Dread Cthulhu Rises Again, On The Big Screen

It’s September, which means that shoggoths and mad cultists of all stripes will be opening the gateways hidden in the back of their closets and making their way to the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro for the third annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival-Los Angeles.

This year the three-day event will be unearthing a lost Lovecraft adaption, The Evil Clergyman, which stars iconic Lovecraft actor Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator). The film, part of a horror-anthology film Pulsepounders, has been out of circulation for decades now.

If you prefer your eldritch horrors a little more lighthearted, the festival is putting up Cthulhu themed cartoons on the big screen as well. The South Park trilogy that centered around Cartman’s superhero alter-ego “The Coon” co-starred the mighty Cthulhu (spoiler alert: raised from his slumber by a Gulf of Mexico oil spill, naturally) and is the centerpiece of the animation section. Even more exciting, the festival will screen the episode of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon– “Collect Call of Cathulhu”– which was the first TV appearance of Lovecraft’s signature creature. That episode probably did more to popularize Lovecraft amongst the 80′s generation than any other piece of media.

Veteran television writer Michael Reeves (Star Trek: The Next Generation) will be on hand to accept an award for both the episode and for co-editing the fiction anthology Shadows Over Baker Street, which pits Sherlock Holmes against the contents of Lovecraft’s imagination.

The festival starts on Friday, September 28th and runs through Sunday the 30th. Tickets at Brown Paper Tickets.