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Call of Cthulhu Available on DVD

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sun Oct 02, 2005 04:04 PM
from the say-is-that-a-tentacle dept.
Media Movies Entertainment
An anonymous reader writes "The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society is finally finished with the ultimate labor of mythos-love. The Call of Cthulhu is now available on DVD! For those not familiar with the long-awaited project, The Call of Cthulhu is a silent film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's famous literary masterpiece of the same name. It really looks like something that would have been shot in the 1920's silent film era. I, for one, welcome our new multi-tentacled, aquatic, ancient overlord. Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn."
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  • warning (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cow_licker (172474) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:06PM (#13700101)
    I ordered it the other day and got the testimonial of randolph carter as well (based on my favorite lovecraft story). and this is the message I got back.

    Thanks for your order; your DVDs will ship the end of the week via US
    Airmail. Be forewarned, the quality of The Call of Cthulhu is WAY better
    than Randolph Carter. TTORC was shot on VHS tape and suffers from poor sound
    and image quality. It's watchable but I wanted to give you fair warning.

    Sean

    I have no problem with that. But thought I would share.

  • speaking of which (Score:5, Funny)

    by porky_pig_jr (129948) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:07PM (#13700103)
    isn't Chtulhu a father of Flying Spaghetti Monster?

  • R'lyeh (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It had better feature non-euclidean geometry.
    • Actually, it does. The producers deliberately built a lifesize model of that part of R'lyeh that included the angle that looked obtuse but was actually acute, or whatever, and had it swallow one of the actors.

  • Server slow: see below (Score:5, Informative)

    by Winckle (870180) <mwinckle@nOsPAM.gmail.com> on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:11PM (#13700120) Homepage
    Coralized links

    http://www.cthulhulives.org.nyud.net:8090/store/st ore.lasso?1=product&2=8 [nyud.net]
    http://www.cthulhulives.org.nyud.net:8090/toc.html [nyud.net]

    These links do not go over standard port 80 and so may not work behind company firewalls

  • Famous Last Words (Score:5, Funny)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:11PM (#13700122) Homepage Journal
    A silent feature of Cthulhu released on the heels of photographs of a live battling giant squid. Isn't it better to leave dreaming leviathans lie?

  • Silent Film Eh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kawahee (901497) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:11PM (#13700124) Homepage Journal
    It's been a while since I've seen a silent film. I don't think too many have been made since we've had the technology to have audio in films. Does anybody know of any?

    At least this means that the movie can be multilingual with few problems.
    • Modern Times, starring Charlie Chaplin. The mechanical salesman has audio, the rest is a normal silent film (IIRC). Last one, AFAIK.

      http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027977/ [imdb.com]

    • Re:Silent Film Eh? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hmm, come to think of it, porn does a pretty good job of being multi-lingual too.

    • Re:Silent Film Eh? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by HermanAB (661181) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:19PM (#13700161)
      Actually, it is amazing how much better some movies are if you press the mute button...

    • Re:Silent Film Eh? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, how about Mel Brook's "Silent Movie" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075222/ [imdb.com]
    • Mel Brooks' Silent Movie is, as the title suggests. Except for that one line spoken by a mime...

    • Re:Silent Film Eh? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by nunchux (869574) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:30PM (#13700220)
      There's a great silent theater on Fairfax in L.A. (I think it's still around, though I haven't paid attention for a few years) that shows old films, complete with live piano accompaniment. I think the Turner Classics channel also shows them occasionaly.

      As for recent silent films-- there are plenty, but most are made by film students and obscure artistes. The "e" was intentional. It's a lost art, but like making a black and white movie today it's a conceit, so if you're doing it you better have a good reason and do it well... Most films of the silent era would have used sound if they could. It would be fun to see a major or large independant studio make one-- it really is a different kind of filmmaking, and works well with creepy horror and broad physical comedy-- but it's not likely to happen, since most moviegoers would avoid silent films like the plague. Also, they don't tend to play well on TV, it's harder for a silent film to hold your interest on the small screen... You really need to be in a theater.

      • There's a great silent theater on Fairfax in L.A. (I think it's still around, though I haven't paid attention for a few years) that shows old films, complete with live piano accompaniment.

        It's still there, but struggling. The accompaniments aren't always just piano; a couple of years ago I saw a live performance there of an original rock orchestration for Metropolis that was friggin' amazing.

        The venue is also notable for being the site (about 10 years ago, IIRC) of a murder worthy of a second-rate detectiv

    • Re:Silent Film Eh? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Daverd (641119) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:51PM (#13700325) Homepage
      Although not a "silent film" per se, an interesting French movie that came out in 2003 is The Triplets of Belleville [imdb.com]. There is a small bit of spoken French scattered throughout the movie, but very little. For the most part you can watch it and fully understand what's going on even if you don't speak French, because they did a very good job of communicating the characters' feelings and other plot elements without the use of words. I'd recommend it to anyone.
    • It's not the technology. Silents really don't play well today; the acting style is so different from what we're used to that modern audiences just don't understand them. I used to go to silent screenings at an old theater near my house, but after suffering through people laughing throughout the entirety of "Phantom Of The Opera", I vowed that I would only watch silents on TV.

