Whispers in the dark

Of those who like to stray of the beaten path, to seek the darkest of the hillside thickets, to haunt the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries, travel in parched and terrible valleys, watch the dryads dance wild in the struggling beams of a waning moon and know that the most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all it's contents, only a few have the energy, skill and will to transfer the stories they love onto film.

The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society (or HPLHS) is a group founded in Colorado in 1984, which, nowadays, is based in Glendale, California. Although they started by hosting Cthulhu Lives! live-action roleplaying group, they are now, for the most part, known for producing sound and film recordings based on H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos works.

The Call of Cthulhu (2005) of HPLHS is a silent movie adaptation of Lovecraft's short story of the same name and written in 1926. The visuals are a quirky blend of new and old intended to recreate the look of the films from that era. The film, produced by Sean Branney and Andrew Leman of HPLHS, has a runtime of 47 minutes, which is enough to tell the short story in its entirety with only a few changes made to the original. It is well worth the purchase if only to see something quite unique done by people whose love of the subject matter is tangible.

HPLHS's next film is again an adaptation of a H. P. Lovecraft short story: The Whisperer in Darkness (1930). As with the story, the film is "from the same age". This means that unlike The Call of Cthulhu, The Whisperer in Darkness is a sound movie - a "talkie", if you will - although still shot in the same style as their previous film. The release of The Whisperer has been delayed, but it will most likely "premier" sometime in 2009.

The Whisperer in Darkness will, in all likelihood, be not seen in the cinemas except for indie festivals and various roleplaying conventions, but it should be available at least in DVD format as was its predecessor.

The teaser can be seen in the following address:

http://www.cthulhulives.org/Whisperer/trailer.html

- Harro Grönberg