25% off @HPLHS’s Dark Adventure Radio Theater downloads.

Just what it says on the label. I enjoy Dark Adventure Radio Theater quite a bit, even though I’m no longer really in a position to pick them up whenever I’d like. The 25% off is for downloads only, and ends Wednesday: so if you’re traveling for Thanksgiving, yeah, they’re great for long car rides.

New DART (Thing on the Doorstep) coming out soon!

As in, maybe by the end of the week.

Already pre-ordered; The Thing on the Doorstep is one of HP Lovecraft’s more interesting works for me, because it’s one that takes place in an area that would have been within HPL’s own comfort zone.  It’s not out in the wilderness, or the depths of space, or even – horror of horrors! – NYC; this is a horror story that’s set right in the man’s backyard, and that gives it a little extra flavor.  Plus, this is one that should work well on radio.

@HPLHS’s ‘Thing on the Doorstep’ Dark Adventure Radio Theater going to the CD printer’s.

If that’s what that sort of thing is called, mind you. Anyway, I’m looking forward to the latest DART: I finally managed to finish both The Shadow Over Innsmouth and At The Mountains of Madness last weekend (listened to ’em while building furniture), so The Thing on the Doorstep will come just in time*. It’s a shame that Lovecraft never developed that story further: it might have had the legs to be a novella or even novel.

 

*Although there are any other number of CDs that I have yet to buy

Tough choice to make on the next @HPLHS Dark Adventure Radio Theater.

I’m going to pick up one of them (via here), certainly: but do I go with ‘At The Mountains of Madness’ or ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth?’  Both are perfectly translatable into radio drama; and I like both stories about equally, so there’s no help there. And they both got good reviews, so there’s no help there.

And no, ‘get them both’ is not currently an option. Alas.

In the mail: @HPLHS’s “The Horror at Red Hook.”

Listening to it right now, in fact.  This is much more than a word-for-word retelling of HP Lovecraft’s original “The Horror at Red Hook:” which makes sense, really. The original is a short story, after all: and they did a full hour version. You have to flesh stuff out.

It’s an interesting story to adapt for today, because this is one of Lovecraft’s more difficult stories for our modern age. It has a genuine power to it that we find rather objectionable – thus making is simultaneously attractive and repellent. It’s interesting to see HPLHS try to play this as straight as they possibly could.

The “Dreams in the Witch House.” Lovecraftian rock opera. [Content warning]

The folks over at the HPL Historical Society (need to think about getting a lifetime membership: $75 is a lot of discretionary income, though) helped put together a rock opera based on one of Lovecraft’s short stories (‘The Dreams in the Witch House,’ obviously).  I just picked up the album (Dreams in the Witch House: A Lovecraftian Rock Opera), largely on the strength of this (DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK YET!) music video – but please note that I am putting a content warning on said video, which I do not often do.  This is a rock opera based on a horror story, and the video features images of a disturbing and alarming nature that are all the more so because they are not done in a cartoonish fashion.  Do not watch this at work.  You have been warned.

I get the impression that the HPLHS might be expanding this, later on (they’ve already done the radio dramatization of the story).

So, I watched The Whisperer in Darkness last night.

Short version: I liked it, and it provided more scary moments than the HPLHS’s previous movie The Call of Cthulhu.  This is not the fault of the CoC movie itself, or the producers: I simply have a harder time getting into a mood where I find silent movies scary.  The production values were pretty tight – possibly the special effects were a little too good in a couple of places; it’s supposed to be a Thirties movie – and the acting was generally good, solid work.  I think that the directors were tweaking the audience a little by having one of the actors take the role of “more well known actor with a cameo in this movie,” but I’m not sure.  Overall, a nice horror flick that visibly misses the old black and white melodramas of the Thirties.  Check it out.

And thanks to everybody who hit the tip jar recently, thus allowing me to buy it.