Tag Archives: HPLHS

03/31/13

The Testimony of Randolph Carter

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Run Randolph Run!

Harley Warren is missing. The last person to see him is his friend Randolph Carter, who was with him on the fateful night of his disappearance and is the only suspect as a result. Finding himself in court, Randolph tells the strange story of how his friend was heavily into occult studies and had recently acquired a book written in an unknown language that Harley refused to explain in detail. The only thing he was willing to reveal was that it key to a certain theory of his. One night, he brings Randolph to an abandoned graveyard for an expedition into a tomb…

Shot in 1987 and released the following year, The Testimony of Randolph Carter is an adaptation of the short story “The Statement of Randolph Carter” (with some elements from “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” thrown in for good measure). Said story was based on a dream Lovecraft had, with his friend Samuel Loveman having the Harley Warren role while he had the Randolph Carter part. Some have speculated that the unnamed book in the story is the fabled Necronomicon, although Lovecraft didn’t create said tome until years later. But, given the overall plasticity of the Cthulhu Mythos, that interpretation is not entirely impossible. Interestingly enough, the prop book from the film was utilized as the Necronomicon in one of the HPLHS gaming sessions a few years later.

Let’s get something straight: this is NOT a film like The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s adaptations of The Call of Cthulhu or The Whisperer in Darkness. This student film was their first effort at applying their years of LARP prop-making skills to a film. As a first effort, it’s naturally a little rough around the edges.
Although the props are all incredible, the film’s low budget does show at times. Despite having access to a real stenotype machine, the lack of a location that looked like an actual courtroom resulted in the decision to keep the room as dark as possible. While not very realistic, it did have an interesting artistic effect. The film’s makers have noted how it also means this can be interpreted as the trial taking place in Carter’s mind. Being shot on videotape, the end result looks like some 80′s British import you’d see on PBS. But you know what? I don’t have a problem with that. In fact, I took more issue with how it uses the August Derleth version of the Elder Sign rather than Lovecraft’s original version.

After a limited release and several appearances at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, The Testimony of Randolph Carter is finally available on home video. However, it’s in the form of a DVD-R with no extras, (not even a starting menu). I imagine this was done to keep people from confusing it with their more recent films. Said films are made to evoke the feeling of the period when Lovecraft was actually alive, while The Testimony of Randolph Carter has an 80′s feel despite its period setting. It’s only 50 minutes, but does feel longer due to the numerous reading scenes. While reading the official HPLHS page for the film, I couldn’t help but notice the reference to plans for a reedited, shorter version. I discussed the matter with director Andrew Leman via email and learned the cut of the film on DVD is only slightly shorter than original version.

The Testimony of Randolph Carter has an important place in history as it’s one of the oldest Lovecraft fan films (although not actually the oldest, as that honor goes to the 1975 adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness). It’s also the longest of the first five and the only one that’s commercially available at the moment. AS it’s a well-made (but rough) first step, I definitely recommend seeking it out. Here’s hoping the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society eventually decides to give it a factory-pressed DVD release with extra features. Given their distribution of a German H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, maybe they could even include other early Lovecraft fan films as well.

Special thanks to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society for use of the image!

12/25/12

Merry Fishmas!

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Another year, another fan-made music video of a holiday song by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. This year’s selection is “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fishmen,” as filmed and uploaded by one haakor:

That said, you shouldn’t watch it if you want to avoid any spoilers for The Shadow Over Innsmouth…

Merry Christmas!

12/25/11

A Mythos Carol

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Seeing as how I celebrated Christmas with a Youtube video featuring a Lovecraftian Christmas carol by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society last year, I thought it would be fun to do it again this year. This year’s selection is a fan-made music video made by GodfreyTemple,: which was apparently approved by the HPLHS:

For more information about the song, be sure to check out its Wikipedia entry!

Merry Christmas!

02/9/11

It’s News to Me!

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While browsing through Comcast’s OnDemand service, I discovered that the “Preferred Collection” menu (found in both the “Free Movies” and “Premium Channels” sections) contains free movies that aren’t listed in any of the other movie categories. If you want to see films like Curse of the Demon and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, I highly recommend it!

Thanks to laughingsquid on Twitter, I found out that somebody made a fire-breathing Godzilla snow sculpture.

