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January 26, 2019 9:38 PM   Subscribe

Nicolas Cage Reuniting With ‘Mandy’ Producers for H.P. Lovecraft Adaptation ‘Color Out of Space’ -- Nic Cage Is Getting Downright Lovecraftian for Color Out of Space. posted by valkane (31 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is gonna be terrible! I'm so excited!
posted by poe at 10:09 PM on January 26, 2019 [15 favorites]


Hey There Cthulhu!
posted by valkane at 10:12 PM on January 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


The colour out of space is a cool story but it’s going to be interesting to see how they make a movie out of it. I mean it’s like,
people get sick,
also crazy,
then die. Fin.

posted by rodlymight at 10:13 PM on January 26, 2019 [12 favorites]


Richard Stanley is back! Wow. I just looked at his IMDB, he's only directed documentaries and shorts since getting fired on the set of Island of Dr. Moreau 22 years ago.
posted by mannequito at 10:19 PM on January 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


if you saw Mandy, it makes perfect sense that they will definitely be able to adapt this.
posted by vogon_poet at 11:24 PM on January 26, 2019 [8 favorites]


Oh boy yes will I watch this for sure.
posted by Grandysaur at 11:37 PM on January 26, 2019


Yeah, Richard Stanley is kind of worthy of a biopic himself. An interesting dude. Although after having just seen Mandy, I'm looking forward to another Panos Cosmatos movie; that guy can direct.
posted by zardoz at 11:37 PM on January 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


There was a film a few years ago based on this that was very interesting. Die Farbe, YT Trailer.

Can't wait to see this one with Nic Cage.
posted by patrick54 at 3:06 AM on January 27, 2019 [4 favorites]


There's been a couple of bad adaptations already -- Die Monster Die!, for instance. Always ready for another. Always interesting to see how unearthly colours are interpreted on film.
(The Dean Stockwell Dunwich Horror borrowed from this other story. They used psychedelic lights. It was the '60s.)
posted by CCBC at 3:13 AM on January 27, 2019 [5 favorites]


Squamous, dude.
posted by MrVisible at 3:41 AM on January 27, 2019 [5 favorites]


Burying the lede a little - Nic Cage and Tommy Chong in a Lovecraftian monstrosity
posted by threecheesetrees at 3:47 AM on January 27, 2019 [6 favorites]


I'm curious about the synopsis given in the second link:

Color Out of Space revolves around the family of Nahum Gardner, after a mysterious meteorite seeping the titular colorful emissions crash lands on their farmlands and starts mutating the flora and fauna around it...and driving anyone who comes near it insane.

I've read precious little of Lovecraft, but this sounds like all the people who loved Annihilation (myself included) will find a lot to like in this movie. Was Jeff Vandermeer ever accused of *cough* borrowing heavily from this Lovecraft story?
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:00 AM on January 27, 2019 [4 favorites]


Definitely yes, people thought it was "Lovecraftian" but so many people "borrow heavily" from Lovecraft that it's just allowed. Like having Tolkien dwarves or whatever.
posted by vogon_poet at 4:25 AM on January 27, 2019 [7 favorites]


Was Jeff Vandermeer ever accused of *cough* borrowing heavily from this Lovecraft story?

The movie is closer than the book, So most of the comparisons come from there. The book gets compared to Roadside Picnic/Stalker a lot, but Vamdermeer says he hasn’t read it.
posted by Artw at 4:41 AM on January 27, 2019 [2 favorites]


For those interested, there is already a film version of The Colour Out of Space entitled "The Curse." It actually does a pretty nice job of showing the effects of the Colour on the family farm. It loses it a bit towards the end, electing a more familiar "curse from God" motif rather than Lovecraft's cosmic horror. Also, no reference to the Quabbin Reservoir.
posted by SPrintF at 6:49 AM on January 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


Oh, I hope this doesn't suck.
I do like Richard Stanley's work.

Been meaning to see Die Farbe.
posted by doctornemo at 8:45 AM on January 27, 2019


I loved TCOUS and stole it for a D&D scenario once... this should be worth a bad movie night at least.
posted by The otter lady at 9:21 AM on January 27, 2019


Nice call on The Curse, SPrintF. One of the articles also mentions that Die, Monster, Die! is an adaption of the story too. (Which gives new frisson to the Simpsons gag.) Wikipedia has a few other film adaptations and notes the similarities of Annihilation.

