Necronomicon (1993)

Absolutely Fantastic

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Necronomicon starts in 1932 as writer H.P. Lovecraft (Jeffrey Combs) as learned that an order of Ontraggi Monks guard a copy of the legendary occult book the Necronomicon, Lovecraft manages to locate the vault where the Necronomicon is hidden & begins the read it...First he reads about 'The Drowned' in which a man named Edward De Lapoer (Bruce Payne) inherits an old hotel that has been abandoned for sixty years after the suicide of his ancestor Jethro De Lapoer (Richard Lynch) managed to bring his dead wife & son back to life using spells from the Necronomicon...The next story 'The Cold' is about newspaper reporter Dale Porkel (Dennis Christopher) who investigates the murder of several people which leads him to a boarding house & a certain Dr. Madden (David Warner) who has managed to prolong his life but with dire consequences...Finally Lovecraft reads 'The Whispers' about a female cop named Sarah (Signy Coleman) descent under an old warehouse where she finds herself in an ancient temple full of Bat creatures who feast on human flesh & need human brains to breed...This French & American co-production is a three part horror anthology film based around three short stories by H.P. Lovecraft who also features in the fictional wraparound segment, the wraparound segment & the third story 'The Whispers' was directed by Brian Yuzna while the first story 'The Drowned' was directed by the French born Christophe Gans while the second story was directed by the Japanese born Shûsuke Kaneko. The script for Necronomicon uses various Lovecraft themes & ideas but the individual stories don't really represent their supposed source materials but I still found them all enjoyable in different ways. I think it's quite nice to watch a horror film that has no annoying teenagers in it, that isn't a remake of anything & isn't a typically predictable slasher & to that end I did enjoy this although it could have been better. Each of the stories has an air of the supernatural about it with the first in particular, each story features the Necronomicon somehow but I would say that 'The Cold' is maybe the best of the three with 'Whispers' not far behind it & while 'The Drowned' is far from bad it's probably the least of the three stories. There's certainly plenty of gore & monsters here & the effects men have a blast bringing all sorts of slimy monsters, people melting, severed limbs & splattery creations to life. At a little over 90 minutes each story lasts the 25 minute range & are all suitably different although I think the twist endings could have been a bitter & played more for dramatic impact.Although based on short stories by Lovecraft the adaptations retain little of their literally source, 'The Drowned' is an adaptation of The Rats in the Wall from 1924 only retains the De Lapoer name & something under a house (a city rather than a monster though), 'The Cold' is adapted from Cool Air published in 1931 & is the closest to the original story while 'Whispers' is adapted from The Whispers in Darkness from 1928 that deals with rumours of aliens hiding in the hills of Vermont rather than cops & old warehouses. Fans of other Yuzna produced Lovecraft adaptations such as Re-Animator (1985) & From Beyond (1986) will be happy to see the same sort of visual style & the same sort of gory special effects, from people melting to piles of severed limbs to people's faces being pulled off to people with the backs of their heads missing to some bat like alien monsters to a huge tentacled monster thing & more besides as the effects men throw plenty of blood & slime our way. The dark Gothic setting or 'The Drowned' is very nice & atmospheric while the more sedate setting of 'The Cold' works too but the somewhat surreal setting of 'Whispers' looks a little theatrical with it's bright neon lighting & smoke everywhere.With a supposed budget of about $4,000,000 this appears to have had some money spent on it & while the effects & sets probably cost a fair bit the stories do feel a little empty at times, Necronomicon feels like a showcase for the effects men rather than the talents of Lovecraft. The acting is pretty good, Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Payne, Richard Lynch & David Warner add a little marquee value for genre fans.Necronomicon is a good film, it's not a perfect film but at least it's something different from the teen slashers, remakes & giant Shark creature features that litter video shop shelves, I suppose it's an acquired taste & the stories might have been fleshed out more for dramatic purposes but it looks great, has lots of slime & gore & is well worth a watch.

The wraparound story and the first story are really successful in creating the familiar apprehension of H.P. Lovecraft's works. The atmosphere is menacing and foreboding. Then everything goes wrong... Necronomicon is supposed to contain the secrets of the universe, and Lovecraft really believed in it. I think if he was born in the East, he would be considered a prophet, but the unlucky writer was born in USA where he became nothing more than a horror writer!. Now, don't try convincing me that "The secrets of the universe' contained in the book are nothing but three average horror stories !.. It's not worth all that effort. Trying to convince me that Lovecraft, who is a real person with established biography, was very good in sneaking to secret books and fighting angry priests was a little bit silly. Makes me remember another silly movie where H.G. Wells invents the time machine and meets Jack the ripper. The photography is excellent. The special effects and make up are far convincing and.. hell!... very offensive !... Gore lovers will have a very good treat here. I think the third story is the weakest, but it has a lot of gore, and it's not definitely suitable for those with weak stomach. What about the time period of stories ?.. The wraparound story takes place in the thirties, but the other three take place in the nineties. This cannot be a mistake unless they are totally moron.. It's deliberate, but what on earth does this mean ? This film is not a masterpiece but don't miss it by any means. The problem with Lovecraft is that NO ADAPTATION WILL EVER SATAISFY WHAT YOU IMAGINED AND EXPECTED WHILE YOU READ. This is inevitable even if you assigned Hitchcock, Romero, Carpenter and Ridley Scott to work together.

