STACK #187 May 2020

FEATURE FILM

Gordon movies. Like everyone else I enjoyed Re-Animator , but I didn’t feel like it was really capturing the essence of the material, mostly because Stuart’s films are largely campy black comedy. And while there’s still black comedic elements in Color , I wanted the otherworldly threats to be as impeccable and terrifying as they deserve to be, which is something I felt hadn’t been put on screen in any of the official adaptations. I think that John Carpenter’s The Thing comes a lot closer in tone to the actual stories.” With Nicolas Cage having hit a new level of madness with his recent hyper-kinetic performance in Mandy , the actor continues to explore the edges of sanity in Color Out of Space in what can only be described as pure derangement. “I think that Nic and I ended up being a really good combination,” Stanley muses. “I guess because partly we both have a penchant for deadpan surreal or apocalyptic black comedy, which is something that just seems to come naturally when I’m directing, and I think it comes naturally to Nic as well. He’s got an extraordinary sense of comic timing in what he does, even in the moments that aren’t particularly funny. “We did highlight a few areas of the script where we were able to let Cage off the leash, such as the tomato scene in the kitchen and the freak-out scene in the car. The trick was to try and calibrate Nic’s descent into madness so that it feels like something which is organic to the pace and texture of the movie.” Following the runaway success of Color Out of Space , Stanley hints at what will come next. “It’s inevitable that we’re going to

• Color Out of Space is out on May 6

about 13 or 14 and making Super 8 movies, simply because it’s the only Lovecraft story that lends itself to a low budget or medium budget adaptation. “It’s set on one farm with one family and you don’t have to go to Antarctica or shoot at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. So it seemed accessible. But of course it took my whole life for the right sort of circumstances to come to being. “I’m a huge fan of Lovecraft's material, and I’m always hoping that someone else would do a great job with it. And I’m completely shocked

We did highlight a few areas of the script where we were able to let Nic Cage off the leash...

be doing two more Lovecraft movies. We’re already developing the follow-up to Color Out of Space , which is a new adaptation of The Dunwich Horror . It will give us an opportunity to expand on the themes of Color , and also to take the saga back on campus, back to Miskatonic University for the first time since Re-Animator , and get to grips with the Necronomicon. I think that’s something that’s going to happen very swiftly, and I hope it will be in production by the end of this year.”

couldn’t give the audience a brand new colour. The human spectrum and our visual range run between ultraviolet and infrared, so I figured that the ultra-dimensional intrusion to our three-dimensional universe would have to come from somewhere. It would have to start from infrared or ultraviolet and slowly bleed into our perception. The same as a sound coming into your consciousness, it has to come in at a very high pitch or a very low pitch, like a bass rumble that you slowly become aware of.”

Nicolas Cage and Joely Richardson

Despite the many Lovecraft adaptations over the decades, Stanley reveals that the film had been on his mind since childhood, and that his frustration with so many of those films paved the way for his own contribution. “I was a fan of H.P. Lovecraft all of my life; I was indoctrinated into his stories by my mother, who was also a huge fan. I probably started thinking about Color Out of Space when I was

that [Guillermo] del Toro hasn’t delivered on that with At the Mountains of Madness , and James Gunn hasn’t given us Call of Cthulhu yet,” he adds. When it came to his own influences, Stanley reflected on some previous Lovecraft adaptations and the films that were heavily influenced by his writings. “I had a really good time with the Stuart

FURTHER VIEWING

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