Dagon (2001)
It took me a while to catch up with this loose Lovecraft adaptation. In fact, it has taken me over two decades. Even great Cthulhu, locked in aeon long slumber in sunken R'lyeh, thinks I'm taking things a bit slowly.
The reason for my dalliance is fear. Not of being scared of the film - I'm familiar with the concept of fiction and I'm pretty sure that's what Lovecraft was writing - but being scared of disappointment. When it comes to Lovecraft adaptations there are very few good ones. Reanimator? Give me a break. It's a lurid, trashy comedy with an unpleasant streak of 80s misogyny running through it.
So I viewed Dagon with trepidation, especially when I learned the man behind the camera was none other than the director of Reanimator and self appointed master of Lovecraft adaptations, Stuart Gordon. The man is certainly a trier, still seeking to convince the world of Scary Movie that it should really be interested in the profoundly unfunny visions of H.P. Lovecraft.
One might wonder why a film that is clearly borrowing more The Shadow Over Innsmouth - a brilliantly ominous title - is rebranded as the snappy but meaningless-to-the-unititiated Dagon. It seems calculated to annoy the pedantic fan of Lovecraft [Bows ironically] without actually doing anything that would tempt those unfamiliar with the work. Still, that's far from the biggest problem here. Alas, Dagon is a real wasted opportunity.
So let's at least try to glean some positives. Dagon is a much better film than Reanimator. That isn't setting the bar high. But it has to be said. Reanimator (stop me if I've told you this one before) is a lurid, trashy comedy with an unpleasant streak of 80s misogyny running through it. There is plenty that is lurid and trashy about Dagon, and there is a streak of misogyny a mile wide running through it, but at least it doesn't think it is a comedy.
This is where the film is at its strongest - the set up of the film is done in a brisk, business like manner and Gordon doesn't waste any time in getting things moving. When Paul and Barbara make it to shore, they find themselves in the bleak little town of Imboca, a suitably weird and creepy locale.
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| It's not that bad. I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely. |
The town seems to consist entirely of narrow, dark alleys and beetling buildings that make a glimpse of sky a rare treat. The denizens of Imboca are weird, mishappen, inhospitable semi-human things stumbling, shrouded through the cramped, streets, The whole place - and everyone in it - seems to be visibly rotting before our eyes. It's tremendous fun, just a bit spooky and very reminiscent of the brilliant little British chiller, City of the Dead - one of the most Lovecraftian films that isn't anything to do with Lovecraft.
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| Don't Look Now, anyone? |
Alas, having shown he can do this creepy stuff quite well Gordon decides to kick it up a gear or two and soon we are locked into chase / thriller mode. In fairness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth is the nearest thing Lovecraft wrote to a pulp thriller - it has some action and chase sequences in amongst the verbiage - but it unravels into a continual montage of rushing about and hiding and looking worried.
There is a sort of lunatic energy to some scenes, as gangs of malformed townsfolk pursue the hapless Paul through rain swept streets, illuminated by flashes of lightning. There is some genuine horror here, a depraved carnival atmosphere as he is herded towards his doom, the camera veering wildly. But it is inconsistent and uneven and as Paul isn't a character we like or are even very interested in, it is hard to keep care. Apart from the occasional room full of human skin suits or hot girls with gills and legtacles - it might as well be a Jason Statham film.
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| Nobody's perfect! |
The slightly creepy fetishisation of women's bodies as sites of weirdness and eroticised corruption might have been a bit of a warning of Things To Come. Still, if Gordon had left it at that we might have had something to like here. But the climax veers into distinctly creepy terrioty (and not in a good way) as Paul and Barbara find themselves in the hands (or whatever) of the grotesque sea monsters who inhabit Imboca (who often look more like refugees from Pirates of the Carribean than the Deep Ones of Lovecraft.) There, Barbara meets a cruel end, totured by the enraged Uxia (the chick with the sexy legtacles, above.) It's unnecessarily sadistic and sexualised, as Uxia carves up Barbara's breasts, played out in lingering close ups for the enjoyment of ... well, who exactly? Who wants to see a woman's breasts being mutilated?
Horror is a transgressive genre, but here's the thing - the torment, mutilation and murder of women isn't transgressing anything. It's main fucking stream, played out for entertainment or reported with ghoulish enthusiasm on the news. If it bleeds, it leads. And what usually bleeds is a woman. There are a hundred ways Gordon could have brought his film to a savage conclusion - and he went for the most obvious, predictable and tired option, just like he did in the 1980s, as film maker after film maker has done before. Women's bodies, it seems are still a canvas that film directors draw on with blood, meat to be displayed and carved up. Gordon was pulling this crap in the 80s in Reanimator, where he had Barbara Campton (the name is surely not a coincidence) nude on a gurney being subjected to Weird Science by undead tormentors.
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| Exhibit A: Barbara Crampton in Dagon, 1985 |
And here we go again, almost 20 years later:
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| Exhibit B: Raquel Meroño in Dagon, 2001 |
To be fair, in 198os I'd have been mad for that, tits being tits and tits being all I was interested in in the 80s. But I've grown up a bit since then, the world has grown up a bit and I'd like to think the horror genre has as well. Stuart Gordon, on the other hand, seems to have been stuck in whatever nasty space he was occupying in 1985, incapable of evolving.
Star Rating: *
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