Del Toro Wants Lovecraft's "Mountains" to be A Grade Film

Though this is probably finding its way around the blogosphere at a steady pace by now, news regarding the biggest H.P. Lovecraft cinematic adaptation to date is too important not to pass on. Film maker Guillermo del Toro was recently interviewed by Aintitcool.com. During the dialogue, he gave a direct update about the status of his proposed film based on Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness:"

Q: You're saying that you know you need to get a little braver, you're trying to work up your bravery. That's something that strikes me that will be very necessary to mount AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS. Is this something that you're working on?

Del Toro: No, no, no. I have exactly the set of tools that I need to be brave on MOUNTAINS. It's just that when you see something that somebody else is doing that you would never do, you admire it, you know? But no, MOUNTAINS is exactly the movie I would like to do; it would push buttons, and it's extreme in many areas. It's a hard R-rated, big production tentpole in the genre of horror.

What I love about tentpole horror - which is not done much anymore, if at all - is that there was a time when you could see something like ALIEN or THE SHINING or THE THING. Movies that came not as a B-movie product of a studio, but as an A, tentpole, big release, high-end production like THE EXORCIST, and so on and so forth. And what I would love with MOUNTAINS is for it to have all the luster and the scope of a tentpole horror movie, but be R-rated. Not because I want to do gore for gore's sake, but because it is a very adult movie, and the consequences of things are really deep and disturbing. Hopefully, one day, I will have the clout to do it. But no, I am equipped with the exact bravery to go crazy on all the movies I make.

It seems del Toro is definitely feeling the pressure to do this right--and that's a good thing--given the sub-par history of Lovecraftian cinema, which has mercifully been turning around this past decade. Unfortunately, this also sounds like it will be awhile before the film will even start rolling forward, let alone hitting the screen. But at least a prominent director with vision is treating Lovecraft's fiction carefully.

-Grim Blogger