adaptation of the story in 1965, Die Monster, Die with Boris Karloff.
Nic cage, there is no better man. Loved this movie