HIPPY TRIPPY SUMMER X THE CUBE OF WYRDING PRESENTS:
THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970)
{ groovy, grotesque and gloriously gonzo 'cosmic horror' from the SUMMER OF LOVEcraft }

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The devil's spawn is about to open the gates of hell.

It's like a dream that you're walking through… a psychedelic journey featuring blue skies, random heart beats, wind rippling across a pond, the rustling of disturbed branches, and aerial shots of beaches… a journey through old, gothic houses with wood paneling and girls in headscarves and tan peacoats... baby blues, lavenders, clementine oranges and bright reds brighten the landscape, as you go from golden statue to flower bell lamp to a red carpet beneath your feet... to the fog that lies thick along the coastline... to a sinister sacrificial altar standing amidst a tumulus of ancient bones within a gaunt circle of stones glimpsed against the sky on some mountain-top... to the red-rimmed, sucking maw of some gigantic, foul-smelling, and alien monstrosity.

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Riding high on his successful adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe, the infamous 'King Of Exploitation', Roger Corman, took on that other titan of literary terror, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, in The Dunwich Horror, a tense, atmospheric, slow-burn, low-budget B-feature that melds acerbic Lovecraftian horror with a generous dose of late-60s hallucinatory freak-out psychedelia into a groovy occult trip.

Made at the apex of the love generation and transplanted from Lovecraft Country (New England) to hip and cool Californ-I-A, The Dunwich Horror is exquisitely divisive. It is either considered a pioneering minor cult classic, underrated and flawed but still one of the more successful Lovecraft 'weird fiction' adaptations committed to film, or a piece of distinctively cheesy high camp oozing the gaudy style of an early-1960s Hammer Horror film with a splash of the simmering unease of Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (the prior year's horror sensation).

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The charismatic and soft-spoken, but deeply unsettling Wilbur Whateley (a dandyish, poodle-haired and improbably pornstached Dean Stockwell *, channelling Aleister Crowley), reputed to be of unnatural parentage and an aspiring magus of a forbidden cult, travels from the degenerate coastal backwater of Dunwich to the library of the prestigious Miskatonic University in Arkham in a quest to access the esoteric knowledge contained within the Necronomicon, a rare occult grimoire of great antiquity (a creation that has been used several times in popular culture - including Sam Raimi's Evil Dead Trilogy, 1981-1992).

Naive graduate student Nancy Wagner (top-billed '50s teenybopper starlet Sandra Dee and her huge helmet of blond hair †) unwittingly falls under his malign influence and is groomed to be sacrificed in a wild orgiastic fertility ritual in order to effect the release of the eldritch 'Old Ones', cosmic creatures beyond conception, trapped between the dimensions, yearning to break free once more, annihilate the entire human race and drag the earth off to some nameless place for some nameless purpose.

'The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.'

Professor Of Occult Studies, Henry Armitage (Oscar-winning actor Ed Begley ‡, whose eyebrows alone are worth the price of admission), armed with a few incantations and a lot of desperate hope, refuses to accede to Whateley's malevolent intentions and races to annul the apocalyptic ceremony.

And behind the locked door of the room at the top of the stairs of the (very Mario Bava-esque) gothic ancestral home, something otherworldly and monstrous blackly unwinds itself and stirs.

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'A truly engrossing film of the supernatural that has been made with sensitivity and skill.'
Los Angeles Times

'A good old-fashioned B-horror film.'
Syracuse The Post-Standard

'Yeah, I have no idea what I just sat through; that was bloody odd!'
Helen_S

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CONTENT WARNING: please note, this film contains some scenes with outdated attitudes and cultural depictions.

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Many horror and film historians consider The Dunwich Horror to be one of the most faithful adaptations of any of H.P. Lovecraft's material. It feels akin to Stuart Gordon's adaptations (Re-Animator, 1985; From Beyond, 1986): reverent and the work of a fan.

