Many perfect, soul-shaking artistic imaginations come from the same emotion: fear.
For example, aliens. Take, for example, H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu World.
H.R. Giger's paintings of alien forms are entirely reproductions of his childhood nightmares, with death, reproduction, and suffering. The massive skull, which combines metal and flesh and blood toned body shape, is the most famous alien species in film history.
This kind of fame is different from et's warm-veined alien visitors. It is so frightening.
That's right. Whoever says aliens must be respectful and friendly with human beings, interstellar harmony.
In lovecraft's world of Cthulhu, most of the extraterrestrial visitors are equally frightening. His horrific images sometimes survive underground, sometimes in outer space. They often lurk in the name of the "rulers of the old days".
In his 1927 novel Color Out of Space, the alien visitor has no substance and exists entirely as a "color.".
It's too hard to shoot.
John Carpenter once said, "The Color of the Stars, it should be made into a movie, but I don't know how you're going to represent the color, it's not anything and shape we've ever seen." ”
It is no wonder that the novel of 1927 has such a movie until now.
Yes, there is a movie version of "Color of the Stars" actually. And after reading it, it turned out to be, not bad. Very cool, very cult.
The Douban score is 6.3 and the IMDB score is 6.2, which is very much in line with the standard score of a WTF film
It all started with the fall of that meteorite. The beginning of a standard extraterrestrial tale.
In fact, the story begins with a depiction of a hidden place in New England:
The mountains are towering, the valleys are densely forested, and no one has ever set foot in the depths of the forest. In the deep and narrow valley, the trees sloped fiercely. A narrow stream flowing slowly, never touching the sun's halo.
When I went into this mountain and valley to investigate the new reservoir, people told me that this was a place of evil.
Ward, a water quality investigator, is more of a witness to the story as an outsider. The real experience of this nightmare is the Gardner family living in this manor.
The father played by Nicholas Cage is violent and authoritarian to his family, the mother is tired of making a living and becomes increasingly indifferent, the brother is indifferent, the daughter is immersed in his own small world, and only the younger son is young and simple.
Father played by Nicholas Cage
Daughter and young son
After the meteorite fell, the seemingly mysterious family began to be gradually eroded and mutated by the "Color of the Stars", divided and swallowed, until it fell apart.
What is "Color of stars"?
A "color" from an alien. It flows and floats like air and color, but it is not color or gas, it is a sentient creature, but it has no substance.
The "color" in John Carpenter's mouth, which is difficult to express, in [Color of the Stars], is a strange and dense neon color.
The purple-pink neon meteorite fell next to the ancient well of the manor. Then, the meteorite disappeared overnight, but spread its "color" to the manor, the valley and then to the entire forest.
"How beautiful," everyone exclaimed. But no one knows that in beauty, there is a crisis.
"The first hour of the film is like climbing into an opium hall and gazing at Satan's kaleidoscope." This is how many people intuitively feel about the 2018 cult film [Mandy].
Same production company as [StarLight], almost the same team, and the same Nicolas Cage starring. The team's preference for colorful neon colors is evident from [Mandy].
The intense color of [Mandy].
Stylizing color as part of giving people a sensory experience, the bold use of color in both films is quite successful.
Lovecraft's work is not easy to shoot. After all, his work emphasizes an "indescribable horror", and the invisible part is the real fear.
Once the alien "color" is visualized, it is doomed to lose and gain.
However, where [The Color of the Stars] has gained, it is the grasp of the atmosphere. Without hurrying, it spreads slowly until the fear of "Color of the Stars" is pushed to a climax.
After the meteorite incident, strange things began to happen here, and it was full of morbid colors everywhere.
Strangely colored flowers began by the ancient well and grew everywhere in the meadows; there was a strange flash in the woods; the telephones were eerily silent; all kinds of electronic devices failed.
Mom unconsciously cut herself two fingers, and my brother was lost in the gap of time at the door of the house.
The younger son sat opposite Gujing all day, his eyes hollow, staring ahead. When someone came to ask, he replied: Shhh, he was talking to me.
In the original book, it is said: "Everyone in the house exudes an atmosphere from the unknown territory, which is indescribable, or rather, it is not famous at all." ”
People know what's coming, but there's nowhere to escape. Everything that grows in the world has fallen, and unlike the alien stars of this world, it is only a "color", but it is burning.
It brings even more horror, as well as the genetic variation and recombination of various animals here.
The cat had fangs and shining eyes; a dozen alpacas had merged into one and mutated into some kind of multi-headed creature; and many dead animal corpses, as if they had suffered radioactive burns.
There is a taste of some early B-grade films.
Genetic recombination. The same is true of human beings who have been irradiated by "Starlight" (let's call it radiation), and the bodies of the mother and the young son are integrated, contributing to the most wonderful cult clip of the film.
The screams of the two flesh fusion processes reverberated in horror in people's ears, it was the sound from hell, whimpering and crying, like a cry, very strange.
It was the assimilation of the mother and the little boy's siblings, one absorbing the other until it transformed into a truly indescribable foreign body.
