I, Cthulhu

It was a minor stroke of genius when director Andrew Leman of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society decided to film Lovecraft's influential 1925 horror story as a faux silent film. Fake scratches, handsome intertitles, a captivating score, and high-contrast black-and-white images at dramatic angles that recall the best German Expressionism go a long way to further the illusion that the film was made in '25 instead of '05. With one gesture, Leman solved dozens of problems–suddenly, it didn't matter that the special effects weren't quite state of the art, that the story consists of an undramatic pile-on of narratives-within-narratives, that the production couldn't even afford a real boat. The result is an almost-vintage tale of hair-raising mystery full of bizarre dreams, murderous eskimos, and blood-thirsty cultists that culminates in the revelation of an unspeakable horror. "Call of Cthulhu" is a highly entertaining addition to anybody's Halloween library.