Horror Actressing: Barbara Crampton in "Re-Animator"
Tuesday, September 1, 2020 at 3:00PM by Jason Adams
Why's it so hard to put the work of H.P. Lovecraft on the screen? Over 80 years since the writer died it's real weird (an appropriate word in this context) to me that there's never been a truly grand-scale adaptation of his begging-for-just-that work, especially given how timely they do feel here in the 21st century as reality seems to morph into madness. Guillermo Del Toro notoriously tried for a decade to get At the Mountains of Madness off the ground to no avail, but that's the closest Hollywood has as yet come. Before theaters shut down in early 2020 we did get an unofficial HPL turn with Kristen Stewart in Underwater (which I truly dug) and we're now right this minute three episodes into the HBO series Lovecraft Country, which... well I'm waiting to see how that goes. Situating Lovecraft's profound racism against American race relations is hella smart, so I keep hope alive it will find its footing. (This latest episode felt like a tentacle squish in the right direction.)
In my talk there of notable Lovecraft adaptations I purposefully skipped over the hilariously disgusting 80s works of writer-director-madman Stuart Gordon though, in order to bring us to the subject of this week's edition of our "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series, which is Scream Queen and Horror Icon Barbara Crampton's turn as the "bubble-headed co-ed" Megan in 1985's Re-Animator...