Cthulhu Cthursday: Stuart Gordon’s Dagon
Posted by Annalee Newitz
You’re a Cthulhu connoisseur. You’re not interested in cute plushies or role-playing games. You want hot babes with tentacles, coupled with face-skinning, flesh-burning, and priests with webbed hands who worship spiny, phallic objects from the sea. That’s why you must rent Dagon (2001), directed by the brilliant Stuart Gordon, who has made an entire career out of filming adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft stories. Unlike Stuart’s ground-breaking 80s flicks Re-Animator and From Beyond, which stray quite far from their source materials, Dagon stays true to
Lovecraft classic “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” about a small fishing village whose inhabitants consort with the Spawn of Cthulhu in order to improve their catches. And by “consort,” I mean full frontal tentacle – there’s even a Cthulhu Spawn-human sex scene in the flick which involves squirts of black goo and arm-severing.
Very few movies capture the profound pulpiness that pushed Lovecraft’s writing from being mere atmospheric Gothic trash into sublime, psycho-sexual narrative frenzy. But Dagon does. From its menacing fish-frog people, to the erotic/disgusting special effects and campy acting from lead Ezra Godden, who looks and behaves almost exactly like Brad from Rocky Horror Picture Show, this movie delivers the kind of scab-picking, tweaker brooding you expect from a good tale of Cthulhu’s spawn.
Plus, oh wonder of wonders! Not only do the villagers in Dagon chant Cthulhu’s prayer in their church (complete with many cries of Ia! Ia!), but there is actually a spooky soundtrack with the same prayer being
chanted over and over. I practically ripped my girlfriend’s arm off with glee when I heard it. I had actually never heard the words “Cthulhu fhtagn!” spoken out loud, and it was a beautiful moment.
What also appeals about this film, aside from its superficial charms, is director Gordon’s representation of the lure of Cthulhu’s spawn. Most mainstream directors would end the movie by blowing up the town, or finding some dumb “cure” that restores all the semi-Cthulu people to full human stature. Instead, the lead character goes through the same weird self-discovery as the narrator of “Shadow over Innsmouth,” finding out that there’s a reason why his mother fled her tiny hometown and never looked back – and that there’s also a reason why he’s been dreaming of a gorgeous, tentacled princess under the sea his whole life.
In short, Dagon has everything: cheesy, gratuitous, grossout sex; emo monsters; and a unexpected, subversive sense of awe for dead Cthulhu, who waits dreaming under the sea, “amidst glory and wonder forever.”
 Before those bastards at Wired circumcised her from the harem, Annalee Newitz was one of our adorable sisters at Table of Malcontents, and will always have an undying place in our hearts for introducing us to our obsessions with vagina dentatas. In addition to being just dollsome, Annalee has a blog at Techsploitation and a weekly column on Alternet. Ectomo loves her. |
Categories: Cephalophilia, Cthulhu, Cthulhu Cthursday, Film, Freaks, Horror, Lovecraft, Monsters, Tentacles
Posted at 11:43 am on July 19, 2007
8 Comments -
Huzzah! It would definitely be nice to see Annalee (and Lisa!) show up here on occasion.
Comment by chesh — July 19, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
My wife and I saw this movie on Sci-fi channel. We were completely expecting it to be a crappy movie and were pleasantly surprised to find it to be a funny creepy movie. It may be my favorite lovecraft movie to date.
Comment by Shon — July 19, 2007 @ 1:25 pm
I think any review of Dagon is incomplete without at least one paragraph fawning over the icredibly gorgeous Macarena Gomez in the role of Uxia, the squid princess.
Comment by Eliza Gauger — July 19, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
Beyond any shadow of a doubt, this movie is THE WORST Lovecraft adapation I have ever seen–and should I ever meet Stuart Gordon at a horror-con anytime soon, I’m going to knock his teeth down his throat for what he did to this film.
There isn’t a single redeeming quality to this film–well…no, that’s not true: Macarena Gomez’s boobies and tentacular limbs are actually a plus; I could watch that scene a thousand times on loop and never grow tired of it. But the rest of the film would’ve had Grandpa Theobald spitting nails at the awful acting (the lead character was so abysmally annoying I was praying to any and all Other Gods that something would eat him), laughing snidely at the absolute lack of atmosphere and suspense, and sneering at the subpar makeup effects.
There are but two films I know of that capture the essence of Lovecraft’s fiction perfectly. Neither are based explicitly on any of the Old Gentleman’s texts, but both are by John Carpenter: The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness. The latter is far from a perfect film, but along with The Thing it manages to be the best possible depiction of Lovecraftian horrors I’ve ever seen.
Comment by Derek C. F. Pegritz — July 19, 2007 @ 5:25 pm
I’m waiting for Mr. Gordon to combine his Lovecraft movies with his Robot Jox movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUxDmKFCD2o
Comment by Rikki Simons — July 19, 2007 @ 9:53 pm
Have you seen The Dunwich Horror? I wanted to be a tentacled beast so I could kill the horrible 60′s drug scenes. It was painful. At least this movie wasn’t brightly lit.
Comment by Jen Larkin — July 19, 2007 @ 11:58 pm
I find it astonishing that nobody has noted the “MISKATONIC” sweater that the protagonist is wearing throughout the film. Made my day.
Comment by Andreas — July 26, 2007 @ 8:25 am
I’ll admit, it was a pretty good movie, although I was praying to Father Dagon and Mother Hydra at the end for the protagoist to die painfully, as he can’t bloody act (he gets the hottest girl instead; how’s that for fair?) or emote.
But, no review can possibly be a review without mentioning the stupendous (and hot, and vulnerable, and psychotic) Uxia Cambarro, High Priestess of Dagon. Cute, evil… so hot the tentacles aren’t a turn-off. Man, talk about her!
Comment by Kieranfoy — February 5, 2009 @ 7:39 pm