H.P. Lovecraft, one of the most innovative writers of horror fiction in the twentieth century, had his birthday yesterday. While I’m not among the poseurs who go down to his grave or anything, I do like the guy’s stuff. It’s pulpy and it’s purple, but the ideas that course through it have made their way into popular culture and stayed there for a reason.

All of which raises the question of why the hell the guy can’t get a break on the silver screen.

There have been a handful of good Lovecraft movies that are faithful to his work; The Resurrected is a neat adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and Stuart Gordon has made both Dreams in the Witch House and Dagon.

But overall, Lovecraft has not been treated well by the cinema. I took a look back to figure out why.



Lovecraft Doesn’t Really Write Hollywood-Friendly Protagonists

Your average Hollywood hero is strong, noble, healthy, and thinks reading is for lesser men. Your average Lovecraft protagonist is a sickly intellectual who’s scared out of his mind most of the time and is going to die or go insane. A lot of Lovecraft adaptations fail right out of the gate because they make the hero somebody who can handle the events unfolding and not some poor bastard well out of his depth.

To Do It Properly Would Be Expensive

It’s worth remembering that for Hollywood, horror movies are cheap little things you turn out because if you invest $10 million in one, it’ll make $20 million at the box office, $40 million on home video, and then you can package the crap out of it forever.