
Four years ago, Chad Ferrin gave us The Deep Ones, which might be described as The Shadow Over Innsmouth via Humanoids From the Deep. Now he’s sailed back to those waters for a sequel called H. P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones.
After a highly stylized animated opening that features chanting members of a cult who toss a corpse into the sea, the film begins with the oddfather Gideon (Benjamin Philip) and his father Dan (Scott Vogel: Attack in LA, It’s Always Smoggy in L.A.). They’re out to catch fish, but the boy comes up with something that was not meant to be either Indonesian or a very good fish. A woman’s mouth was/was not opening and the word ‘alive’ came to mind just not one from her head.
It’s Captain Russel Marsh (Robert Miano, Scalper, Donnie Brasco) who last remembers being stabbed and thrown overboard. He further claims he was the captain of The Chase a 38 footer that sunk in 1930 after he was struck by a strange light and subsequently became bewitched by The Old Ones.
Unsurprisingly, they do not trust him, at least until a creature attacks and slaughters Dan. Gideon is then left with no alternative but to assist Marsh in his scheme to cause time to go backward and prevent what he has done in the past, which means that the assault on Dan would never have occurred. However, like any ancient god, there are plenty of The Old Ones’ disciples sneaked among the masses. And they will do every conceivable thing to stop them from averting the time.
As much as he puts Lovecraft’s name in his titles, this time Ferrin does not remain closer to the author’s works either. H. P. Lovecraft The Old Ones is also a compilation work, and it seems that H. P. Lovecraft used the themes, ideas and some of the characters, or at least their names, from many of his writings, and created a new composition, this time.
For instance, In the Center, Tillinghast o Crawford Edwards (Elli Rahn, Fight of the Living Dead, Antidote) the resonator and him are the keys to his plans to go back to the past, yet he needs to make a bargain with Nyarlathotep (Rico E. Anderson, It’s the Masque of the Polychrome Death, Eddie Poe!, The 5th Passenger) to help him. There is also Randolph Carter (Timothy Muskatell, Deadgirl, Dead by Dawn) who will surely ring the bells of Lovecraft’s fans again.
However, even though it is a very low budget film, Ferrin manages to include some monsters into his adaptation of Lovecraft`s The Old Ones. These include a costumed actor playing a fishman, and ghasts, and a big Shoggoth which assaults Marsh in one of the bathrooms. The effects by Joe Castro (The Beast Comes at Midnight, Hunting for Herschell) tend to be practical, with a little bit of CGI included, in the peak scenes mostly. The only detail which is likely to bother some people more than others is the overused voice distortion that is typically employed for the portrayal of the possessed.
And for those fans who haven’t seen The Deep Ones will not be disappointed watching The Old Ones. There is just one short passage in relation to this film detailing how Marsh came out of the sea, and apart from him only one other character, Ambrose Zadok (Kelli Maroney
, Night of the Comet, Exorcism at 60,000 Feet) is seen in the opening. This being said, you are quite right that it was such a hell of a lot of fun that it should be watched.
Although it does not measure up to the levels of insatiability to a certain film, HP Lovecraft’s The Old Ones is still an entertaining movie. It does approach the subject tangentially more seriously than other writers but never too seriously as to lose a relative amount of dark comic relief. And considering the contexts, that’s perhaps the best way of dealing with Lovecraft’s writing.
Ferrin is currently doing post-production on Unspeakable: Beyond the Wall of Sleep. He is getting ready to put his spin on Lovecraft’s other worldly horrors. It will be intriguing to see what direction he takes with it.
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