Review: The Dunwich Horror (1970)
Has any H.P. Lovecraft story ever been successfully adapted into a feature film? It must be quite a challenge; after all, Lovecraft traded in short stories, so any full-length movie is required to do the unthinkable by adding to the author's original structure and narrative--which is an ill-advised proposition. Also, because Lovecraft's stories frequently dealt with cosmic or inter-dimensional beings that primarily work best in the theater of the mind, trying to bring creatures like Cthulu or Yog-Sothoth to visual life can be unconvincing at best, outright comical (as seen here) at worst. 1970's The Dunwich Horror makes a noble effort. In fact, I really like this movie, despite realizing that it isn't very good. The first major stumble stems from the fact that it isn't really much of an adaptation of Lovecraft's original 1928 short story, originally published in Weird Tales and anthologized endlessly in the near-hundred years since. Instead, the movie is fi...
