New Details Released on Next Stuart Gordon Lovecraft Film

Bloody-digusting.com has released new details for Stuart Gordon's new adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep." The film, originally confirmed last summer, is due to begin shooting this April. Although no roles are cast yet, the guidelines for assigning them to screen talents are out today. It's worth skimming over this list to examine how closely this latest Gordon feature might correlate with Lovecraft's original story. Historically, Gordon has garnered admiration and production awards for making cult successes like Dagon and H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House. Yet, the slew of Reanimator films, forcing a blatantly humorous edge onto Lovecraft's original tale, is despised by more serious fans who see it as a bastardization of Lovecraft's original work (though it's interesting to note Lovecraft himself considered "Herbert West: Reanimator" to be hack work).

The same comedic and lusty elements of Reanimator generating this controversy also make appearances in nearly all of Gordon's Lovecraftian films. Based on the casting qualifications released by Bloody-disgusting, at least some of these Gordon standbys, taken from mainstream Hollywood rather than HPL, are almost certain to appear in The Thing on the Doorstep. The presence of nudity is sure to draw fire from the usual Gordon critics, as are details suggesting a fairly large plot divergence from Lovecraft's story.

It seems Gordon is giving Lovecraft's nervous, scholarly character Edward Derby a shotgun marriage before introducing the fateful seduction by the haunting Asenath Waite. Despite being a moderate divergence from the original text, where Derby remained unmarried and socially immature until meeting Asenath, Gordon's gamble may well throw an interesting love triangle into the mix. Katie Derby, the preset wife of Edward, could also play a role in assisting Daniel Meyer (Daniel Upton, who is also the story's narrator, in Lovecraft's original) in uncovering the horror behind Edward's sudden changes. Another potentially fascinating move by Gordon is assigning psychiatry careers to both Edward and Daniel.

Whether pre-existing knowledge of psychiatry falls flat as a mere plot convenience, or adds new twists to Lovecraft's spiderweb of mind-exchanging wickedness, is unknowable at this point. In fact, all of these designs by Stuart Gordon are subject to change, considering the movie won't even begin shooting until next quarter. In any event, this picture promises to deliver another high profile Lovecraft piece under Gordon's craftsmanship, with the usual love-hate entanglement common between the director and Lovecraftians.

-Grim Blogger