“A Talking H.P. Lovecraft Picture Thrill!”

Directed by Sean Branney

Starring Matt Foyer, Barry Lynch and Andrew Leman

The Story

Written in 1930 and published in 1931, “The Whisperer in Darkness” tells the tale of Albert Wilmarth, a professor at good ol’ Miskatonic University who is initially skeptical of claims that alien beings inhabit remote Vermont hills. He gets into correspondence with a farmer, Henry Akeley, who claims to have proof. The evidence becomes more and more convincing — but suddenly, Akeley tells Wilmarth that he got it all wrong and invites him to visit him in Vermont. And don’t forget to bring all the evidence! It’s a trap, from which Wilmarth barely escapes, but the real centre of the story is the scene where Wilmarth sits in a darkened room, talking to Akeley and gradually starting to realise that all is not as it seems.

The film

The HPLHS’s previous project, The Call of Cthulhu, was a very story-accurate adaptation of the tale into a silent film. Here, they’ve tried to turn the story into something more like a Universal film of the 1930s, which means adding quite a lot of new material. There’s a debate with Charles Fort (Leman) at the beginning and a long, slam-bang action sequence at the end, together with the setup of a group of … well, of Call of Cthulhu investigators that never really goes anywhere. The aliens themselves are represented by some pretty ropey effects, and you can see how much the earlier film benefited from its intentionally stylised look.

Continue reading The Summer of Lovecraft: The Whisperer in Darkness (2011) →