Andrew Migliore and John Strysik’s Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft is a love letter, not only to the gothic American writer, but to those who have likewise took the time to puzzle their way through Lovecraft’s mythos, adapting his tales to the big (and small) screen. Having spent countless hours on both sides of the fence as an avid reader of the writer and a connoisseur of horror films, I find Lovecraft’s snail-paced rise to critical recognition, when cast alongside his acclaimed peer during the period, William Faulkner, ironic in that there are poignant similarities between the scope and range of the works of the Rhode Island writer and the Southern scribe, yet Migliore and Strysik’s work is the first of its kind in Lovecraft scholarship, though there have been numerous texts focusing upon the cinematic adaptations of Faulkner’s works even though, to date, the gothic author’s pen has been the catalyst for roughly three times as many films as that of his famed American cohort.
Both writers create an expansive, intricate mythology which spans the entirety of their fiction, which takes place in a small fictionalized locale–replete with glorious local color and time signatures–that is so succinctly drawn, one can chart their narratives on a map. However, do to various factors, academia was initially reluctant to trudge through the Nobel Prize-winning Southern writer’s works, only later to praise him for his convoluted narratives. Yet, for decades, the intellectual community insisted upon maintaining a comfortable distance with the New England writer, often using the term “pulp” within its alibi for having avoided the macabre tales. However, as is oftentimes the reason horror cinema is viewed as the bastard child of the medium, the subject matter–however ironic, paradoxical, and hypocritical it may be coming from the higher echelons of scholarship in all their prided objectivity–is the unspoken impetus for said critical neglect, as the nay-sayers use Poe and Mary Shelley as their token representatives of the genre.
Fortunately, with the publication of Library of America’s compendium of the Lovecraft’s short fiction, simply titled Tales, and Migliore and Strysik’s study, the writer seems have begun to receive his much belated due as a serious artist of highly critical acumen.
The work opens with an introduction by the authors before a segue is made by way of a preface by S. T. Joshi, the world’s foremost Lovecraft scholar who, ever so modestly, outlines the gothic writer’s distain for the medium of film. As we move to the text proper, we are greeted with overviews of the various cinematic Lovecraft interpretations, in both strict adaptive form as well as by way of mere influence, via feature length films, television productions, and short films.
Considering the breadth of the Rhode Island writer’s canon, the text serves as an invaluable reference for the inevitable dissertations which have already begun appearing upon the writer’s work and influence. Yet, from a less lofty perspective, Lurker in the Lobby saves the Lovecraft or horror aficionado countless hours in painstaking research as well as money (natch–many “Lovecraftian” films are out of print) as each overview earnestly delineates whether the work in question is worthy of the connoisseur’s time and hard-earned cash.
Though meticulous in its research, the work does suffer though in two directions in particular: One, due to the sheer number of films the authors are attempting to address, they leave little room for weighty analysis as each segment ever-so-briefly outlines how a particular work can be viewed as Lovecraftian. Of course, a handful of arguments will undoubtedly ensue as to just how much a particular work can legitimately be considered “Lovecraftian,” just as some will unhesitatingly complain that that such-and-such a film was unjustly omitted from the list, but this is by no means the work’s agenda, as the authors humbly admit in their preface. By in large, few of the adaptations which are cited will cause much chagrin on the reader’s behalf in this respect and, as for the latter grievance, well, one can only humbly accept the fact that his or her name isn’t listed on the text’s spine. Secondly, there is an express bias toward the films of Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna productions due to the fact that Strysik is in close cahoots with the famed Lovecraft team, Gordon having producing the co-author’s script for Deathbed.
To compensate for the brevity of the films’ analyses, the authors aptly supplement by way of including a very thorough series of interviews with most every key player in Lovecraft cinema. In many respects, what one will read about the films in the first portion of the work will be old hand, yet what is disclosed within the interviews sheds revelatory light in many respects upon the genesis and creation of the films (even works-in-progress, such as the much-anticipated adaptation of “In the Mountains of Madness” by Guillermo del Toro). As a feather in the authors’ caps, they also include an art gallery as well.
Overall, both the horror fan of Lovecraftian cinema and the bibliophile of the writer’s works would be well advised to purchase Andrew Migliore and John Strysik’s Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft for it serves as a staple text for both parties. Even with the aforementioned faux pas in mind, what the work offers far outweighs its deficits. Obviously a charter effort in an area which has been profanely neglected, the work will nonetheless, if not itself in future editions, serve as a catalyst for other studies which will expand Lovecraftian scholarship even further which, as with William Faulkner’s works, houses the capacity to sustain seemingly countless examinations long before the writer is granted his due turn as a master of the written page.
– Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with Director David DeFalco (Chaos) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Nathan Baesel (Behind the Mask: ROLV) - January 22, 2015
- An Interview with Bentley Little - January 22, 2015
- So You Want to Be a Movie Critic, Heh? - January 22, 2015
- Fearful Meditations: An Annotated Bibliography of Studies in Horror Cinema - January 22, 2015
- I Can’t Discuss Glen Morgan’s New Film, [Censored] [Censored], Because Liberty Counsel Says It’s Rude: Race, Religious Tolerance, Ethics, and Aesthetics and the 21st Century Holiday Horror Film - January 22, 2015
- Roger Ebert’s Bloody Ax: An Examination of the Film Critic’s Elitist Dismissal of the Horror Film by Michael “Egregious” Gurnow - January 22, 2015
- Defending the King: An Examination of Academia’s Reaction to Stephen King Being Awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters - January 22, 2015
- Zarathustra . . . Cthulhu . Meursault: Existential Futility in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” - January 22, 2015
- The Evil - January 18, 2015
