After the Re-Penetrator, you are brought back to earth by a wild psychedelic music video with an animated Lovecraft tripping on drugs and self-discovery, and then the credits roll accompanied by an actually pretty funny blooper reel. With so many different parts, I guess you’re going to get a hit and miss type of flick but LovecraCked is very entertaining and more hit than miss I am glad to say.
Additional thoughts:
- Nice quality production for a do-it-yourself effort! Especially the illustrated
intro. Wow.
- Great packaging including full, vivid color disc art.
- Jam-Packed with extras! You get even more short films and bloopers, some
music videos, and trailers.
- One of the shorts, “The Voice Inside” (also from director Elias),
came with all kinds of advance warning in the form of awards it had won such
as “Most Disturbing” and “Most Offensive.” Well it
didn’t seem to match the hype at first, but boy… it got there!
LovecraCked! The Movie
by Shrub 09/28/06
Now here’s a novel idea, inspired by the very serious horror fantasy fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, comes the anything-but-serious farce called LovecraCked. A full-length anthology, LovecraCked is an assemblage of Lovecraft inspired shorts submitted by independent filmmakers from all around America and beyond. These short films go all over the board from artistic to goofy to, well, zombie porn. We end up with a mostly zany but at times downright impressive blockbuster of independent filmmaking.
We start with our guide, an investigative journalist hosting a program titled “Obscure Writers of Supernatural Horror and Science Fiction.” This put-upon fellow (imagine a skinny Dante from Clerks) is looking for evidence and answers to the mysteries surrounding the life of Lovecraft, and continues to meet with one misfortune after another along the way. The Journalist (played by the film’s director, Elias) continues to pop up between the segments to usher us on our way with some wacky scenarios until he gets so fed up and admits to himself that surely there could be no more viewers and goes ahead and offs himself by firing squad. It takes a minute to get acclimated to the goofball comedy of this part of the movie, but once you get it, there are a couple of parts that made me guffaw, and probably would more so on any repeated viewings.
Now on to the short segments them selves. As I said, these run the gamut in tone and some are color, some black and white and one is animation. My favorites were “Alecto” and “Chaos of Flesh”. Alecto is a downright impressive piece of cinema that starts out seemingly nonsensical but comes together as it progresses. A story of a man who is tormented by visions from his childhood, this also features some really spooky marionettes. Alecto has none of the comedy of the other stories, but is a real visual treat. “Chaos of the Flesh” is a short scene that starts with an Ed Gein looking guy dragging an axe and a woman over his shoulder into the woods. It turns on you like a Twilight Zone episode and has one wickedly cool monster.
Honorable mentions go to “Remain” which employed what looked to be some very painstaking (and impressive) animation, the gross “Bugboy”, “Witch’s Spring” (nearly a realization of something really good), and ”The Lurker” which is more punk rock zaniness from director Justin Powers’ in the vein of his “Pot Zombies.” There’s also a Troma commercial mixed in which is pretty much a throwaway but is humorous and allows for a Lloyd Kaufman cameo.
Now I suppose this review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning “Re-Penetrator.” The inclusion of this segment will undoubtedly sell more copies of the LovecraCked DVD , but watching the movie start to finish, when you get to this, it’s kinda like being tripped right at the finish line and smacking down right on your nose. I’m not saying it’s offensive or anything, it’s just SO over the top and pointless, it doesn’t fit even in this slapstick-riddled flick. A scientist reanimates a female corpse to have zombie sex, which descends into gore-drenched mayhem. That’s it. It’s like the horror version of nailing the pizza boy type of plot I guess.