What I want to see is someone tackle the conceit from the title, the Colour itself. Its primary characteristic is that it looks like nothing on Earth, totally alien. From the story:
when upon heating before the spectroscope it displayed shining bands unlike any known colours of the normal spectrum.

The colour was almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all.

strange colours that could not be put into any words
No sane wholesome colours were anywhere to be seen except in the green grass and leafage; but everywhere those hectic and prismatic variants of some diseased, underlying primary tone without a place among the known tints of earth.
I've always loved this device because it is so brazen. "It is indescribable! I, the author, am describing this indescribable thing to you! It is a horror!" Elsewhere Lovecraft often works by analogy and encouraging you to imagine "like that horrible thing on Earth, only moreso". But the best Lovecraft is when he reaches beyond the horrible to the beyond imagining.

But it presents a cinematographic challenge. How do you film a Colour that does not exist? It sounds like most previous treatments turn the Colour into something more relatable; radiation, or a corrupting psychic force. I want the Big Bad to actually be a Colour. Or rather, a visual effect. Only it can't be cheesy. Into the Spiderverse kind of messed with viewers in this way, I could imagine it working in animation. Harder in a live action movie.
posted by Nelson at 9:31 AM on January 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


There is some controversial experimental evidence for so-called "impossible colors", but probably it wouldn't work on film and wouldn't be very impressive if it did. But in theory!
posted by vogon_poet at 9:46 AM on January 27, 2019 [2 favorites]


Oh yeah, I've seen some of those chimerical colors! There's a reasonable demo here. They work by fatiguing your colour vision by steady exposure to one colour. Then they switch to some contrasting colour and your eye (or brain?) is fooled into momentarily seeing an overly intense version of a colour. It's a neat effect and only takes a few seconds. I could imagine it working in a film assuming the projection flicker doesn't ruin the effect. Would probably be awkward and disorienting though.
posted by Nelson at 10:06 AM on January 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


I always thought that Barry Manilow and Lovecraft were a perfect fit.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:12 AM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


OhGod.
posted by New England Cultist at 10:30 AM on January 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


I always wind down Christmas Eve with a reading of 'The Colour out of Space'. It's my new family tradition.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 11:16 AM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


There is an extremely high probability that this film will depict Nicolas Cage wrestling physically with an invisible monster
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:35 AM on January 27, 2019 [12 favorites]


One of the articles I read about this (sorry, no link) declared "Finally, a Nicolas Cage movie where Cage is most likely NOT the most batsh!t insane thing in it!"
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:39 PM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


I think I tended to blend this story in my teenage mind with 'The Saliva Tree' by Brian Aldiss, a loving tribute I think, unless I'm mixed up. The Curse was part of the body horror thing where guts fell out, I forget the other ones. The Dean Stockwell Dunwich Horror was a big disappointment to me, because Roger Corman did some excellent Poe adaptations.

If I was the producer of this film, I would have some Barry Manilow music, he's great.
posted by ovvl at 6:12 PM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


Touch of Dunwich horror to The Saliva Tree, I think.
posted by Artw at 8:19 PM on January 27, 2019


"No sane wholesome colours were anywhere to be seen except in the green grass and leafage; but everywhere those hectic and prismatic variants of some diseased, underlying primary tone without a place among the known tints of earth."
It's only just occured to me, actually, but the conceit of "diseased colors" certainly suggests another subtext when considered in the context of Lovecraft's fear of every color besides white.

I always thought that Barry Manilow and Lovecraft were a perfect fit.

I mean,
I remember all my life
Raining down as cold as ice
Shadows of a man
A face through a window
Crying in the night
The night goes into
what vile and nameless faces peer through that window?
posted by octobersurprise at 7:09 AM on January 28, 2019


octobersurprise, similarly I also think it's no coincidence that it's Nahum Gardner's (unnamed? I'll have to check) wife who gets infected worst and locked in the attic as punishment.
posted by Quindar Beep at 8:18 AM on January 28, 2019


It better be based around the filling of the new reservoir. That’s the Final Dread, for crying out loud!
posted by Guy Smiley at 11:26 AM on January 28, 2019 [1 favorite]


Hand reaching out of the water like Deliverance...
posted by Artw at 10:09 AM on January 29, 2019


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