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Thus far, the people who've come closest to getting it...rightest, I guess...are Japanese director Hideo Nakata (the doom-laden central figure of whose modern masterpiece Ringu could more than give Wilbur Whately a run for his money in the halfbreed Old One stakes) and American director Stuart Gordon (whoseRe-Animator, though just as parodic and demented as their source material, remains riotously true to Lovecraft's central mad-scientist-as-black-magician-with-less-innate-professional-integrity paradigm). Which is why Gordon's long-awaited triumphant return to this regrettably fallow field really shouldn't surprise me much except in a pleasant way, especially since the result, Dagon, is such a cool and squid-slick little box of nasty treats. It's a version of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", his classic New England gill-men novella, which will also inevitably set you a-ruminating over the concept of horror as Other...this time-honored trope being oh so particularly pertinent now, post-September 11, when a fresh flood of support for the metaphorical demonization of (certain) other cultures can still be occasionally seen permeating our own. Dagon begins with a vacationing couple, overworked American dweeb Paul Marsh (Ezra Godden) and his Spanish girlfriend Barbara (Raquel Merono), who are forced to row to the nearby fishing village of Imboca for help after their friends' pleasure-cruiser runs aground on the harbour rocks. Imboca, however, soon proves to be a rainy, cobblestoned place full of incredibly unhelpful people with hyperthyroid eyes, scaly skin and a lurching, shuffling way of walking. Paul ends up getting the low-down from town drunk Ezekiel (Francisco Rabal)—apparently, the whole town has converted to the worship of Dagon, "god of all the slimy things of the Sea," and is now populated by creatures caught partway through the process of becoming fully aquatic. They crave human blood, propagate through human women, and their leader is a gorgeously grotesque apparition who already haunts Paul's dreams... Properly atmospheric, yet fast-paced and surprisingly vicious, Dagon manages to be sexy and bloody without being facile, maintaining a continual sense of shrinking options and mounting dread which promises—and delivers—few compromises in its truly Lovecraftian climax. What I find most interesting about it, however, is the way that its translation from America to Europe, necessary for reasons of budget and production, has actually highlighted rather than obscured the original themes which provide "Innsmouth"'s lasting kick. From F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu on down, the idea of an inherently negative, "degenerate" alien culture infiltrating and contaminating ours from within like an (in)human plague has been one of horror's most enduring tropes. How do we know these people are bad? Because they try to seem like us, but can't, because they aren't: Physically different, religiously and historically separate, mentally and morally distinct. Though they usually somehow manage to find us sexually attractive, not to mention compatible for breeding purposes—the all-too-familiar spectre of miscegenation raising its half-human head—which seems to chime in with all of Lovecraft's established personal pychological tics: An autodidact's fascination with root languages and ethnos-spanning occult symbolism, liberally admixed with a "normal" 1920s'-era educated American Caucasian's frankly racist fear of genetic contamination and in-breeding. By his own admission, Gordon has been trying to complete a version of "Innsmouth" for years. But the project always came to nothing, mainly because no American company was willing to provide the necessary budget for extensive location shooting, underwater photography, convincing makeup F/X and a small but integral dash of CGI. Then Gordon moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he founded the Fantastic Factory film production company—and suddenly, everything became possible. Already using a Spanish crew, Spanish F/X experts, Spanish character actors, Spanish extras and a sprinkling of Spanish stars, Gordon also decided to concentrate his shoot in the Spanish fishing town of Cambaro, using the native gallego dialect as the "secret language" of the Imbocans/Innmouthians...a very significant choice indeed, within context. You have to wonder: Attention and financial rewards aside, didn't the native Cambarans resent having their birth-tongue cross-referenced as the cant of a nascent colony of underwater monsters? And better yet, wouldn't H. P. himself have been tickled pink to discover what 1960s radicals would surely call a blatant case of cultural misappropriation at the heart of his favorite ethno-phobic horror fantasia? One way or another, Dagon's a fitting culmination to Gordon's long haul uphill: A weird combination of appropriation and demonization; on the one hand, this stuff is exotic and strangely attractive, yet on the other, its very attraction might be a Trojan Horse trap designed to lure us into violating the necessarily rigid behavioural standards which help us support our mutual White Man's Burden. Before you know it, the streets of Innsmouth and the world beyond will be jam-packed with bug-eyed hybrids: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. Iaaa indeed, y'all.