      Anyway, I couldn't think of any modern silents other than "Silent Movie," which someone else mentions. There are long stretches of mov

    • Re:Silent Film Eh? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ColaMan (37550) on Sunday October 02 2005, @08:09PM (#13701096) Homepage Journal
      A lot of Rowan Atkinson's work (that is to say, Mr Bean) had no dialogue at all.
      Mind you, any of his live performances (with a lot of dialog) are quite funny (with a fair bit of wit) as well.
      • Set in the Civil War, Keaton is a locomotive engineer too small to make it into the Confederate army, so he helps out any way he can

        A minor correction here: Keaton's character tries to enlist, but as an engineer, he is desperately needed right where he is.

        The movie is based on the Anderson raid, "The Great Locomotive Chase."

  • Cthulhu gets slashdotted ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by icepick72 (834363) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:15PM (#13700139)
    and woken from his slumber as a result. Shit man! A server on fire is one thing, but bringing on the end of the world as we know it ...

  • I, for one.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Black Parrot (19622) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:22PM (#13700177)
    DON'T welcome this particular overlord!

  • Yeah yeah! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Henriok (6762) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:25PM (#13700192)
    I'm really glad to see the correct spelling of "Iä Iä". As a native Swedish speaker I use the "ä" daily as it is a common vowl in Swedish. "Iä" is pronounced quite like an English speaker would pronounce "yeah". I'm not quite sure of how Lovecraft would've pronounced it though.
  • I got all the brushing with Cthulhu I wanted from playing Dungeons and Dragons [wikipedia.org].

  • Original Text (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:42PM (#13700274)
    For those of you who have no idea WTF is this, here's the original text:

    http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Call_of_Cthulhu [wikisource.org]

    and one of my favourites, the Mountains of Madness:

    http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/At_the_Mountains_of_ Madness [wikisource.org]

    In general, wikipedia has lots of material on Lovecraft:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft [wikipedia.org]

  • Fantasic Talents (Score:5, Informative)

    by Quirk (36086) on Sunday October 02 2005, @04:48PM (#13700306) Homepage Journal
    Fantasy, the more lurid the better, ate up great chunks of my childhood. Clark Ashton Smith [oceanstar.com] should be remembered with Lovecraft. C A Smith and Lovecraft [oceanstar.com] had a good friendship. From the above site: "The friendship of Clark Ashton Smith and Howard Phillips Lovecraft began in letters in 1922 and progressed over the years as each became famous to the readers of Weird Tales and other pulps of the 1920s and '30s

    Another great of the field was L. Sprague De Camp [wikipedia.org]

    The Elric Saga [stormbringer.net] by M Moorcock remains my all time favourite.

  • Excellent....*heh, heh, heh* (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nihilist Hippie (905325) on Sunday October 02 2005, @05:01PM (#13700361)
    Now that phase one is complete, we can look at "fixing" the administration;
    http://www.cthulhuforpresident.com/ [cthulhuforpresident.com]

  • Hello Cthulhu (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stormwatch (703920) <rodrigogirao@@@hotmail...com> on Sunday October 02 2005, @05:06PM (#13700385) Homepage
    - Hello Cthulhu [hello-cthulhu.com]
  • Teaser Trailer [cthulhulives.org], but the site is slow. Coral Cache didn't give me the cached version of the trailers and this specific Web page. :(
  • I've read The Call of Cthulhu and a few other Lovecraft stories that I dug up online in the past few years and really liked them. Does anyone have any suggestions for one or two good comprehensive compendiums of his works? The Library of America [amazon.com] book looks pretty good, but I just wanted to see if anyone else had any other suggestions before I order. Thanks for your help!

    "Kill your friends, Light your feet, Do what I want, Lovecraft." -Vaselines

    • Would electronic copies do? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mark_in_Brazil (537925) on Sunday October 02 2005, @07:07PM (#13700844)
      Dos it have to be a print copy?

      If not, try this: The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft [dagonbytes.com], completely free (and legal!) in HTML. His works are available in a few other places online too, like here [wikisource.org] (see the copyright information at the bottom of the page-- most or all of Lovecraft's work is in the public domain), here [noveltynet.org] (complete works, mostly in PDFs-- probably your best source), here [polachek.net] (PDFs of several works), and here [blackmask.com] (a 100-page collection in a few different formats, including PDF and HTML).
      Since most of Lovecraft's work is in the public domain, you can find other sources around the internet.
      If you do want books, please consider buying from Arkham House [arkhamhouse.com], which has done a lot to promote Lovecraft's work, encourage and publish studies of it, and keep the genre alive by publishing the works of other authors. You'll find Lovecraft, S.T. Joshi (the leading Lovecraft scholar), and other authors like August Derleth on the authors page. You may notice on the main page that despite Lovecraft's works being available in the public domain, books of his works are three of the top five sellers at Arkham House.
      Whether you read Lovecraft in electronic format or in bound books, enjoy!

