Not an adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Lurking Fear,” but a hybrid pastiche/homage to Lovecraft and Buster Keaton, with a hint of Indiana Jones in a few places

Part 1

Part 2

The Lurking Fear by Eric Koenig [Youtube]

Lovecraft-inspired music is nothing new, and it is usually subtler than this. But there’s clearly some love on display here. You can listen to their similarly-themed “Children of Dagon” at their Myspace. And I really like the revival bit, which works both with the message and the 1930′s HPL at home frame. Though the idea of Howard, having transitioned from his earlier fallen patrician attitudes to his New Deal-era quasi-socialism, listening to a southern fried revival is a little jarring.

On the other hand, while the study is stocked with modern Cthuliana, having a bunch of odd art and idols is not inaccurate in spirit. HPL did indeed collect and enumerate in his letters various artifacts and weird art in his possession, virtually all gifts from more financially stable friends. These items included some sort of two Maya or Mexican “eikons,” an African flint tool, an Egyptian ushabti funerary figure, a carved wooden Balinese monkey sculpture, a Japanese idol, a Chinese vase, and an Asian bird statue carved from black horn that Lovecraft dubbed the “Bird of Space.”

Cockfight Club – H. P. Lovecraft [via Youtube]

Another fine film from Andrew Jones. A solid mix of several varieties of pulp from different eras, blended in a dynamically quirky style. Better if I don’t say more.

Watch it and other films at Mr. Jones’ website .

Andrew Jones
h/t: Yog-Sothoth.com

Two more pieces of Lovecraftian fiction for you this week. This time from well known author Neil Gaiman, so I suspect that you might have already seen them in some form. But if not…

The first story, A Study in Emerald (warning: PDF), is a Hugo Award winning short story from the 2003 anthology Shadows Over Bakerstreet, which feature Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes confronting H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos. This story has also been collected in Neil Gaiman’s short story collection Fragile Things, but is presented online as a faux Victorian era document.

I Cthulhu is something different in approach. This is much earlier story of Neil’s, and is about Cthulhu’s personal history and, er, motivations I guess; it makes the Great Old One seem almost personable. As if Cthulhu had appeared on Parkinson.

Neil Gaiman – Short Stories [Neil Gaiman]

I think it is fair to characterise most Lovecraftian fiction, including a lot of H.P. Lovecraft’s work, as being bloody awful. A collection of often very interesting ideas badly written or poorly executed. (Yes, there is a difference.) Yes, I know that Mr Lovecraft was writing to be paid by the word, but that’s an excuse. I think it is also fair to say that many attempts at writing this form of existential horror try to elicit the horror from trying to describe the indescribable cosmic horrors. Which, well, just doesn’t work after you’ve read a couple of stories about unimaginable terrors. A fact that has been parodied in many places including Discworld and Baby’s First Mythos.

What does work with Lovecraftian fiction is when you take the ideas and form, and then pair them with other unimaginable, but real, horrors. Because then you can start to use these simpler ideas from fiction to analyse and explain something more complex and real. This folks is foundation of all good speculative fiction, and this is something that Charles Stross does really well.
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We are aware that some, perhaps even many, ectomites have not only engaged in the sticky and awkward physical act of love but have gone the distance, so to speak, and reproduced; pushing new, wriggling life into the world. We do not judge. Now that you have a needy tadpole to take care of though there are, apparently, things one must do to ensure good growth and retard cellular breakdown. Fuel helps as does avoiding exposure to corrosive substances. We at ectomo, therefore, suggest that you never, ever touch your child. Better to place the neonate inside an antiseptic environment and insert food through an airlock. You could include a habitrail for exercise.

Should you not have the funds or not care enough about your offspring to keep it hermetically sealed then, at the very least, do something to keep it warm. We suggest this crocheted Cthulhu blanket which not only prepares the child for its inevitable death at the hands of the mighty master of R’lyeh, but also sports a handy pacifier to silence it and, thereby, help it to avoid a fatal shaking.

Scary cute Baby Cuthulu Blankie [Craftster] : Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Bookended by scenes from an episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, entitled “Professor Peabody’s Last Lecture” what follows is madness of the highest order. I can’t really explain what ensues but it involves J-Pop and choreographed dance moves.

Ah, the internet and its wonders.

Apologies to Mr. Lovecraft… [YouTube] : GrimReviews