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Last week, a banner ad at Something Positive caught my eye. It was an ad for a DVD of Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, using art that was quite familiar to me, for it was the art from Mock Man Press's Kadath comicbook, which I picked up as a set back in 1999 and recently found among my stuff after my first serious comicbook re-org since, um, 1999. Turns out the movie is semi-animated (think old Marvel cartoons where it's mostly cut-out Kirby figures moved around the screen, but a little more up to date), using the comic as a source of images.
Today my copy of the DVD (ordered from Petting Zoo) arrived and I sat down to watch it. Not too bad, although it has a clearly amateur feel to it. My main problems are, in no particular order:
But I mostly enjoyed it, and watching it as a movie brought home a comment I'd once made to a friend about Kadath.
It's Lovecraft doing the Wizard of Oz.
Yes, the story is something like 80 years old, but some people have spoiler issues. :)
Anyway, in overall theme of "Seeking a fantastic alternative to home, only to find that home was what you were seeking all along" is key to both Kadath and Oz (well, movie Oz in any case, it's been a LONG time since I read the book). Plus, of course, the idea (much stronger in the movie than in the book for Oz) that this was all a dream. A lucid, directed dream for Randolph Carter, of course. The protagonist goes through many struggles to reach a shining city of dreams, fighting horrible monsters, being dragged through the air by winged creatures, struggling against strange minions, making deals and alliances and finding strange traveling companions. Richard Upton Pickman seeks a brain too...he's hungry. He wouldn't mind a heart and some guts, for that matter.
Sure, there's differences in the details. The Wicked Witch analogue in Kadath is also Glinda and the Wizard, all rolled into one (with a thousand other forms to spare) as Nyarlhotep. Carter didn't realize he wanted to go home to Boston until the end of the story, while Dorothy really did want to go back to Kansas pretty much from the time she landed in Oz. And Carter would challenge the gods, while Dorothy self-described as small and meek.
But this isn't HPL aping Baum. I doubt Lovecraft really even thought of Oz when writing Kadath (HPL scholars, feel free to confirm or deny). More likely he drew from some of the same basic fairytale inspirations and happened to pick the same core theme by coincidence. "Protagonist visits land of the fantastic in a dream and discovers that home is where the heart is" isn't too hard to come up with, eh?
Now let's see a battle between flying monkeys and nightgaunts!
I'll get you, Dorothy, and your little ghoul, too!
Today my copy of the DVD (ordered from Petting Zoo) arrived and I sat down to watch it. Not too bad, although it has a clearly amateur feel to it. My main problems are, in no particular order:
- The voice acting is mediocre.
- The music is often so loud you can't hear the mediocre voice acting.
- The black and white line art often "strobes" in rainbow colors as line widths drop to smaller than a pixel.
But I mostly enjoyed it, and watching it as a movie brought home a comment I'd once made to a friend about Kadath.
Yes, the story is something like 80 years old, but some people have spoiler issues. :)
Anyway, in overall theme of "Seeking a fantastic alternative to home, only to find that home was what you were seeking all along" is key to both Kadath and Oz (well, movie Oz in any case, it's been a LONG time since I read the book). Plus, of course, the idea (much stronger in the movie than in the book for Oz) that this was all a dream. A lucid, directed dream for Randolph Carter, of course. The protagonist goes through many struggles to reach a shining city of dreams, fighting horrible monsters, being dragged through the air by winged creatures, struggling against strange minions, making deals and alliances and finding strange traveling companions. Richard Upton Pickman seeks a brain too...he's hungry. He wouldn't mind a heart and some guts, for that matter.
Sure, there's differences in the details. The Wicked Witch analogue in Kadath is also Glinda and the Wizard, all rolled into one (with a thousand other forms to spare) as Nyarlhotep. Carter didn't realize he wanted to go home to Boston until the end of the story, while Dorothy really did want to go back to Kansas pretty much from the time she landed in Oz. And Carter would challenge the gods, while Dorothy self-described as small and meek.
But this isn't HPL aping Baum. I doubt Lovecraft really even thought of Oz when writing Kadath (HPL scholars, feel free to confirm or deny). More likely he drew from some of the same basic fairytale inspirations and happened to pick the same core theme by coincidence. "Protagonist visits land of the fantastic in a dream and discovers that home is where the heart is" isn't too hard to come up with, eh?
Now let's see a battle between flying monkeys and nightgaunts!
I'll get you, Dorothy, and your little ghoul, too!
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From:
random bizarre (but friendly) post.
just a note of appreciation for your slide rule page. :)
i found it by clicking on your usericon from one of your
sorry. i'm nosy, but harmless; my father's slide rule is still one of his cherished possessions. i always thought it was the neatest thing EVER...until he bought the apple ][+, of course.
anyway...keen page. sorry for the interruption.
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Re: random bizarre (but friendly) post.
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no subject
(Spotted your post while wandering through some friendsfriends.)
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I'm not really an HPL scholar, but I am a big ol' fangirl. I don't think Oz had any influence on Dream-Quest. Aside from the theme of homecoming, the works are quite dissimilar. Carter is Lovecraft's autobiographical character (see especially The Silver Key), and Dream-Quest plays heavily on Lovecraft's devotion to New England, childhood nightmares, and general wish to have lived in an idealized past.
Anyway, I'm eagerly awaiting my DVD. I'm glad Randy ran that ad; I hadn't given a thought to Mock Man since NecronomiCon '01. Jason Thompson, the artist, is a good artist and GM, and I am happy to give him more money.
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