Where to start for the budding Lovecraftian?

[Soel]

You left out one of the few GOOD Lovecraft movies - Re-animator. Most of Lovecraft based movies are best avoided.
Dagon is a fairly straight adaptation of "A Shadow Over Innsmouth" another good story to read. While it's not a bad movie it is missing something and is ultimately sort of eh.

I'll second Reanimator, and Reanimator 2, but avoid Beyond Reanimator at all costs.

Dagon was pretty good, I felt. Some really effective scenes therein.

I'll add that the last two on the original list are going to be released together on a dvd sometime soon, if not already. Dunno how good they are.

From Beyond was pretty good. It gave a nice sense of the word "etherial."

Avoid Cthulu Mansion, if you ever see it on some rental shelf. It doesn't have the feel at all of any of the above.

I would recommend a couple of other films that seem Lovecraft inspired-

In the Mouth of Madness - very Lovecraftian themed with madness, and creature from somewhere else.

Castle Freak - stars Jeffery Combs and Barbara Crampton, directed by Stuart Gordon (all involved with Renanimator 1 and 2, and From Beyond.)

Evil Dead (and the film that inspired it, Equinox, 1969) - Necronomicon inside...

The Beyond - more of a zombie film, but still similar to some of the themes above.

 

[mmadsen]

Any books/stories in particular?

I'd recommend The Beast of Averoigne. (That's an early version of the story, not the final edit.)

I'd also recommend reading the "Classics of Fantasy" column on Clark Ashton Smith.

 

[Desdichado]

One last suggestion. Avoid any of the other stories written by others of the "Lovecraft" circle, esp August Derleth? While they ape the subject and style of his stories, they completely lack the sense of the unknown and the alien that make his best stories so unique.

Huh. I was actually going to suggest looking into those as soon as you've put down half or dozen or so of the true Lovecraft classics. I haven't liked anything much by Derleth; he was a hack of the worst order, and he absolutely did not get the whole point of the Lovecraftian vibe. But Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long and others wrote darn good "Lovecraftian" tales, and even contributed such standbies of the mythology as the hounds of Tintallos, Tsathoggua, the Book of Eibon, "Nameless Cults" and others.

And, they were also good writers.

 

[Rackhir]

Huh. I was actually going to suggest looking into those as soon as you've put down half or dozen or so of the true Lovecraft classics. I haven't liked anything much by Derleth; he was a hack of the worst order, and he absolutely did not get the whole point of the Lovecraftian vibe. But Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long and others wrote darn good "Lovecraftian" tales, and even contributed such standbies of the mythology as the hounds of Tintallos, Tsathoggua, the Book of Eibon, "Nameless Cults" and others.

And, they were also good writers.

I've not read much by Clark Ashton Smith, so I can't comment on his stuff. Bloch I've read a fair amount of. His Cthulhu stuff wasn't bad, but I wasn't very impressed by it either. Howard's stuff from what I've read of it, well reads like REH's stuff. More like Conan than Lovecraft, not bad stuff, but not very much in the feel of it. In general I've had bad experiences with "Cthulhu Mythos" stories by anyone else, though The Hounds of Tindalos was pretty good. Clive Barker in his short stories does manage to capture something of Lovecraft's style though they are very different stories. I can heartily recomend "The Hellbound Heart" (basis for the movie Hellraiser) as one of the best horror stories I've ever read.

 

[ShrinkyLink]

The Rats In The Walls, three am, one glass of wine. It's how I started.

 

[Desdichado]

I've not read much by Clark Ashton Smith, so I can't comment on his stuff. Bloch I've read a fair amount of. His Cthulhu stuff wasn't bad, but I wasn't very impressed by it either. Howard's stuff from what I've read of it, well reads like REH's stuff. More like Conan than Lovecraft, not bad stuff, but not very much in the feel of it. In general I've had bad experiences with "Cthulhu Mythos" stories by anyone else, though The Hounds of Tindalos was pretty good. Clive Barker in his short stories does manage to capture something of Lovecraft's style though they are very different stories. I can heartily recomend "The Hellbound Heart" (basis for the movie Hellraiser) as one of the best horror stories I've ever read.

All of that is not necessarily a bad thing. Lovecraft had great, brilliant ideas, and he's worth reading for that alone, but as a writer he often left a lot to be desired. I've often wished for a truly talented and skilled writer to take some of the same ideas; or at least the same vibe, and really run with it.

 

[Alzrius]

Reanimator: "To Life, to Life, I'll bring all these dead men to life..."

"He's learned a way for surviving them."

"Really reviving them."

"He can do it! To life, to life, he brings them."

 

[Alzrius]

The Call of Cthulhu, The grand old gentleman of the Mythos Stories

I fixed the link here for you.

 

[Testament]

Barker does a bit of the "things outside reality as we know it" with The Great and Secret Show, and its sequel Everville. He has some of Lovecraft's ideas on horror, but takes a different tact. Still worth reading though, "The Hellbound Heart" and any of the Books of Blood collections are great.

 

[The Serge]

... and any of the Books of Blood collections are great.

"Rawhead Rex."