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The famous Cult film/horror film director John Carpenter is a master familiar to many fans, but perhaps unknown is that Carpenter is a loyal fan of Lovecraft, and his "Three Apocalypse" "Song", "Strange Forms", "The Return of the Demon", and "The Frightening Black Hole" are undoubtedly hardcore Cthulhu horror movies. Here, I hope to use this article to make a recommendation to everyone and pay tribute to this great director.
About director John Carpenter and his "Apocalypse Trilogy"
John Carpenter was born on January 16, 1948 in an art family in New York. His father was a music professor and orchestra conductor. Carpenter has a soft spot for western adventure films and B-level horror films since he was a child. Before he entered high school, he used 8mm film to shoot short horror films. In 1968, he went to the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, where he co-created the debut feature film "Black Planet" (1974) with his good friend Dan Obannon during the university, and the response was strong. Two years later, Carpenter's "Blood on the 13th Police Station" created a new popular style for B-rated movies. With the launch of "Halloween" in 1979, Carpenter was completely established in the field of horror films. Unshakable master status.
In 1982, Carpenter released a classic sci-fi horror film "The Strange Form", which overthrew the friendly alien image Spielberg painstakingly created in one fell swoop. The character's dim ending and the sinister apocalyptic atmosphere opened up The prelude to Carpenter's "Apocalyptic Trilogy". Although "Strange Shape" suffered a loss at the box office, it did not affect it as one of the most classic sci-fi horror films in movie history.
In 1987, he directed the second part of the "Apocalypse Trilogy", "The Return of the Demon", with a cost of 3 million and a box office of 14 million. It was a huge success. This is definitely a horror work that is seriously underestimated. In 1994, "Terror of the Black Hole" withstood a severe test, bringing the "Apocalypse Trilogy" to a perfect ending.
"Weird Shape": The Thing
John Carpenter’s "Apocalyptic Trilogy", the first part: "Weird Shapes" is a remake of the old film "Weird Shapes: Visitors from Another World" in 1952, which was adapted from John W. Campbell and written in 1938. Science fiction novel "Who is there?" ". If there is any relationship between John W. Campbell and Lovecraft, in fact, there is only one sentence that can be contacted: "Lovecraft is very unfortunate and did not get John W. Campbell to take over "The Amazing Story" "The era of ", that was the opening of the golden age of science fiction in the United States." In other words, the connection between the two is only the magazine "Surprise Story".
But it is undeniable that the influence of Lovecraft in this movie is very obvious. The story of "Crazy Mountains" can be seen in the influence of future generations of science fiction and horror stories. The framework of the entire story has become the template for all subsequent types of stories (maybe it is a coincidence, or there may be mutual influence. This is unknown, so what we can compare is only the results we can see.) Including earlier than The same is true of the classic horror science fiction movie "Alien 1" of "The Strange Form": a very classic routine, human exploration in an unknown area, discovered an ancient and unknown civilization of wisdom-the ancients, space jockeys, and the outside of the strange form The original owner of the starship. Later in the process of further exploration, they found that another destructive force had sneaked in. This kind of power began to destroy mankind, just as they destroyed the other intelligent civilization before...
The story structure of the original work has been preserved as completely as possible by the two adapted movies, and the publication of this novel is when the American golden age of science fiction began. Some of the elements in the story can indeed see the accumulation of many predecessors, the story of the game with super-powered aliens, and the changes in the relationship between people. The 52-year film adaptation has faithfully restored the short story of the original book, but there are more things in the remake of John Carpenter.
The first is the origin of the most important enemy: in the 52-year movie version, the grotesque is an image of an alien with plant characteristics, and in the original story of John W. Campbell, it is only mentioned that the alien has The ability of deformation and imitation can vividly imitate the human beings it comes into contact with. In John Carpenter's movie, this monster becomes of unknown origin. The owner of the alien flying saucer that crashed on the earth ten thousand years ago in the beginning of the film is not a "weird" (in the original and old movies, the owner of the flying saucer is "weird"). Until the end, we didn't know what the real UFO owner was.
