Seldom seen DVD review NECRONOMICON
This installment of Seldom Seen features a film some people might know about but haven't gotten the chance to see since its only been released on VHS in America and I don't know how wide it spread over the world. It features three highly respectable directors each doing a segment in this H.P. Lovecraft inspired anthology. Of course at the time, 1993, only one of them was well known but the other two would break out a few years later on the international scene.
The film is Necronomicon, co-produced and partially directed by Brian Yuzna and features the first filmwork by Chrisophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Silent Hill) and the first and only US lensed film by Shushuke Kaneko (Gamera trilogy, Death Note). It's also noteworthy that it's produced by Samuel Hadida (True Romance, Resident Evil, Good Night and Good Luck) and Takashige Ichise ( Ring, The Grudge, Shutter).
It's true that when this film was made nobody knew who Gans was or even Kaneko, who had a few films under his belt, but none of them had gotten him any attention overseas, so the film was marketed solely on Yuzna's name. I remember reading about this in Fangoria back in the day and being slightly interested but then the film failed to make any waves and quickly disappeared. But it stayed in the back of my head all this time and when I looked for a DVD release of it, for my Gans and Kaneko collection, I found a superb version released in France three years ago. But more on that later.
The film is built up like most horror anthology films, with a wraparound story that holds three other stories together, connected only by the unholy book that Lovecraft wrote so much about. The wraparound features Lovecraft, played by Jeffrey Combs in make up looking more like Bruce Campbell's brother than Lovecraft, searching for the fabled book in a strange library. In the book are the stories of the film, The Drowned, by Gans, The Cold, by Kaneko and Whispers by Yuzna.
Even though Gans was making his first “real” film, he clearly shows that he was a great visual talent from the get go. Bruce Payne stars as Edward De Lapoer, the heir of a decrepit old Hotel that holds some bad memories for him and his family. Payne learns that his forefather (a brilliant Richard Lynch) used the cursed book to bring back his dead wife and son, with terrible consequences and it just so happens that Edward had fairly recently lost his girlfriend in a terrible accident. Not one to learn from his forefather mistakes Edward uses the book to bring back his lost love but of course it comes with a price and plenty of slimy tentacles.
Shusuke Kaneko is up next with The Cold, a weird little tale about a young woman who rents a room in a house with a strange old doctor (David Warner) who might be older than he looks. The story is a pretty standard mystery where our protagonist tries to unravel the tangled web of lies spun by the doctor who seems to be inflicted with a rare disease which compels him to keep his body temperature below freezing and suck the spinal fluids out of unwitting victims to cheat death, like most of us would do in order to survive. In the end the old doctor manages to bang the leading lady who has almost literally melted his heart right before all of him melts away in a big pile of goo.
Yuzna's Whispers departs from the period setting of the first two stories and takes place in a modern, urban, environment, filled with color and gore. Signy Coleman stars as a police woman who is following a suspect to an old house that holds horrors and monsters older than mankind. Lured down below by the owner of the house she is pushed down a hole that's actually the belly of an enormous monster and has to battle winged, bone marrow sucking, worms and the re-animated hollow shell that was her partner. Yuzna, who is a big fan of the surreal, fills his segment with gruesome and weird imagery and plenty of slime that border on the ridiculous.
Despite all the talent behind the film it's far from being successful in capturing the mood of Lovecraftian horror. Bogged down by lack of funds and dodgy special effects that had to be almost all re-shot, the film feels like a TV movie with more gore than usual. What helps is nice visuals, a good score and competent acting in some of the segments Afore mentioned Richard Lynch is superb in his small role in The Drowned and Signy Coleman is very good as the cop on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Christophe Gans shows right of the bat that he is a huge talent with his visual style and his segment is the best of the three even though when the effects kick in it falls pretty flat on its face. It's like he didn't want to go that route but had to so it doesn't really fit in. Kaneko's film doesn't display any of the director's style, relies on the mumbo jumbo science that many Japanese films take as a normal thing but the gore is the most effective in his segment even though they had to shoot all of David Warner's meltdown again to make it work. The acting is only so so, Warner does his usual thing and the rest of the cast is forgettable. It might have something to do with Kaneko not speaking any English at the time and leaving immediately after wrapping so he had really nothing to do with the post production.
Whispers is the bloodiest of the bunch. I have never been a fan of Brian Yuzna's directing, too comic bookie for my taste and sometimes his love for the surreal bugs me as most of the time it's weird for weirdness sakes. The effects in his segment are some of the best and the worst in the whole film.
If I had just seen this film on video with none of the extras that are on the French SE I would have just shrugged it off as a failed attempt at an anthology series and hadn't thought more about it. But this ridiculously bloated Special Edition made me appreciate it more. Its chock full of behind the scenes stories about all aspects of the production and the best part is that Gans and Yuzna are the first to admit that the film is really no good. But there is genuine love for it, especially with Gans as it was his first film and so treats it with more respect than it deserves.
The film is presented in its original aspect ration, re-mastered in HD and looks very good. The disc is very English friendly with all the bonus material subtitled in both French and English, even though on the feature film the French subs are forced (although I was able to turn them off on my computer). The commentary by Gans and Yuzna is very lively and they poke fun at the film as it goes along. It's full of interesting stories to make you appreciate the process more and not dismiss the film entirely for its short comings.
One of the extras is a great feature length documentary about the making of the film where Gans, Yuzna, the editor and production designer talk about the making of the film and we are shown many of the awful looking special effects that had to be re-shot. There are also interviews with composer Joseph DeLuca, production designer Anthony Tremblay and producers Samuel Hadida and Takashige Ichise. Sadly Shusuke Kaneko is all but absent from this disc and is only mentioned in passing by some of the people involved. The disc is mostly focused on Gans's segment and his involvement and it's most likely that this film got this great treatment because of his at the time mega hit Brotherhood of the Wolf, Joseph DeLuca's interview even begins to focus more on his involvement in that film than Necronomicon.
This is a fantastic release for a mediocre movie and is a must for fans of Christophe Gans and Brian Yuzna, fans of Shusuke Kaneko will have to look elsewhere for any information on his part of the film though.
You can get the DVD on Amazon.fr for 28 Euros but you can also get it cheaper from one of the Amazon affiliated sellers like I did.
