In the realm of weird fucking Horror films.... Stuart Gordon is one of my absolute favorites... especially with his love and determination to bring us the visualized madness from the brain of H.P. Lovecraft. It seems that while Stuart hasn't been able to get SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH going at a studio (damn blind executives!), he is at work on something... Innsmouthy... Read the full report and I'll meet you at the bottom....
Hello Harry
The evening of the 15th I attended the 4th annual HP Lovecraft film festival here in Portland Oregon. This year's special guests were Stuart Gordon (Re-animator, From Beyond) and Bryan Moore (Cool Air). The organizers of the festival had been trying to get Mr. Gordon for years, and since this was the first time he was able to come, the evening seemed special. In the lobby were all manner of HP Lovecraft books, comics (the people from Dark Horse were there in force), trinkets, and other horrors. The turnout was pretty decent despite that there was very little advertising in the local (or national) media.
The festival was made up of two separate theatres running short films and one feature length movie each. I chose the one whose highlight was the 35mm version of From Beyond. The short films were pretty good, especially a locally produced short of 'Return to Innsmouth'; but the majority were like most of the student shorts you saw in film class back in college.
I was mildly suprised that Stuart Gordon was a stout, cherubic good natured...'guy'. He looked like an english teacher. He seemed to be happy to be at the festival, and supplied some amusing anecdotes.
Anyways, we watched From Beyond, and it was a blast. The audience found a lot of the creatures and effects amusing...some of them haven't aged too well, but the famous scene with the biting of the pineal gland made EVERYONE in the theatre cross their legs.
Following the screening was a short question and answer period. Most of the points brought up centered around the MPAA and the censoring of the film. Apparently there is no hope of a director's cut for From Beyond because all the clips that the censors cut out got destroyed. Mr. Gordon even went so far as to hunt through the dalies of the film, but couldn't find anything. Another amusing point: In Spain where the film was shot, there is no word for Beyond; so they were titling the film as From Behind.
Stuart is filming a new HP Lovecraft movie this summer somewhere in Europe. The new movie will be basically a marriage of "Dagon" and "Return to Innsmouth".
Sorry if some of this is a little vague; this is the first opportunity I've had to write this down.
Call me "Volt9"
