"Beyond Tickling," Beyond Love's Craft

This bizarre item popped up recently on Ebay, originally brought to my attention by a post on alt.horror.cthulhu, and selling for the unholy price of $15.00. Yes, it's none other than a Lovecraftian tickling fetish film, called "Beyond Tickling," from HPL's story "From Beyond." Just when a person thinks they've seen everything odd surrounding Lovecraft, there are always new surprises, and not always pleasant ones. As many already know, HPL's creations have a rather sordid history of inflaming niche fetishism, a strange twist of fate that would turn Lovecraft's own stomach.

Apparently, "Beyond Tickling" involves the demented scientist Crawford Tillinghast summoning entities from outside the veil of our reality to tickle his female assistant into madness. Personally, that's all I really care to know. It's more than enough to suggest this sub-B Grade spinoff is just one of the latest extensions of Cthulhuvian tentacle fetishism, also given a boost by years of appearance in Japan's erotic scene. This lusty sub-genre culminated in "Cthulhu Sex Magazine," which folded within the last year, after over twenty issues that sought to join the eldritch horrors of Lovecraft with their very human allure. Despite the magazine's demise, it's a safe bet that it won't be the last such venture.

Poor HPL. Though some would say his mythos offspring had it coming--at least his psycho-analytical literary scholars and biographers, who see sexual repression lurking in the twisted shadows of every theme and entity appearing in Lovecraft's tales. Not to mention more obvious sexual symbolism in many of his slimy, tentacled creations. Still, there's some comfort. Lovecraftians, more so than admirers of other sub-genres, tend to have thick skins, patiently taking the good with the bad. And as with the bland, pure Lovecraftian pastiches of decades past and the more recent slew of gutter-quality films to carry his name, the Lovecraftian might do best to laugh off this latest tickle adaptation.

-Grim Blogger