In other Godzilla news, IDW Publishing has worked out a deal with Toho to publish a comic book called Godzilla: Monster World. The comic, which will be released next month, will also feature appearances by other monsters from the Godzilla franchise! Licensing issues prevented that from happening in the Marvel and Dark Horse Godzilla comic book series, although this will not be the first time an original American comic book will feature other Toho monsters. That honor goes to Trendmasters’ one-shot comic book, although it would have happened sooner if Atlas Comics’ proposed Godzilla series had ever been realized. Hardcore fans will note that the promotional Godzilla vs. Megalon comic doesn’t count since it was a loose film adaptation rather than an all-new adventure.

Your dreams have come true…there is an Alien Pez dispenser.

The Warner Archive has released an official DVD-R of the rare Rankin-Bass/Tsuburaya Productions giant turtle movie, The Bermuda Depths. It’s right up there with Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Legends of the Super Heroes in terms of highly sought after video rarities released by the Archive.

Someone is actually making a sequel to The Killer Shrews. I hope they either call it “Shrew Fast Shrew Furious” or The Killer Shrews: The Squeakquel.

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, best known to readers of this site as the makers of The Shadow Over Innsmouth audio drama and the “Scary Solstice” CD series, have announced that their film adaptation of “Whisperer in the Darkness” will premiere at this year’s H.P. Lovecraft film festival. Those booking a room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel to attend the festival should use the code “HPL” before checkout in order to get a nifty discount. For more information, please visit its official Facebook group and/or the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society Facebook group. Oddly enough, that last group posted a picture of a fungi-infected spider that nicely illustrates the sort of head structure Lovecraft intended for the Mi-Go of the story the film is based on.

Also on the Lovecraft front, Bang! Productions Ltd. and Colin Edwards have completed an audio movie version of Lovecraft story “The Dunwich Horror.” Although the concept of audio movies predates this adaptation, it does seem to be the first drama-style audio movie that is in 5.1 sound and plays in theaters (as opposed to “direct to CD/MP3″ release). For more information, please visit the official website.

Finally, I’d like to announce that we have some updates coming to the site this year. Gravedigger’s Local 16 is in the process of being redesigned and moved to a new server. We’re also in the process of adding images to older articles. Although we originally only intended to add cover scans to old reviews, we’ve also been toying with the idea of putting pictures in other articles. Please let us know what you think of this, or anything else you would like to see here, by contacting the Front Office. While you’re writing, please feel free to discuss your favorite podcasts, as we’re in the process of creating an official Gravedigger’s Local 16 podcast with music, stories and more! More will be posted about this as it develops…

12/25/10

We Wish You a Mythos Christmas

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The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has given the world a ton of cool Lovecraft-themed goodies, from the modern silent movie version of The Call of Cthulhu to the “Dark Adventure Radio Theatre” audio drama series (as covered in my review of The Shadow Over Innsmouth installment). They’ve even released not one, not three, but two Christmas albums! Both A Very Scary Solstice and An Even Scarier Solstice are chock-full of creeped up Christmas classics and the only thing scarier than the subject matter is just how good the singing is! But don’t take my word for it, just check out this fanmade video for “I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog-Sothoth” from A Very Scary Solstice by aabeeceed.

As if that wasn’t enough, the HPLHS also has a page with free sheet music and clips from the albums!

Merry Christmas!

03/24/10

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

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Move over Suspense and Lights Out!

You might remember the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society from my “Printable Halloween Decor” article or for their 2005 silent film, The Call of Cthulhu. Just as that “Mythoscope” film was designed to look like a 1920′s silent film (as the original story was written/published then), their Dark Adventure Radio Theatre CD series seeks to adapt Lovecraft tales in the style of old-time radio shows. To date, the series has adapted At the Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Out of Time and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a tale of one man’s harrowing visit to a strange seaside (and mostly fictional) town in Massachusetts. The odd-looking inhabitants are very suspicious of outsiders and fiercely secretive about the practices of their religion, the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Rumors of the townspeople making sacrifices to and interbreeding with sea demons turn out to be more than the ramblings of the town drunk…


The HPLHS has put together a simply amazing audio adaptation in the grand tradition of horror-themed radio shows like Lights Out, Quiet, Please and Inner Sanctum Mysteries. Thanks to the acting and authentic-sounding opening sequence, one could easily pass this off as an episode of an obscure radio series to an unassuming listener. That is, until they get to the humorous “1931…plus 77″ copyright notice. The tongue-in-cheek ads for the nonexistent Fleurs De Lys brand of cigarettes (a staple of the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre dramas) are an amusing callback to the days when cigarettes were supposedly good for you.

