Up From the Depths

This video is the perfect way to highlight one of Andrea Bonazzi's Mythos bas-reliefs.   He's been producing amazing artwork for decades.  

 

Arkham Lost and Found

Ephemeral Rift's latest ASMR video features a visit to the Arkham Lost and Found antique shop. A familiar bit of cultist paraphernalia makes an appearance right at the end.


While ASMR videos are eminently mockable, in most cases veering between incomprehensible muttering and cam girl boob fests, I really enjoy narrative roleplays like this.  The best are a mix of dramatic monologue and improvisational theater.  Within that realm Ephemeral Rift is a standout, with a bizarre internal mythology that embraces all sorts of high weirdness.  His Deep One Dave videos are genuinely funny Mythos comedy, a rare thing indeed.

The Last Lovecraft: The Relic of Cthulhu

This week marked the debut of a new Lovecraftian horror/comedy at the Slamdance film festival- "The Last Lovecraft: The Relic of Cthulhu". Bloody Disgusting is giving it some positive coverage and offers up this plot summary:

In the film Jeff, a down on his luck office worker, finds out he is the last living relative of horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft. What he doesn't know is that Lovecraft's monsters are real and will soon threaten the very existence of mankind. Jeff and his best friend Charlie are forced to embark on a perilous adventure and they enlist the help of high school acquaintance, Paul, a self proclaimed Lovecraft specialist. Together the three unlikely heroes must protect an alien relic and prevent the release of an acient evil, known as Cthulhu.

They also have an exclusive look at the film's trailer:



Given that this was produced on a shoestring budget I think it looks pretty good. Is it high art? No freakin' way, but it seems like a fun project with the same kind of manic energy and goofy logic as the "Evil Dead" films. It also has some nice prop designs, in particular the "Relic of Cthulhu" itself. I wouldn't mind picking up one of these if they were commercially available:





The seal from the end of the trailer also looks interesting:



It's similar to a couple of existing designs, but the way the pieces slide together to form the final embossment is clever.

Weekend Matinee

This is what it's going to be like when the Shoggoths rise up again.

Found Footage: Amundsen and "At the Mountains of Madness"

One of the things I enjoy about Lovecraft's work is the way it relates to actual historical events. Lovecraft wasn't shy about acknowledging the things that inspired him, and things as diverse as the exploration of Angkor Wat and Ponape to the theories of Albert Einstein influenced his writing. The way he incorporates fragments of the real world into his stories helps make the fantastic more believable even today.

In the case of "At the Mountains of Madness" he used contemporary accounts of Arctic and Antarctic exploration to help fill in the details of the ill-fated Miskatonic expedition. In particular, Roald Amundsen's unsuccessful attempt to be the first to fly to the North Pole in 1925. ATMOM is filled with details drawn from the flight, from the way fuel was cached to the use of Dornier Wal's as the party's aircraft of choice.

To an extent, I'm following in Lovecraft's footsteps with my own "From the Mountains of Madness" project. Accounts of the Amundsen expedition have been a valuable source for photographs, text, and documents in my attempt to recreate the historical record of the Miskatonic expedition to the Antarctic. That's why I was excited to discover that someone has uploaded video transfers of the old Pathe newsreels of the Amundsen adventure to YouTube.

The quality isn't the best, but what can you expect from film that was shot over eighty years ago?

Revised "At the Mountains of Madness" Trailer Revised Again

Happy New Year! I did indeed finish the lightbox, but I have to pick up some more lights this afternoon. In the meantime I finally added annotations detailing the source material in my fan trailer for a "At the Mountains of Madness" movie on Youtube. Click on through to watch the high-res version, or you can watch the low-res video here.

Call of Cthulhu Nazi Reanimation Project Footage

This is a compilation of film clips seized by Allied forces near the end of World War II at a Nazi research facility.

Most of the footage was damaged beyond repair, but the film that was salvaged offers conclusive proof that the Nazi reanimation project had progressed to the point of human trials before it was shut down.

Technical Note: This is extremely poor quality footage. The original negative appears to have suffered from extensive physical abuse and may have been irradiated at one point. The clips are presented without audio.



Over the last couple of weeks I've been experimenting with "props" that consist of video clips edited together from found footage. It seems like a natural technological progression from CoC's traditional paper props, particularly if you're running a Delta Green game. The main DG book makes passing mention of a semi-successful Nazi program to reanimate the dead, but I think that idea has a lot more gaming potential than that brief note would indicate. Video games and low-budget movies have helped make Nazi zombies a suprisingly popular meme that I think it would be interesting to develop.