A masterclass on how to create a creepy and uncompromisingly hallucinogenic atmosphere with practically no budget, there's not a huge amount of plot, as such, just an intensifying sense of dread, an evocative aura of foreboding that aims to disorient and discomfort you as you watch.

Deep character work isn't exactly the order of the day, but Dean Stockwell and Sandra Dee give effective low-key performances that contribute to the eerie tone. Stockwell, a Lovecraft fan, holds his performance barely above a whisper, a deliberately studied monotone that achieves a mesmerising power that captures attention throughout. You can see why David Lynch would have been enamoured with him for his outings in Blue Velvet (1986) and Dune (1984). Sandra Dee's character is entirely a fabrication of the screenwriters; Lovecraft, with his pathological fear of women, never had a love interest in the original story, but it was perhaps an inevitable requisite to make the film more watchable to 1970s audiences. Lovecraft would have hated it.

There are many things to enjoy here, not least the keenly off-kilter visual aesthetic - disorienting and mesmerising in equal measure - with moments of classic psychedelic cutting and perception-warping solarised effects; ultra-stylish direction; wild camera movements; manipulations of point-of-view (very Evil Dead, an influence perhaps on a young Sam Raimi?); a deliberate embrace of hint and suggestion of the monstrous, rather than a direct showing; genuinely mystifying and unsettling details §; odd humor, some inadvertent - it's a film with a fair few ludicrously funny bits, yet something endearing in how unashamedly earnestly it's played straight, not for laughs; impressive locations and sumptuous and super brightly coloured sets and art direction - a look far richer than such a budget would normally allow; bold, deviously playful, pop-art animated opening title sequence; evocative, sinister, theremin-heavy pysch-rock soundtrack, a mixture of classic horror scoring and '70s cool; one of the most iconic/bonkers movie posters of the '70s; and some fine performances from a committed cast (veteran character-actor Sam Jaffe, having a lot of fun as the appropriately mangy and deranged grandfather, Old Whateley; Talia Coppola, later Shire, of Rocky and The Godfather Part II fame, in one of her first film roles as an ill-fated nurse; and A Bucket Of Blood's Barboura Morris). All work together to create a surprisingly winning and entertaining horror film.

Directed by Daniel Haller (Buck Rodgers In The 25th Century), a very fine production designer of numerous Corman classics, this was the first screenwriting credit for Curtis Hanson, who would later direct the multi-Academy Award-winning L.A. Confidential and 8 Mile.

The film drew some controversy as teen heartthrob Sandra Dee ('Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee'), the eternal virgin in beach party and biker flicks, tried to shed her wholesome family-friendly Gidget (1959) 'Good Girl' image and move on to more adult-themed fare, with some provocative sexuality and fleeting nudity ('Gidget Goes To Hell').

It might not be a lost genre-defining masterpiece, but whether as a deeply odd curio period piece of psychedelic gonzo cinema and/or as an audacious and admirably out-there attempt at 'cosmic horror', The Dunwich Horror, above all else, is fun to watch - preposterous, not to say profoundly mad, but a hell of a lot of fun. Either you are one of the devoted or you're not; you won't know what camp you're in until you see it.

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* looking more '70s than it could be thought humanly possible and reminiscent of Richard Ayoade in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004).

† in her first and final adult film role as her acting career waned and her personal life became increasingly troubled.

‡ in his final screen role before passing away shortly after.

§ the movie gets points for such arcana as the whippoorwills piping daemoniacally in the glen; birds that flock by night to catch the souls of the newly departed.

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H.P. Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1890. He was self-educated and lived in his birthplace all his life, working as a freelance writer, journalist, and ghostwriter. His best work - including some sixty or so short stories - was published from 1923 onwards in the pulp magazine Weird Tales. He died in 1937, in poverty and virtually unknown; today he is recognised as one of the great masters of supernatural fiction, the dark father of modern horror with a unique, singular vision. His personal reputation, however, is tainted by his infamous bigotry and bountiful prejudice and misogyny.