Influenced by the writings and works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (better known as H.P. Lovecraft), LovecraCked! The Movie delivers nine Lovecraftian tales that are all tied together by an investigative journalist who tries to find out who this mysterious writer really was. Along with that the reporter keeps digging for clues about Lovecraft, one short film after another is shown; All being indie films with some being good and some that could've been a helluva lot better.
There has been a lot of adaptations of Lovecraft's works with the most famous one probably being Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, not to mention The Necronomicon itself used in Evil Dead. If you're a big Lovecraft fan who likes and admires the man for his utterly obscure writing skills, LovecraCked! The Movie might not be your cup of tea since it mixes horror with comedy, and to make things better or worse, depending on how you see it, there's even some porn to be found in one of the short films. When talking about Lovecraft's writings, there are really no excellent adaptations out there to compare to what the man has written and LovecraCked! The Movie is no exception. But this is not a movie you should watch because you're really into Lovecraft, but for the fact that you get a wide variety of different indie films. Some made by people who might have a bright future ahead of them, while some made by others who should not make movies at all.
Let's break it down shall we? The first short story is called The Statement of Randolph Carter, directed by Jane Rose, and it had a pretty good feel to it even though it didn't really do it for me. The style of the film itself was pretty cool though and it was 'stupid' enough to work on some levels. Unfortunately it was over in a blink, but was kind of a good, sort of a tease, to start off with. Next one out was called The History of the Lurkers by Justin Powers, and even though I found it to be far from being great, the people behind the film definitely deserves some credit for originality. It takes place in modern day with a punk-rocker who can summon true evil (that was an hilarious scene for sure). The lurkers themselves were quite frightening but in a funny sense of the word.
What follows the lurkers is a short film called Remain, directed by Ashley Thorpe, that proved to be one of the best segments LovecraCked had to offer. Filmed using stop-motion technique, something that made things seem even more creepy and felt a bit like watching a video by the band Tool. It had some disturbing imagery to offer with an artist painting a canvas that comes alive. This piece was right on the spot. Fourth flick called Bugboy from Swedish director Tomas Almgren was, according to yours truly, the very best segment on the disc. Filmed in black & white, Bugboy looked really awesome and had a Cronbergian feel to it (couldn't help but to think of The Fly when watched it). It had a good but really simple story that worked wonders and even though it was really short, just like all the segments, it was still enough time for it to really satisfy. The film had some nice effects, nice make-up and I honestly think the black & white helped it look a lot better.
5th segment called Witches Spring by Brian Barnes was a drag to watch, and even though it was really short it was still too long and just looked and felt way too amaturish. Dealing with some pretty girl that were supposed to be a witch that lures some horny guy to her apartment and tries to steal his youth. It really had nothing to offer and was the worst so far. 6th segment called Alecto, directed by Simon Ruben, actually felt a bit too long as well, or that is that it was too drawn out. It had some cool stuff in it, like the puppets, but felt a bit too artsy and was really not my kind of thing. But at least it was different and it really separated itself from the other segments, something that was both negative as well as positive I guess.
Grady Granros's Chaos of the Flesh was the seventh film and had also been shot in black & white just like Bugboy which made it look really good. Unfortunately it felt like somewhat of a clone to Dario Argento's version of 'Jenifer', even though they were not exactly similar to one another. I have to give it some credit though for how nice, not to mention creepy, it looked and the make-up was awesome. This piece was really worth watching as well. Segment number 8 called Re-Penetrator, directed by Doug Sakmann, was basically a porn parody of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator. It had some hardcore sex in it, some bad acting (I'm not gonna complain about the acting because after all, this was a porno), and a lot of blood, gore and some disgusting stuff. The girl in it was moaning for all she was worth there for a while and now I have a hard time facing my neighbours. But apart from that, Re-Penetrator sure provided some weird fun.
Last out was something called And This Was on a Good Day which best could be described as an animated music video. Watching this felt like being on drugs and the film stood out and was really captivating. I was in fact really impressed by this one, maybe because it was just so different from the rest, I'm not sure. Directed by Brian A. Bernhard it was definitely one of the highlights on the disc though.
To tell you the truth, I have some problems giving LovecraCked! The Movie a proper rating. I would say that half of the short films shown had some, to a lot of potential and were great to watch, but some of the films on the disc brought everything down a bit as well. The actual comedy by the investigative journalist between the films did not do too much for the movie and also I felt that it took away some of the seriousness some of the films had to offer. But if you're up for a bunch of different H.P. Lovecraft inspired indie flicks, LovecraCked! The Movie ain't half bad.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Elias and others
WRITING CREDITS: Elias, H.P. Lovecraft
GENRE: Horror, Comedy, Fantasy, Thriller
CAST: Joanna Angel, Adam Armstrong, Elias
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 87 min
RATING: 5/10
LovecraCked! The Movie Website/IMDB Click here
LovecraCked! The Movie Trailer Click here
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