In order to make the story more suitable for the radio play style (and too add more dramatic impact than the lead simply reading the story), some changes had to be made. Whereas the original story frequently has the protagonist recap events and conversations he has, the audio drama opts to dramatize them. Similarly, the start of the play now features a fake clip of a radio news story on and interviews with the FBI agents raiding Innsmouth rather than the original’s narration about the events, which may remind listeners of Mercury Theatre on the Air’s infamous broadcast of The War of the Worlds. A framing story featuring an FBI agent interviewing the protagonist has been added to make the story end with “more of a bang,” as noted by the production blog. Occasionally, extraneous lines that didn’t add anything important from the story have been left out. This was most likely done to allow the audio to fit onto a single CD and only the most anal-retentive purist would be bothered by this. Truth be told, I only noticed their absence after the CD inspired me to reread the original. As for the running time, The Shadow Over Innsmouth. clocks in at a little under 80 minutes, comparable to the length of the average feature-length film.

The acting and music are both top notch. The conversations all sound natural (or as natural as you can get with Lovecraft’s purple prose) and the rural Massachusetts accents are dead-on accurate. The actor playing Robert Olmstead will amaze you by how easily he can transition between the world-weary man tortured by what he has experienced at Innsmouth and the cheery, chuckling student he used to be. I was also impressed by the use of old-fashioned pronunciations for words like “roof,” which led to one person who overheard the audio play into thinking it was Canadian! Composer Troy Sterling Nies has put together a terrific score, which effectively enhances the both mood and sound effects. Their well-timed, minimal nature of the effects provide a sense suggestion that Lovecraft himself would have approved of. Given Lovecraft’s low opinion of this particular story, he might have even approved of the alterations made for this particular adaptation.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth comes with informative liner notes about the genesis of the story. As it turns out, the name “Robert Olmstead” was never used in the story and the name was found in H.P. Lovecraft’s old notes on the story. On top of that, the CD comes with an assortment of props similar to the “feelies” that came with old Infocom text adventure games.

The props include a “Newburyport Historical Society” postcard depicting some Innsmouth jewelery, a book of matches from the Gilman House Hotel (with a single unused match), a page torn from an old newspaper about the FBI raid, and a fish-scented scratch and sniff map drawn on First National Grocery paper. Like the liner notes, a lot of hard work and research was put into these. The actual logo and slogan from the now-defunct First National chain are used for the map and the fake newspaper clipping draws its design from the New York Evening Graphic, an out-of-print tabloid from the era. And if you carefully removed the custom security sticker, you also get an Esoteric Order of Dagon seal!

All in all, the props are very cool and do help the listener get a better connection to the story. Home haunters probably won’t have much use for them and would probably prefer the occult tome pages from the The Dunwich Horror and The Shadow Out of Time installments of the series. The props could also be used in a Lovecraft-themed RPG (be it tabletop or live action) or left where a Lovecraft neophyte could stumble upon them as a gag. Like the Infocom feelies, they can be thought of a a kind of copy protection (after all, you can’t torrent a scratch and sniff map). I also suspect they are the result of the HPLHS’ origins as a LARP group. Speaking of which, the Fate of the Ancients episode mentioned at the end of the play is a reference to one of their old gaming sessions. Only time will tell if that adaptation will really happen.

Special thanks to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society for the review copy!

10/12/08

Printable Halloween Decor

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Economic woes eating up your Halloween budget? If you’ve got a well-stocked color printer and some glue, then we’ve got you covered!

If you have a lot of spare time and patience, you might want to try making the “following portraits” of Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula available at Frankenpaper.

Haunted Dimensions offers papercraft versions of tombstones and other things associated with Disney’s Haunted Mansion.

The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society offers up toe tags, death certificates, and a Miskatonic University diploma that are perfect for haunted houses.

You can spook up any non-digital clocks in your house using the “13 hour clock” images from the Monster Maze or the Ghoul Skool.

The Halloween section of Canon’s papercraft site has a small assortment of kid-friendly masks and cards. Those who want more serious decorations can try assembling the realistic papercraft snowy owls (Great for Harry Potter-inspired setups) and a cat that I’m sure can be easily modified into a black cat.

I’ve saved the best for last: Ravensblight has printable games, masks, paintings, and other cool stuff (like this creepy little fellow). There’s even free music!

Gravedigger’s Local 16 is not to be held responsible for the content on or anything that may occur (be it good or bad) as a result of visiting or downloading from any links on those sites (or constructing a project that’s detailed on them). Attempt at your own risk.