Travel Log of the 2024 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR
Travel Log of the 2024 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR
Movies, Madness, and Mouth-watering Korean Fried Chicken in the PNW
This past weekend, I had the chance to attend the 29th annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon! As with NecronomiCon back in August, I got to go with the talented writer and burgeoning Lovecraft scholar
of the (go follow her!). Over the weekend we gathered in the historic Hollywood Theatre with fellow fans of Lovecraft and watched hours of horror on the big screen accompanied with a few panels and readings led by the movers-and-shakers of Lovecraft studies and -related media. Although it was a short outing to the far corner of the country, it was one to remember!To read my previous Travel Log on NecronomiCon 2024, check it out at the link below!
NecronomiCon 2024 Travel Log
I flew into PDX late Friday night so unfortunately I was sailing through inky black space while the festivities kicked off in the Hollywood District. I really only had Saturday and part of Sunday to enjoy the festival, but my entire time there was one to be remembered!
Saturday morning seemed like it would be gloomy as the leaf-strewn streets were damp and overcast in grey. The clouds, however, opened up to grant us a blue-skied autumnal day—and this persisted the entire weekend! We drove into Portland’s Hollywood District a little after noon and lined up with fellow fans outside the doors of the Theatre to check-in. After getting some armbands, we made our way to the Upper Right Theater where the founders of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, prepared for a live reading of “The Statement of Randolph Carter” and “From Beyond.” As usual, the HPLHS always knocks it out of the park with any creative extrapolation on Lovecraft’s original works and this live double-header was no exception; Branney and Leman perfectly set the tone for the next 48 hours of horror and Lovecraftian lore. During the Q&A portion, the duo announced some exciting projects in the works at the HPLHS headquarters, including an audiobook of the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Immediately afterwards, we went to the Sonder Bar just down the street to join Sean and Andrew along with guests Gretchen Brooks, Ken Hite, and Molly Tanzer for a panel on the myriad of authors who influenced Lovecraft at different ages in his life. Staples of the discussion included Poe, Arthur Machen, Robert W. Chambers, and Algernon Blackwood. Although I had heard these names referenced in Lovecraft’s essays and his own fiction, it was nice to get an in-depth rundown of how each author specifically influenced his works.
We returned to the Theatre to catch a showing of Aaron Moorhead’s Resolution (2012). Moorhead was this year’s Guest of Honor at the film festival, but I hadn’t heard of him before then. He and some fellow directors were wrapping up a panel on making cosmic horror without directly referencing Lovecraft and some of the sentiments of that discussion were apparent in Resolution. This film, made right after Moorhead graduated film school, follows a man trying to force his friend into sobriety in the boondocks of San Diego. Meanwhile, some forces outside their control including frustrated drug dealers, reservation security officers, and a mysterious entity obsessed with stories might spell a bad end for the pair. Resolution was a very experimental film, as explained by Moorhead prior to the screening, as it plays around with and pushes against certain filmmaking norms such as not including a soundtrack. The cosmic horror elements of this film were left very peripheral until the very end; there were hints throughout of some sort of ancient, eldritch force that has haunted the area for years prior.
After a dinner break, we resumed our evening programming with an exciting premier of a new mockumentary directed by Stuart Ortiz, one half of the “Vicious Brothers” most famously known for the Grave Encounters movies (2011 and 2012). Neither Rose nor I had any prior knowledge of this film other than the description given in our programs (which were made up to be like newspapers covering eldritch happenings), but the story that followed after it was introduced by one of the festival’s organizers, Brian Callahan, was something that caught both of us off guard.
Strange Harvest: Occult Murders in the Inland Empire (2024) is presented as a true crime documentary (although the events are fictional) that follows two homicide detectives tracking a brutal serial killer with ritualistic habits operating in San Bernardino county and surrounding areas from 1995-2013. The film’s premise and execution very much reminded me of the first season of True Detective (2014) right down to the almost 20-year time jump, but with more explicit eldritch and supernatural elements. The whole thing chilled me to the bone, beginning to end. What I really appreciated about the first Grave Encounters movie was how seriously the frame story treated the premise, and this mockumentary as well handles its subjects with grave certainty even when they start reaching stranger heights. While Strange Harvest certainly revels in its references to Lovecraft and disturbing the audience with the cruelly creative killings delivered by the killer, dubbed “Mr. Shiny”, there are some somber moments that exemplify how families and survivors of serial killers might deal with the fallout of such a harrowing experience.
