Even though I'm pretty sure the decision was motivated by B-movie making logic, the best thing that Stuart Gordon ever did for H. P. Lovecraft was move the setting to a Spanish coastal town, and rejiggering the story so that Gordon's version of Innsmouth, the creepy village of Imboca, is effectively alien to two cultures at once. Both the pasty American husband, Paul, and his sophisticated and urban Spanish wife, Barbara, are unable to deal with the weirdness of this very alien place. It's already not home to Paul, who clearly feels a little guilty (as do many second-generation immigrants in the U.S., including Frisk and myself) that he never learned anything about his Spanish heritage from his mother. But it's even alien to Barbara, who ought to be more at home in Imboca, and that more than doubles the horror. And when you find out that Spanish acting legend Francisco Rabal is reduced to huddling in crawlspaces? Nasty.

I suspect that H. P. Lovecraft, thanks to the racism that underscores his weird writings, is probably best adapted indirectly, in Dagon fashion. Gordon's decision to make Paul Marsh a second-generation Spanish immigrant was brilliant. It grounds the horror of Gordon's Dagon in something far more human and understandable than the prissy fears of the typical Lovecraft protagonist. ("You mean I'm NOT an 18th colonial squire??" faints) It also lends genuine emotional weight to the final reunion between father and son. Imagine being called by your original name for the first time in your life since...before you can remember.

Also this is one of the best looking cheap films I've ever seen. There's a few loosey-goosey process shots but otherwise the production feels really professional and solid to me.

~Chara of Pnictogen

has anyone developed a device that turns a patch of human skin into a vibrating element for emitting sound, like a speaker? ~Chara

...that sounds both eminently plausible, and positively dreadful.

imagine tiny creatures or nanobots or whatever somehow...getting hold of your eardrum.

aaaaaa wtf the Universe is HORRIFYING why are such things possible ~Chara

only half?

well...does the percentage fluctuate at least?! c'mon, Brian, throw me a bone here!

~Chara

I have an uncomfortable relationship with the David Cronenberg film Videodrome, which is one of those movies that (like Taxi Driver or Rear Window) feels like a warning: "Don't let this happen to you!" But I feel as though I really have been through the Max Renn experience. I really used to LIKE James Woods! You know that? I liked his sardonic edge and maybe even mimicked it a bit, subconsciously. But when an actor is always at their most convincing when they're playing utter scumbags...it's not a great sign.

I rather hope that I'm not quite as scummy as Max Renn, but I feel like, too, got drawn (partly through the allure of kinky sex and psychotronic entertainment) into a strange new world that I'm still having trouble with. Except it wasn't television or videotape that drew me in...not exactly, even though these things are involved. Instead, I played too many of the wrong video games!

Max Renn accidentally reminds me of another Max I know, and that's Max Payne. He too gets drawn into a strange liminal dimension between comic books and video games and movies and other forms of entertainment. There's one striking difference, though: Max Payne gets a lot of backstory, whereas Max Renn gets zero backstory. The movie begins in much the same way as Disco Elysium, with a protagonist who might as well have been dropped into the beginning of the movie isekai style. A patient outside voice needs to tell Max what to do—haven't we all been there? er, not all—and where to go and who he is, practically. Before that point in time we know basically nothing about Max Renn. James Woods's strength as a character actor is such that Max Renn doesn't need a backstory. This is why B-movies love intense actors: you can believe they have a backstory just by looking and listening.

~Chara of Pnictogen