As Guillermo Del Toro heads into his much-anticipated production of H.P. Lovecraft’s longest mythos story, At the Mountains of Madness, Undead Backbrain presents a much shorter, much cheaper version of the same tale.
This one comes courtesy of Daniel Lenneér, who previously brought you the Jules Verne pastiche, Vågbrytare [aka “The Wavebreakers”] (Sweden-2009; short [14:30 min.]) — see this Backbrain article for details.
The new film’s called Terror from the Abyss [aka Fasan Från Avgrunden] and is 11:56 min. in length, filmed in black-and-white in the style of a silent film of the ’20s. This particular retro approach to Lovecraftian filmaking was popularised by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s The Call of Cthulhu (US-2005; dir. Andrew Leman) — and it works here, too.
Terror from the Abyss is more light-hearted and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, filled with cute animated Elder Beings and Shoggoths, but the ending in particular is a doozy. Richard Svensson (“The Lone Animator”) is responsible for the “blasphemous” claymation and Stefan Harrysson for transfforming the footage into a 1920s silent film style using “glorious” post-production techniques. It stars Lenneér and his oft-collaborator Christopher Johansson.
Says Lenneér: “To bring life to Lovecraft’s strange visions, the film uses mixed techniques like green screen compositing, cut-outs, and clay animation. The production took place in Sweden during 2009-2010.”
Images:
- Leneer’s website
- Millroad Production’s website
- Research: Avery Guerra | Written by Robert Hood