To round out the night, we caught a late showing of some short films, quite a few of which we had seen at NecronomiCon 2024 back in August. Several of the films were actually adaptations of or inspired by Edgar Allan Poe stories, one being an animated short, titled “Mistletoe”, that incorporates elements from several of his tales and a short, apocryphal horror story about a bride and groom that play an ill-fated game of hide-and-seek on their wedding day. The shorts block concluded with a Mandarin film about agents dealing with a strange contamination that causes severe hallucinations and overall provided a mind-bending take on some concepts of cosmic horror.
Sunday began with a quick panel on sword and sorcery in the Hollywood Library held by Molly Tanzer, Ken Hite, and Adam Scott Glancy. The discussion covered incorporating cosmic horror into s&s, the difference between high and low fantasy, the current scene of s&s fiction, thoughts on what qualifies a heroic fantasy protagonist, and who would win in a battle royale including all the known s&s heroes.
The main feature for our last day at the film festival was the world premier of the Lovecraftian love letter feature film The Letter (2024) directed by Vincent Shade. We snagged ourselves some nice central seats towards the back rows of the main theater in the Hollywood Theatre to take in as much of the dark spectacle as we could. The movie was a 1920s period piece that drew inspiration from numerous tales by Lovecraft and his overall Mythos but had an original story also very much in the vein of the grandmaster. The plot follows the mild-mannered Jonathan Ackley who is recruited to find the missing daughter of a New England lord, all while uncovering the secrets of his family, the manor house he’s sheltered in, and the darkness of the cosmos itself. There were lots of Lovecraftian Easter Eggs jam-packed into the 1 hour and 50 minute run-time, as well as a postcredits scene hinting at the possibility of future installments in this world. I hope Shade gets to direct more movies as follow-ups to The Letter, and I would happily add this film (along with Strange Harvest) to my DVD collection not only to commemorate this trip but support the directors.
We concluded our programming with a return to the Hollywood Library for a very open discussion panel on Lovecraft and science fiction. The panelists, David Heath, Gretchen Brooks, and D.B. Spitzer opened the floor to audience participation as they covered which stories of Lovecraft were considered sci-fi, what sci-fi tropes could be found in his stories, and Lovecraftian elements in films and TV into the modern day. The whole discussion was recorded by Spitzer for The People’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos so you should be able to listen to it very soon!
I was very grateful to attend the Lovecraft Film Festival for the first time this year, right on the heels of my first ever visit to NecronomiCon as well! Being part of these community events for fans of obscure horror really makes me happy to have discovered this literature in the first place. Learning about the current creative projects and scholarship taking place throughout the community really inspires me to get in on the discussion and efforts being made to bring a subgenre of horror, created by a man who thought he wouldn’t aspire to very much, out to all dark corners of the Earth. In the future, I hope to attend more of these conventions and festivals, and hopefully participate in author readings and panels! It might take some time, but being so inspired by Lovecraft, Howard, and other pulp fiction authors, I’d enjoy sharing what I’ve studied and written with the rest of these fan communities. I also hope to get to meet other Substack writers and my own followers at some of these future events! (We will definitely be back for the 30th anniversary next year!).
If you missed the live festival, there will be a streaming version on the weekend of October 18th! This is a more truncated version with most of the shorts and only a few feature films, but hopefully the other movies will have streaming or physical media releases in the near future!
Thanks for reading this week’s post! Have you ever been to the Lovecraft Film Festival? What was your favorite film you’ve seen there? If not, what Lovecraftian movies are on your watchlist for this Halloween?
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Thanks for mentioning me. You did an amazing recap of this wonderful event, you did the whole trip justice. :)
Very nice description of your short but enjoyable Lovecraft event!