Although the "weird" has shown a certain degree of intelligence-the "weird" that has been transformed into the shape of a doctor can actually build its own spacecraft with parts removed from snowmobiles and helicopters. But because of the monster's powerful imitation ability, its abilities have a variety of interpretability. In fact, in the end, there is no answer in the movie. So an unrecognizable concept becomes one of the important factors that make this "weird" frightening.
The deformation ability of the "weird" has been scientifically explained in the Carpenter version of the movie, instead of simply showing its ability to deform. This detailed scientific interpretation has increased the mystery of the thing itself. This method of expression is almost in the same vein as Lovecraft’s two works (the two works are "Crazy Mountains" and "Star Color". ").
In Carpenter's version of "Weird Shapes", the horror atmosphere creates some unusual horror film routines. First of all, there is no female character in the whole film. In ordinary horror movies, female characters are often the main characters. This is used to express the weakness of the main character itself, and the perceptual experience of women makes it easier for the audience to have a sense of substitution, which further brings out the atmosphere of horror. Carpenter’s "Weird Shape" is completely different (it is said that there was actually a female character in the original crew, but then due to pregnancy, this female character withdrew from the crew, and Carpenter had to cancel the female character.
The suspicion between people and other passages in "Strange Forms" are what many film critics like to discuss in large sections. For example, many critics believe that the monsters in the movie are just a foil. What should be more frightening is the people. Mutual suspicion and distrust between each other.
But I think that the suspicion and distrust between people is not the point, but the normal response of human beings as intelligent beings under the circumstances at that time. The actions of the American scientific expedition team in the movie are unexpectedly efficient and coordinated. Through gradual contact with the "weird", they continue to summarize their characteristics, try to find ways of confrontation under limited conditions, and infer who has it one by one. It may be an "infected person."
Compared with the actions of the characters in other horror movies, this kind of performance is almost very admirable. Everyone carried out all confrontation actions almost indifferently, including eliminating experiments, cleaning up corpses, and so on. The confrontation between the people in the middle of the movie is indeed the climax, but no one is simply thinking about running away or showing some human weakness. On the contrary, they make reasonable judgments under limited conditions.
In fact, facing such a thing completely beyond understanding, people's confusion and irrationality are also normal. However, the doctor still considered certain possibilities. He destroyed all the tools to communicate with the outside world to prevent the "weird" from escaping. Until the final stage, the leading actor and a few survivors even made the consciousness of sacrificing their lives, and they bombed the base to prevent the "weird" from escaping. When the dog owner Clark saw the tentacles with teeth and claws in the dog cage, his first reaction was to close the door and lock. Even when everyone was confronted with each other because of suspicion, they faced the appearance of the "weird", and they immediately put aside the barriers and confronted the enemy in unison.
The human team in the movie almost maintains the highest level of action and cooperation. All the plans are the most perfect plans in the current situation, and even these "ideal" plans have successfully completed most of them. However, even so, the members lost one by one, and there were sacrifices in each round of confrontation with the "weird". But that thing was hardly affected at all, it burned so many things, and the next time it came out, it still looked unscathed.
The members of the scientific expedition team seemed so indifferent. Although the matter was not completely resolved, they occasionally smiled, as if everything was business as usual. All the execution procedures are as if they have done it thousands of times, and it seems that they are still performing daily operational tasks. Like a train rushing into a canyon, the machine's operation will not stop because of danger or other things ahead. They look more like machines, and the clips that show their personal emotions in the movie are compressed to a minimum. Because in such an extreme environment, the interpersonal relationship and personal feelings are the least worth mentioning. And if you return to the civilized world and society, these themes are the most important and most concerned content. I have only seen one of these similar bridges-Lovecraft's "Color of Stars" or translation: "Colors from Outer Space".
In the farm that was infected by the colors from outer space, the family of the farmer stayed in place. Even though his wife and children turned into terrifying gray matter and shattered in front of them, they were still trying hard to fight in their own way and persisted in operating. Go down. This operation is not a kind of indifference or a metaphor for the materialization of human beings in modern society. On the contrary, this state of striving to keep functioning is an effort to fight against destruction and prove that one is alive.