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Enron has cheated thousands of people out of their life's savings. Then there's WorldCom. And ImClone. In a world where everyone is cheating you, isn't it nice to know somebody is willing to give you your money's worth? In his new movie, Dagon, Stuart Gordon (director of Re-Animator and From Beyond), ladles out some wonderfully smelly, corrupt, degenerate, ill, disgusting images and sounds that'd make Hieronymous Bosch wanna lay off the ergot. I'm tellin' ya... there were moments in Dagon that made me wanna paint myself green, put on a pair of swim-fins, draw gills on my neck with magic marker, and flop around like a Deep One. Iä! A lotta of people I've spoken to hate Dagon. They've each had a number of valid criticisms: the threats chasing one character are mighty slow, so there's no real threat; there's no good reason for the baddies to be chasing our nominal 'hero'; the movie stops dead for an extended flashback; the movie is clunky. Like I said. All valid criticisms. But... I... don't... care! Phgathn! Dagon is a bitchin' movie that captures the flavor of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories, as well as the flavor of certain Lovecraft-inspired works near and dear to my heart. Dagon, nominally an adaptation of Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," has a lot of the faults of its source material. "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" stops dead for a long flashback recounted by a drunk; there's no real reason for the baddies to chase the nominal "hero" of the story... I could go on. And yeah... while Dagon is based on Lovecraft's "Innsmouth," it also looks like a riff on the old Creepy and Eerie comics of my youth, as well on those early issues of Heavy Metal before that mag started to suck. Dagon reminded me of rainy fall afternoons of my youth spent with Snickers bars and long shuddery contemplations of Arthur Suydam's art. The script for Dagon, by Lovecraft-adaptation stalwart Dennis Paoli, had been in development for fifteen years. I guess Gordon and company could only get funding from Spanish interests, because the narrative has been transplanted from New England to coastal Spain. Instead of trying to pass Spain for Massachusetts, Gordon and Paoli use the native culture and architecture of where they shot the film for maximum creepiness. I think the decision works ultra-bitchin'ly. I don't know where exactly Dagon was filmed, but the town that became an ersatz Innsmouth is gorgeously slimy and fungoid. I swear, some shots of those twisted streets looked like the nightmare towns that show up in Jason Van Holldaner's art. Cool. Some folks have been unfairly picking on Dagon's male lead, Ezra Godden. Dagon was obviously written with everyone's favorite twitchy little dark-haired horror guy, Jeffrey Combs in mind. Godden plays a twitchy little dark-haired guy. With glasses. And a Miskatonic sweat-shirt. Let's give the guy a break though, shall we? Yeah... he's supposed to be Jeffrey Combs. But he's not. Big deal. Besides, I think Combs is now too old for this kind of part. It's not like Gordon and company are trying to peddle George Lazenby for Sean Connery, are they? Personally, I'd love to see Godden play Herbert West's kid brother in the upcoming Beyond Re-Animator. Or, maybe a Herbert West kind of Mini-Me clone? And hey... I gotta give Dagon kudos for going head-long into the implied realms of Lovecraft sexuality. Yeah, it's one thing when old HPL talks about "unclean, squamous breeding practices." But when a calamari-cutie like Macarena Gomez slithers on the scene, one gets an idea of just how that might work. Man... once you get an Innsmouth "gill-job," you never go back! Does Dagon reach the fluid-spurting heights of Re-Animator? Nope! Does Dagon provide lots of nasty thrills and long sequences of unease? Yep! Look, guys... you got a creepy coastal town. You got the requisite strangers come to said town. You got monsters. You got antediluvian demon-gods. You got temples. You got unclean denizens chanting unclean prayers. You got sacrifices. And you got no excuse to not love this wonderfully enjoyable Creature Feature. Sure, it's clunky. Sure, thudding blocks of exposition club you over the head. Sure, the CGI is cheesy. Who cares? Dagon is the kind of scary movie for which Friday nights with friends and popcorn were made. In a more innocent time, you'd have seen Dagon at the Drive-In... maybe along with The Haunted Palace or The Crimson Cult. For now, the new Lions Gate VHS and DVD release will have to do.
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