How is all this possible?
Possibly. What comes with the meteorite is changing everything around it. Not only things, but time has also changed and genes are being reorganized.
They change everything, change into the world from which it comes.
[Color of the Stars] can subvert people's ordinary imagination of extraterrestrial visitors.
Who says they have to be humanoid? They may only need to "exist", even in the form of energy bodies.
As early as the classic science fiction film [Forbidden Planet] in 1956, there was already some kind of alien advanced life that did not exist in physical form.
Set in 2200 years ago, humans landed on a planet, but no one came back. Years later, another expedition team arrived, only to discover the hidden truth.
The planet's advanced life Quills, due to their overdevelopment, have eliminated physical entities and exist only as consciousness, and they can also visualize the human subconscious through machines.
And extraterrestrial life not only exists in the form of energy bodies, but can also change the genes of animals and plants in some way.
This kind of setting is easily reminiscent of the 2018 science fiction movie [Annihilation].
[Annihilation] is adapted from the first installment of the Lost South trilogy, which won the 2014 Nebula Award for beating The Three-Body Problem.
In terms of key settings, it is easy to see the influence of Lovecraft's "Color of the Stars".
Alien life forms in [Annihilation] have no physical bodies
The heroine of [Annihilation] is a professor of genetic biology, and in order to find out what happened to her husband, who has a changed temperament and vomits blood, she decided to participate in the same project that her husband had participated in - and a group of 5 people went to the "X Area" practice investigation.
The so-called "X area" is a secret space that falls from the sky. Falling with meteorites, separated from the rest of the world, and still expanding, almost none of the explorers who went there survived.
"Area X"
It turns out that within the "X region", refraction can occur, disrupting the gene pool of animals and plants.
Crocodiles grow shark teeth, antlers bloom strange flowers, green plants grow human forms, and grizzly bears make human shouts when they eat people...
Doll Plants
Here, all living things are copied, divided, and recombined. People will feel that their bodies flow like liquids, their thoughts are unrestrained, and their original genetic forms are annihilated and retained with new energy bodies.
All along, the collocation and reorganization of different creatures to form a newborn monster can be regarded as a good trick of the Cthulhu myth.
What is Cthulhu Mythos?
An alternate mythological system based on a series of loeft novels and perfected by many other writers.
Lovecraft famously said, "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear; and the oldest and strongest fear is the fear of the unknown." ”
If the things known to mankind form a circle, the blank space outside the circle is the nourishment of all Cthulhu myths - the unknown.
What unknown could be more obscure than an extraterrestrial visitor? And when the alien guest and the mutant creature merge into one, it will only bring people a more evil and unspeakable horror impact.
For example, the mutated alpaca in [Color of the Stars], or the combination of the mother and the young son. Quirky, sticky, and hard to describe.
Another example is John Carpenter's classic B-movie [Strange Shape] from 1982. "Strange Shape" is a convenient translation, "The Thing", and God knows what that is.
On the Antarctic continent, the expedition team rescued a sled dog that suddenly appeared.
As a result, the sled dog looks like a dog, but is actually an alien monster. The people and animals it came into contact with have changed. It turns out that this alien creature can be imitated and deformed, and it is difficult to be detected when mixed between humans.
The fame of [Strange Shape] comes from the various mutated monsters that appear in it.
The human body that bites off the doctor's hands, the "blood basin mouth", the "strange shape" with spider-like arthropods and the human head hanging, this kind of monster that cannot be defined by a known concept, creates a strange sense of madness, and the cult is extremely evil.
Arrange and combine some parts of animals such as spiders and dogs with human flesh stumps, and put them together, and there are many inexplicable strange shapes.
Lovecraft has always been good at this.
His cult gods, Cthulhu, are a hybrid of an octopus monster and a human, Dagon a mash-up of a fish and a frog, Sabhu Nicholas a hybrid of a human organ and a goat, and so on.
He often depicts supernatural forces on a cosmic scale. How big the universe is, vast sea of stars, countless unknowns, there may be too many existences far beyond our cognition.
In the original Book of Stars, it is written: "This terrifying visitor comes from an invisible realm that we do not know. The presence there reveals to us a dark, boundless abyss of the outer realm, leaving us dizzy and numb on all fours. ”
That's where movies like [Stars] and [Annihilation] are fun.
They're not far away, they're here. In static electricity, in moisture. Up is down, fast is slow, and here is also in the other realm. And what came from the other world is already here.
To face the incomprehensible landscape, to face the oldest and most fundamental emotion of mankind, fear.
Then admit that human beings themselves are insignificant and small.
Resources:
[1] Color Out of Space，Wikipedia
[2] Cthulhu Mythos，Wikipedia
[3] Translation of alien color Chinese, bilibili column, 2019.10.25
[4] Faithful to the original style of the Cthulhu film, Star Color Douban Review
[5] Terror comes from the unknown – the horrific element of "Cthulhu" and the alternative meaning of faith, The Economic Observer, 2019.10.21
What is your favorite Cthulhu movie?