Snake Head Revisited: The Dunwich Horror

Perhaps it's the aftermath of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival or the fact that I've been feeling the need to extend my reading habits into the horror realm, but I've been really digging on the idea of H.P. Lovecraft lately. I watched Dagon not long ago and mostly dug it. I like the world of tentacled beings he's got going on. I was a little jealous of some volunteers and their ability to easily discuss the man when I really know very little about him aside from film adaptations (which, as I understand it, take many liberties with the original tales).

To be honest, I had my sites set on watching this film long before most of that stuff I mention above. I was sold the minute I saw the poster:

 

There's not a part of that poster that doesn't appeal to me. The copy at the top is pure gold. The film has a surprisingly stocked cast, too. Sandra Dee, Dean Stockwell (who I immediately forgot was in the movie and didn't recognize him at all... it must have been the mustache), Ed Begley, and though she's not credited on the poster, Talia Shire. On top of that, one of the screenwriters is Curtis Hanson (yet another lauded filmmaker who got his start working for Roger Corman for me to be jealous of)!

Sadly, a good pedigree isn't enough to elevate The Dunwich Horror (taken from the Lovecraft story of the same name) much above, "Eh, it's alright." There's a nifty opening credits animation and some cool editing decisions (during the line, "Suppose she goes up there," especially). The first monster attack is trippy and campy and all sorts of fun, but even those get tiresome. The end of the film has some really neat shots of wind blowing across a stream and through the forest. There's definitely stuff to recommend, but as I'm sure you've noticed, none of that has much to do with the story.

Probably the biggest issue is that Anything involving Walter Whateley (Stockwell) is totally unbelievable. I love Dean Stockwell, but whatever direction he was given or decisions he was making were the wrong ones. Are we really supposed to believe Nancy (Sandra Dee) would so willingly go along with this creep? I know... supposedly she's in some sort of Dracula-like trance, but that really seems more like an easy way to get around the fact that she would ever do what he wants. Surely if he has some sort of mind control, he'd use it on the townsfolk so they stopped hassling him. The scene where Nancy goes into Walter's home for the first time is excruciating and awkwardly times. Fortunately, that is the film's nadir and the rest of the way is tolerable.

Some other odd aspects of the film are that Nancy dreams of bizarre feral hippies from some inexplicable reason and there is a weird filter used in another dream scene where she's laying on an altar that makes the movie look like it's being projected onto a burlap sack. The finale consisted of two characters incantating at each other, but the viewer has no basis for why this is happening, why it works, and why the victor wins. It's abrupt and poorly established. Finally, there are aspects of the music that continually brought to mind the music in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

So yeah... The Dunwich Horror Poster is better than the movie. But with Corman, one should never be surprised when the advertising surpasses the film.