  • Cthulhu on Sunday Morning Cartoons (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nihilist Hippie (905325) on Sunday October 02 2005, @05:42PM (#13700533)
    Lest we forget The Real Ghostbusters? http://archive.ghostbusters.net/episodedetail/rgh/ 28/ [ghostbusters.net]

  • And there's a musical! (Score:4, Funny)

    by alasdair (213627) on Sunday October 02 2005, @08:11PM (#13701104)
    Not sure if they're selling it, but I have the HPLHS cast recording of A SHOGGOTH ON THE ROOF, the brilliant re-writing of A FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, orginally by Bock, Harnick and Stein. The rewrite is by He Who (For Legal Reasons) Must Not Be Named.

    Henry Armitage, opening the show:
    "A Shoggoth on the Roof. Sounds crazy? No, certifiably insane! ... It's not easy having a shapeless, malevolent monster hanging over your head like that, but there it is... A big monster like that, on such a pointy roof, you may how it stays up there? That I can tell you in one word: TENTACLES!"
    Chorus of Old Ones and Townfolk:
    "Tentacles, Tentacles! Tentacles, Tentacles!"

    My favourite is "To Life, to life, I'll bring them! I'll bring all these bodies to life!" It's hilarious if you're into both FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and Cthulu, which is admittedly a select group...

  • For all those Canadians who are care... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Txiasaeia (581598) on Sunday October 02 2005, @08:54PM (#13701231)
    ...I just placed an order for the DVD: they charged me a whopping $1.60 USD for shipping, and they're apparently shipping with USPS. Finally, a US company that not only doesn't want to gouge their Canadian customers, but are actually charging a reasonable price for shipping!

    Bear in mind that the site is still slashdotted, so I'm essentially ordering the DVD sight-unseen, but with the Canadian dollar worth $0.85 of 1 USD, *and* the fact that I'm not supporting the MP** with this purchase, it's worth it already.

  • Is Lovecraft's work Public Domain? (Score:4, Informative)

    by cvd6262 (180823) on Sunday October 02 2005, @10:47PM (#13701614)
    Okay, I'm confused.

    When HP Lovecraft wrote his work, IIRC, copyright was for 14 years, with a possible 14 year extension.

    He died in 1937, meaning all of his work would have been public domain by 1965. Specifcally, The Reanimator in 1922 would have expired in 1950.

    In 1976, the US extended copyright retroactively to the life of the artist plus 50 years. So, Lovecraft's work was then removed from public domain. All of his work would be copyrighted until 1987.

    Then, in 1996 - thanks to Sonny Bono - copyright was again retroactively extended to life + 70 years. So Lovecraft's work is now copyrighted until 2007.

    Even the supposed official HPL site says, "Please note that Lovecraft's fiction is still considered to be under copyright by Arkham House, and any texts presently available on the web without their consent are in violation of that copyright." ( http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/hwr.ht m [hplovecraft.com] )

    So, what's up with that?

    • No. And maybe. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Melllvar (911158) on Monday October 03 2005, @12:02AM (#13701849)
      The Reanimator is definitely in the public domain by now; any creative works produced in the United States with a publication date prior to 1923 is considered to be public domain, no matter what. Reanimator just squeaks in at 1922.

      Anything published after that is iffy -- but could very well be free, depending on how careful Lovecraft or his estate holders were in renewing their copyrights after the initial period was up. This includes Call of Cthulhu, which was written in 1926, and thus I assume published sometime in the late 1920's.

      For much of the 20th-century, initial copyright and renewal [copyright.gov] was for 28 years, by the way, not 14. Later on the renewal period was extended to a whopping 67 years; this includes anything published after 1922 -- which, as I mentioned above, includes a substantial portion (but by no means all) of Lovecraft's work. This doesn't change the fact that it would have to have been renewed in order for Arkham House to claim ownership.

      As for the "death plus 50/70" situation, that was generally only applicable for unpublished works. So if you're digging through some murky basement, and you stumble across a pile of ichor-splattered, hand-scrawled notes of hitherto unknown Lovecraftian ghoulishness, you can publish that in 2007.

      Here's a nice site with a handy-dandy chart [cornell.edu] that can help clear away some of the murk for you.
    • In "H.P. Lovecraft: A Life", Joshi (quite an expert on HPL's stuff) states that he thinks most of it is likely public domain. It comes down to whether or not Derleth renewed the copyrights, and no evidence has been presented that it was done. And the Bono law only retroactively extended copyrights for things that were still copyrighted. Stuff that has lapsed into PD (due to failure to renew back in the 1950s, for example), stays PD.

      But it's interesting that the best answer is a matter of opinion and gu

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