"The Demons Return to the Soul": Prince of Darkness
Filmed in 1987, "The Demon Returns to the Soul" (or translated as "The Son of Darkness") is the second part of John Carpenter's "Apocalyptic Trilogy". In this movie, John Carpenter actually began to gradually add a larger amount of "Cthulhu" elements. However, I don't know why, maybe it is too rigorous imitation, or some other elements that are too bright cover up the original core. More people regard this movie as a religious movie, a crappy horror movie with less clever religious elements, because the whole movie seems a bit incomprehensible to the end.
And this is actually a "Cthulhu" movie without a doubt. Now with the gradual popularity of "Cthulhu", more and more people are beginning to come into contact with it, and some fans are beginning to realize it.
The story of the return of the gods is roughly like this: an incredible thing is sealed in an ancient church in Los Angeles, and the church has been sending priests to guard this place at this moment. When the last priest passed away, the new priest came here, and he realized something extraordinary through the notes left by all the previous guards. So he invited a physics professor from a nearby university and asked him to lead a research team into the church, trying to study the strange thing that was sealed in the church. However, when the two major forces of human civilization-science and religion, joined forces, they found that what they had to face was an unimaginable and terrible thing.
The style of this story is almost the same as Lovecraft’s classic work "Dunwei Zhicun Horror Incident", especially in the second half of the story, the professors of Miskatonic University jointly studied and tried to prevent the "Cthulhu" from coming. This is similar to the movie. The whole plot direction is so similar. At the same time, this is not only similar in plot, but also very similar in layout. They all use a small pattern to show a grand development with a "world scale" (the things in the novel are limited to New England, Dunwich, Arkham and other places, and the story in the movie is limited to a church. The events that occur can be regarded as major events on a world scale. They are all revealed through a few words or some small details that the impact of the entire event has a world-class scale.)
If you look closely, you will find that all the clues of the movie’s advancement and some of the props still have wording, and they are undoubtedly Lovecraftian. The first half of the movie uses a lot of space to describe various physical and chemical knowledge to show those researchers. The professionalism of physics itself, as well as some "anomalies" discovered by physics itself through research and exploration (the protagonist and his classmates have repeatedly discussed various quantum physics, Schrödinger’s cat theory, etc.), this kind of very rigorous "Scientific" paragraphs have become a style in many of Lovecraft's works.
Although the passage of the matter is gradually clarified in the middle of the movie, at the beginning of the movie, a lot of space has been used to show the "vision". At the same time, it is interspersed with the content of college students discussing advanced physics, so interlaced and interspersed, it produces a special sense of contrast. There are more powerful and "evil" things outside of our own cognition. Later, as the plot progressed and the truth was revealed, more and more "visions" became more and more serious. A large number of scavengers gathered aimlessly, the church was gradually surrounded, and a large number of animals and plants that caused intensive phobia gradually covered the doors and windows of the church. The weird phenomenon of the sun and the moon coexisting in the sky all the time, and the results of the combination of science and religion have led to a leap in people's understanding. So some seemingly unreasonable things in the past, some things that were once denied by human civilization once again occupy the entire world.
A small easter egg worth mentioning here is that at the end of the movie, the protagonist's hands trembled and stretched out towards the mirror. The movie "boom" at that moment! The sound stopped abruptly. This idea may have been inspired by John Carpenter from the story of Lovecraft’s "A stranger" in the past. In the documentary "Unknown Fear", Carpenter once said that he was deeply shocked by this ending. In this movie, he tried to express his shocking feeling. So the audience got an abrupt ending. Of course, some audiences obviously won't pay for it, which makes people feel that this movie is a little bit mystery. But people who like it naturally like it, and people who don't like it will certainly not like it. This is how it feels personally.
The background music of the whole movie is to some extent a continuation of "Weird Shapes", which can be seen in the rhythm and melody and even repeated use in the whole movie. In a feeling of weird oppression, the "abnormal" began to appear, and with the gradual upgrade, the proportion of music became heavier and heavier. In the early days, the music has been lingering in the back with a kind of volume. Various other sounds can directly cover the background music. Weird music is only used to set off the "anomaly", and as the weird situation gradually spread, the proportion of music began to increase. Until the last eruption, the music also burst out in the same way-after a harsh sound, the theme of the melody began to enter, and the flustered rhythm was advanced layer by layer.
