THE LAST LOVECRAFT : RELIC OF CTHULHU

No, I didn't just accidentally sit on the keyboard when I was writing the title at the end there.  "Cthluhu" is a real word.  Its the name of a giant octopus alien that has arms and wings and extreme thoughts of self superiority.  Must...resist....topical.....Charlie Sheen joke...here....

THE LAST LOVECRAFT is about three nerds who save the world from sea monsters.  Just because you never heard of it doesn't make it a bad movie.  This movie is really quite good.  Its a small film with limited locations but the overall look of the picture seems bigger.  There are a couple of places near the beginning that kind of give you that "I'm watching RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK" feeling.  But in a good way and not "you ripped this off" way.  The movie mixes horror and humor perfectly together to form a new word called "horrumor".  Lets pretend I didn't just write that and move on.  I'm just saying that when it wants to be funny its funny (most of the time) and the horror element works too but doesn't take itself too seriously.

So a cult of fish faced people find part of a key that can open up a city under the ocean that contains Cthulhu who is a giant alien like I said before.  The movie explains the back story in comic book form which I thought was pretty cool.  The back story goes like this.  Cthulhu  came down from space millions of years ago during the time of the dinosaurs.  He wanted to make himself god over the earth.  Sadly, there was already another alien race of googly eyed slugs that were here first.  War broke out and eventually a giant asteroid came down and wiped out all the dinosaurs and forced Cthulhu back down into his underwater city.  The slug aliens hid out in the mountains now called THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS.  Cthulhu now waits for his followers to reunite two parts of a key that can release him from his underwater city.  A secret society that wants to protect the earth from Cthulhu has one part of the key which they give to one of the nerds because he is the last Lovecraft and only he is immune to the sea monsters' powers.  I don't know about you but the whole damn thing sounds like Scientology to me. 

Now I am not a nerd.  I am too busy snorting chicks and "banging" large piles of cocaine to get into all this Star-Wars-Lovecraft-Lord-of-the-Rings-Lazer-Tag talk.  I don't even know what "blogging" is.  But if you asked me, I think that this movie does the whole Lovecraft myths justice.  The horrors of the deep coming into our world are well displayed with extremely impressive practical make-up and creature effects.  The monsters aren't all computer generated.  They are realistic and kind of scary.  Cthulhu has a General who is after our heroes.  He is kind of a red-fish-faced-with-tentacles-Darth-Vader type.  He is a badass and for some reason he struts around in a t-shirt that features a drawing of a unicorn sporting two machine guns and looking at you like you better give a F@$K.  For some reason that just cracked me up.  Maybe you won't find that as funny as I did but then again I am stupid.  The special effects are great with some CGI here and there and big time at the finale but its not too bad. 

The only thing I feel like complaining about is how short the movie is.  It kind of ends rather quickly with very little build up.  There should have been more back story to our heroes just to see more of their antics and to pad out the time.  The movie does jump right into the action rather quickly.  Maybe the movie is just the right length but I was just too enthralled with all the excitement that I lost track of time.  I think that's a good sign the movie was good, don't you?  I do like how they jettison the whole love interest subplot which most movies like this always have.  Its too cliche and obvious.  Kudos to them for leaving it out.  Honorable mention goes to the sea captain in the desert and his first mate Gary.  Those are two funny people.  Watch the movie to find out why. 

If you love the literary works of H.P. Lovecraft then you should love this movie even more than I did.  Stop doing the whole L.A.R.P.ing thing and go out and buy this movie.  It needs a sequel.  As an added bonus this will give the studios the balls to green light Guillermo Del Toro's MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS movie or whatever it was he was working on.  You demand it.  I demand it.  The big green tentacle face jerkola at the bottom of the ocean demands it as well.  Go forth and buy this movie.  And while you are out there try not to get fish raped.  It sounds like an awful experience....Unless you are into that kind of thing......Perv.

Jason