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H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon

2001, Movie, R, 95 mins

H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon: Review

H.P. LOVECRAFT'S DAGON
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Director Stuart Gordon began talking about adapting H.P. Lovecraft's damply atmospheric "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" in 1985, shortly after the success of his back-to-back Lovecraft pictures RE-ANIMATOR (1985) and FROM BEYOND (1986). But it took more than 15 years to get the project off the ground, from a script by frequent collaborator Dennis Paoli that combines "Shadow" and the brief story "Dagon," moves the location from New England to Spain and updates the story to the present. Two couples — Barbara (Spanish TV star Raquel Merono) and Paul (Ezra Godden), and the older Vicki (Birgit Bofaroll) and Howard (Brendan Price) — are enjoying a vacation tour of Spain's scenic Galician coast on Howard's yacht. As they pass a small island, a freak storm blows up, wrecking the yacht and wounding Vicki. Paul and Barbara row to shore for help and find the town, Imboca, eerily deserted and rundown. The local church is an odd affair, dedicated to the "Orde de Dagon," and the priest (Ferran Lahoz) is one creepy man of the cloth. Barbara remains in town while Paul returns to the crippled yacht with a couple of local fisherman. But the yacht is deserted, and when Paul returns to town Barbara is gone as well; something is fishy in Imboca. Very fishy indeed. Hampered by the fact that he doesn't speak Spanish — though Paul's mother was from Spain, he was raised in America — Paul installs himself at the fetid local hotel to wait for Barbara, only to find himself pursued by a deformed horde of islanders. Paul eventually learns from an old drunk (Francesco Rabal, who died shortly after the film was completed) that Imboca's residents, desperate when the fish abandoned their shores, rejected Catholicism for the cult of sea-god Dagon and are mutating into slimy sea creatures. It remains for Paul to learn what's become of his friends and how the nightmares that haunt his sleep are connected to the horror he's uncovered in Imboca. Things get off to an all-too-familiar start, and Paul's pursuit by the Imbocans — which takes up the entire middle of the film — is protracted. But the film's last third is startlingly nasty, and it successfully captures the dank atmosphere of Lovecraft's prose. Spanish actress Macarena Gomez, who haunts Paul's dreams in the guise of various creepy sea-things, is the film's breakout performer: With her disturbingly wide-set eyes and viciously kittenish face, she has a touch of Barbara Steele about her. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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