15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Harsh Hands of Lovecraft Fans, June 25, 2002
This review is from: Necronomicon: Book of the Dead [VHS] (VHS Tape)
For some reason, people give this movie such low marks without giving actually viewing the movie as a movie. Perhaps its because the name HP Lovecraft was attached to yet another adaptation failure, and they thought, quite foolishly, that this meant that there would be a Lovecraftian film that was actually Lovecraftian. Well, that never happens and the H.P. is almost always attached to sell more movies and to get more bad reviews. Still, while not a standout jewel in the forum of monster movies (and what really is in the true monstrosity arena?), it does hits 4.5 star highs and 2.2 star lows to make it worth seeing. You just have to forget that nefarious little label.
This movie is set in 1932 with everyone's favorite actor, the immortal Jeffrey Combs, as a strangle Indiana Joneseque version of H.P. Lovecraft. In it, Lovecraft decides to steal a view (and the book itself later) of the infamous Necronomicon despite the wishes (and warnings of its keepers). Taking a key from one of its monk keepers, he finds his way to a secretive chamber where he finds the book and begins to transcribe three stories - The Drowned, The Cold, and The Whispers - from what he sees here.
The Drowned, a story borrowing from Lovecraftian themes and mingling in some ideas from differing stories, is about a man returning to an inherited hotel and finding more than he bargained for. Our main character looks over a letter from his Uncle that, in flashback sequencing, finds his family dead and denouncing God for it. After throwing his bible to the ground, he is visited by a good looking Deep One who replaces the book with another. Reading from it, he finds his family returned, but only in a small sense of the word. Well, our main character, seeing only the "raising the dead" and not the lesson in the tale, decides to liberate the book from its hiding place and resurrect his long lost wife, leading us to a showdown with a huge one-eyed monster (I can't call the thing great cthulhu).
The Cold, a good piece adapted from Cool Air, begins with a reporter who is investigating a series of murders going to a house and speaking to the current owner. After loosing her tongue her with a series of threats, she reveals a story involving her mother and a doctor with a "Skin condition" that first owned this place. This story's ending is actual good, plus the body of the tale is also an interesting piece. I would have to say it also pulls its weight with a 3.5 to a 4.0 rating.
Wanting to forget The Whispers, I'll only break it down briefly. Here is a tale about a female officer chasing a criminal who turns out not to be a criminal unto a cavern (more like an abandoned sewer) of terror (and yawning). It has a little gore, some scary homeless people - one of which is blind -, a lot of crawling and chasing, and some really, really bad acting. I would give it a 2.2 only because I had to spit on the other two pieces here.
If you haven't seen this movie before, its not really a bad addition to anyone's growing horror selection. Just don't build a house of expectations on it.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining B Movie, April 22, 2004
This review is from: Necronomicon: Book of the Dead [VHS] (VHS Tape)
I got this on the cheap, and if you're a fan of cheesy, B movie horror with lots of gooey special effects and can find it cheap, do so. Don't expect a legitimate Lovecraft tie-in: Lovecraft appears as a character in a "wraparound" uniting three unrelated stories, but it's not Lovecraft the historical character--there's a disclaimer at the end of the film admitting as much--nor do the stories themselves reflect Lovecraft's ethos. Lovecraft was about understatement and suggestion; this film takes the opposite track with dripping gore and monsters in full view. To me, that's no bad thing, but as you can tell from the reviews here, plenty of hard-core Lovecraft fans disagree. What the movie does offer is plenty of slime covered latex masks and monsters, and you get good views of them; one pretty good story, one mediocre story, and one gross-out fairly stupid story; lots of mediocre to bad acting, and a quick, totally gratuitous and titillating (so to speak) shot of one of the actresses naked in the shower. If that's what you want to pay your money for, go for it. I admit to my own amusement and entertainment.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, June 20, 2004
This review is from: Necronomicon: Book of the Dead [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This has all the makings of a good Lovecraft adatpion, namely Jeffery Combs and the Necronomicon. 3 stories linked together by the mysterious black book called Necronomicon. Really gory, but doesn't take itself too seriously. Combs is the actor king of H.P. Lovecraft adaptions and Brian Yuzna is also a really good contributor to Lovecraft films, namely his skills as a producer and the more recent Beyond Re-Animator. Worth a look for anyone even casually interested in modern horror films.
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