Like everyone else on the planet, I have zero interest in doing a year-end review or, God help us all, a decade-end review. The world just doesn't work that way anymore.
I will point out that 2020 is already shooting eldritch beams of bad mojo at us, so it's only appropriate that there seems to be a Lovecraft revival in the offing. God help us all again.
I will point out that 2020 is already shooting eldritch beams of bad mojo at us, so it's only appropriate that there seems to be a Lovecraft revival in the offing. God help us all again.
There was a Lovecraft revival raging a few years back but it got swept away when the Woke sewer pipe burst and began rotting the economic foundations of popular culture to their very core. Ol' Howie was at the very top of the Woke Hitlist, and things got quiet for a while.
Yes, Lovecraft was an obnoxious racist, but guess what? So were Woke saints Albert Einstein, Margaret Sanger and Mahatma Ghandi. So were all kinds of people the Left still lionizes. And given everything that's unfolded this past year, the Khmer Woke has lost its very last shred of credibility when it comes to high-horsing about racism or anti-Semitism or any other kind of bigotry, for that matter. Planks in eyes and all that.
Hence all the Vanity Fair thinkpieces probably won't stifle this latest HPL revival. What I do think will probably stifle it is the proven track record of economic anemia in relation to adapting the man's purple prose to screen. Many have labored, many have fallen.
And to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I want to live in a world where Lovecraft was in the mainstream. Given what a fucking mess the guy was, I think that would be a pretty sick world. Just sayin' is all.
Even Woke Mothership Auntie Beeb is adapting Lovecraft, and cannily relocating the action to the fable forests of Rendlesham.
Appropriate given that Bentwaters AFB was used for location shots in the quasi-Lovecraft/crypto-Cocteau sleeper Annihilation.
Appropriate given that Bentwaters AFB was used for location shots in the quasi-Lovecraft/crypto-Cocteau sleeper Annihilation.
There's also the upcoming Colour Out of Space adaption hitting theaters next month.
I'm a little nervous about this one, seeing as how word of mouth has been mixed at best. The fact that it's being dumped in the cinematic no-man's land of January is not an encouraging portent either. Then again, I still have yet to see Mandy, on account of me being insufferably lame and sad.
I'm a little nervous about this one, seeing as how word of mouth has been mixed at best. The fact that it's being dumped in the cinematic no-man's land of January is not an encouraging portent either. Then again, I still have yet to see Mandy, on account of me being insufferably lame and sad.
The question becomes will the potent Lovecraft corpus be wed to a nth-wave Crowley revival, hence dredging up the fetid shade of Kenneth Grant in the bargain?
Well, this will all come to pass if the folks bankrolling the ongoing AATIP PR campaign wish it so.
Well, this will all come to pass if the folks bankrolling the ongoing AATIP PR campaign wish it so.
One of the luminaries of said campaign is Peter Levenda, whose Dark Lord hagiography could act as a foundational text for this new assault on the body politic by the Netherworlds. So be advised in the coming weeks: there will be all kinds of Nightgaunts circling overhead.
Given the labile state of the world's increasingly-fragile psyche - particularly the social media-addicted world - I'm not overly optimistic. Especially given the new cohort of occult dabblers calling forth the Princes of Hell from ancient grimoires on their iPhones.
Need more Knowledge?
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