There is no doubt that Carpenter already had his own trilogy plan when he was shooting this movie. And the use of Cthulhu elements has become more and more obvious, because "Strange Shape" itself has the original work, and there are also previous shooting content as a reference. So Carpenter can only express his own content in a limited part (but this part alone is already quite amazing). From the beginning of "The Demon Resurrection", Carpenter is undoubtedly and determined to make a real "Cthulhu movie" of his own.
"Terrorizing Black Hole": In the Mouth of Madness
I believe people who know something about Cthulhu after watching this movie will never deny that "Terrorist Black Hole" is a pure "Cthulhu movie." In the movie, whether it is the core content of the plot structure, the plot promotion, and even many details, Cthulhu's "stalk" is buried.
First of all, the identity of the movie protagonist Trent is an "investigator"-an insurance investigator, and everything starts with him investigating an insurance complaint. The image of the author Satkair is undoubtedly a tribute to Lovecraft, and the various monster images in the novel are the classic Cthulhu images-twisted claws, octopus heads, deformed limbs. As the investigation deepens, those who read "horror novels" will go crazy. At the same time, some nouns in the movie also have obvious tribute elements-"Pickman Inn", "Hobby Town Horror", "Black Church"... (These names come from many Lovecraft novels. "Pickman's Model", "Dunwei Zhicun Horror Incident", "Night Demon"... the name of the movie itself is changed from "Crazy Mountains"-At the Mountains of Madness)
With "Return to the Soul", Carpenter has experience and can further use the elements of "Cthulhu" in film art, and it is very hard-core. The essence of the "Cthulhu" story is revealed in the most straightforward and concise way, and at the same time it is more in-depth than ordinary horror films, and explores some truly creepy topics-"How can you ensure that you are not crazy? "?
This problem is thrown by this movie to all the audience, even if the audience may not understand "Cthulhu" (of course, some people can't see anything at all in the end, and feel a mess, which is understandable).
Our truth comes from our experience as proof. Our mind records and accumulates our experience through memory, and proves its authenticity through the combination of our experience and our cognition. But we already know that mental cognition is very ambiguous. How can we ensure that our memory and cognition are completely free of problems, and that the real construction foundation is so fragile. Just like Trent in the movie, there has been a deviation between his cognition and his experience, and it is getting bigger and bigger. When it exceeds a critical point, his memory is also chaotic. In the end, his self-reality completely collapsed, because everything that constructed his perception of "reality" collapsed.
The protagonist emphasized more than once in the movie that "This is the truth!" But whenever he said this sentence, what happened made him witness that "his truth" was a joke. At the same time, when he himself was still normal, the chaos and disorder he saw was gradually proved to be a "sense misplacement": the one who tried to attack the actor in the restaurant at the beginning of the movie At first, all the audience must have believed that he was a lunatic who was lost in mind by weird powers. However, we learned later that he was actually a person who knew the truth, and that his actions were trying to save the world.
And just like the author of the horror novel in the movie Sartre Kane said (this author should just pinch him Lovecraft). Truth does not need any proof, only enough faith, then it is true for human civilization. We don't actually need any "objective proof". After enough people have committed their beliefs, anything can come true. So when Trent knew that the last book had been published and that it would be made into a movie to circulate more widely, he knew he had lost. In the end, he could only laugh wildly in the cinema, watching himself perform "real" on the screen. So how do you prove your truth? (For more related content, I have discussed it in another article on the subject of alienation. If you are interested, you can check it out).
postscript
As the art of light and shadow, film is the most intuitive way of expressing people's imagination. We look forward to many themes that can be seen on the big screen (the Warcraft of the year also made movies, and Warhammer fans may also hope that one day they can see this magnificent story being interpreted on the big screen. More novels and Comic works are also expected in this way). As a Cthulhu lover, I naturally hope that the subject of Cthulhu can be brought to the screen. And due to various conditions (for example, the original works are really unpopular, changes in the times, etc.), there are not many excellent Cthulhu-themed movies. But there are still some excellent works appearing, enough to relieve the desire of fans. I look forward to more in the future...
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