I see others lambasting this movie, but can't agree - so I need to weigh in on the side of reason.While this is certainly not a must-see timeless classic, it's a competently-executed B movie with reasonably good special effects and a few faces who have been seen in bigger and better things. The style of the movie is similar to "Creepshow"; i.e. several small, unconnected stories told with a wraparound that sort of takes the place of a narrator. Imagine three episodes of "Tales from the Crypt" spliced together and you've got a good idea of the way the film is structured.All of the film versions of Lovecraft's works - and yes, I HAVE seen all of them in existence, as far as I know - were B movies, and the quality of this particular one is towards the upper middle of the pile. Yes, there are rubber monsters. However, they are quite well done for the era and budget that spawned this movie.If you want to see an example of a Lovecraft film adaptation I think is at the top of the quality scale, see Dagon. But don't shun this movie either; if you're a Lovecraft fan, this oeuvre is not to be despised.

H.P. Lovecraft's gloomy short stories about obsession and the supernatural monsters that lurk all around us unnoticed by society at large naturally lend themselves to a multi-storied omnibus fright film format. Well, this trio of truly terrifying tales does the master full justice, combining both supremely sepulchral midnight-in-the-graveyard moodiness and jump-out-at-you startling straightforward shocks with often genuinely frightening results.First yarn, "The Drowned" - Wealthy Bruce Payne inherits a crumbling old seaside hotel that unbeknown to Payne has a foul carnivorous demon residing in the murky basement. Directed with exceptional style and grace by Chistopher Gans, this particularly chilling humdinger is highlighted by Richard Lynch's touching turn as a bitter man who renounces his faith in God after losing his wife and child in a shipwreck and direct-to-video erotic thriller perennial Maria Ford's strikingly eerie, ethereal and even strangely sexy cameo as Payne's dead girlfriend who's resurrected as a ghostly, pallid, mossy-haired zombie.Second vignette, "The Cold" - Sweet young runaway Bess Myer rents a room at a shabby apartment with a lonely, reclusive scientist (movingly played by David Warner) residing on the weirdly freezing top floor. When Myer befriends the sad, fragile Warner she learns that he has discovered the secret of immortality, which not surprisingly comes at an especially terrible price: Warner can only remain alive by constant fresh injections of human spinal fluid! Director Shusuke Kaneko manages to milk considerable poignancy from this haunting parable about the horrible price one must pay for cheating fate, coaxing fine supporting performances from Millie Perkins as Warner's protective landlady, Gary Graham as Myers' abusive, incestuous brute stepbrother, and Dennis Christopher as a foolishly snoopy newspaper reporter.Third and most gruesome anecdote, "Whispers" - Gung-ho female cop Signy Coleman and her more sensible partner Obba Babatunde stumble across the dark, dank and forbidding underground lair of these ancient subterranean monsters with a voracious appetite for bone marrow. Director Brian Yunza eschews the spooky atmospherics of the previous segments for a graphically visceral approach that's crudely effective in a gory, mondo disgusto, gross you out hideous sort of way. "Return of the Living Dead" 's Don Calfa and Judith Drake are wonderfully quirky as the nutty old couple guardians of the savage flesh-eating flying beasts who need new victims to keep their race thriving for all eternity.All these stories in and of themselves certainly smoke, as does the thankfully solid wraparound narrative starring Lovecraft movie vet Jeffrey ("Re-Animator," "From Beyond") Combs, who's perfectly cast as the author himself who visits a secret library to check out the legendary tome of evil "Necronomicon" and almost gets killed in the process. Barely recognizable under heavy make-up which makes him resemble a gaunt Bruce Campbell, Combs simply shines in a role he was seemingly destined to portray. Moreover, the uniformly superb special effects by such dependable artists as Tom Savini, Todd Masters and Screaming Mad George are as ghastly and grotesque as they ought to be, the splatter is likewise properly revolting and plentiful, the tone suitably creepy throughout, and, most importantly, the individual stories ultimately cohere into a provocative and penetrating meditation on man's tenuous hold on reality, exposing a scary netherworld that if intruded upon by us stupidly inquisitive mortals can prove to be quite deadly and dangerous. A superior horror anthology.