REVIEW OF LURKER FILMS H.P.LOVECRAFT COLLECTION VOLUME 3:OUT OF MIND

The shorts contained here are not only consistently entertaining, they are professionally wrought calling to mind the sort of loving care that only a true professional brings to their “fan” art. You will have your favorites to be sure but there’s no filler here to my mind. Instead, while some are better than others, all this material contains a surprising amount of craft, wit and genuine unease.

Titled Out of Mind after the brilliant hour long Raymond Saint-Jean faux Lovecraft documentary the collection also offers the shorts The Music of Erich Zann by John Strysik, and The Outsider and My Necronomicon by Aaron Vanek. Saint-Jeans piece is liable to be your favorite. Besides the usual in-jokes and countless Lovecraftian references Out Of Mind offers a complex narrative weave of real world history, elements of Lovecraft’s fictional world and even his legendarily copious correspondence to tell the story of a modern day artist with the appropriate if unlikely name of Charles Dexter Ward. Ward inherits a Necronomicon triggering a nightmarish journey through his own family history and ending with an unforgettable meeting with Lovecraft himself.

Christopher Heyerdahl plays H.P. Lovecraft in what many consider to be the finest performance of the author ever put on film. You will quite literally be amazed. Special effects are used sparingly but very well when they are onscreen and it’s easy to see why Saint-Jean not only won the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival Award for Best Feature but also saw his baby play on Bravo.

There are two audio commentaries for Out of Time featuring Saint Jean and Heyerdahl, the second including those two plus cinematographer Serge Ladouceur, plus an interview with noted Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi and a featurette/interview with the cast of Music of Eric Zann