Dagon
DVD
*
Directed by
Stuart Gordon
Written by
H.P. Lovecraft
Dennis Paoli
Cast
Ezra Godden .... Paul
Francisco Rabal .... Ezequiel
Raquel Meroo .... Brbara
Macarena Gmez .... Uxa
Brendan Price .... Howard
Birgit Bofarull .... Vicki
Uxa Blanco .... Madre Ezequiel/Ezequiel's Mother
Ferrn Lahoz .... Sacerdote/Priest
Joan Minguell .... Xavier
Alfredo Villa .... Capitn Combarro/Captain Combarro
Jos Lifante .... Recepcionista Hotel/Desk Clerk
Javier Sandoval .... Padre Ezequiel/Ezequiel's Father
Victor Barreira .... Ezequiel Joven/Young Ezequiel
Fernando Gil .... Sacerdote Catlico/Catholic Priest
Jorge Luis Prez .... Chico/Boy
Ah,
Howard Phillip Lovecraft. Your work has been adapted, stolen, modified
and outright bastardized more times than I care to count. Your name
appears above more titles than John Carpenter, not to mention more
opening credit crawls than Bob and Harvey Freaking Weinstein, and I get
the distinct feeling that, somewhere, you are SPINNING in your grave.
If you are in hell right now, you are likely tied to an uncomfortable
chair and forced, your eyelids pried open, to watch these movies over
and over again. Cthulhu Mansion alone is probably making you vomit, but
that's another story.
But anyway, back to Dagon.
We join
our story with the next dot-com millionaire in the making on a boat
with his wife and their friends. The boat, of course, doesn't last long
and the dot-com millionaire and wife head ashore into a small fishing
village. Stopping into a church with a familiar sign, Esoterica Orde De
Dagon, allows these stranded friends to find some help. This sets off a
chain of events in the most evil little seaside village since John
Carpenter and his "Village of the Damned" redux, which, of course,
anyone even vaguely familiar with Lovecraft's work will see coming from
hundreds of nautical miles away. When the only church in town worships
the psychopathic meat-eating god of murderous mer-creatures, you know
it's not going to be Pleasantville On the Seaside.
And I
have to hand it to our boy genius here...when there's fifty angry
villagers storming his hotel room, how does he help himself? Not by
taking a couple minutes to push his bed and other furniture against the
door. Oh no, that'd be far too simple! He instead decides on removing a
deadbolt lock from one door and installing it on another with a SWISS
ARMY KNIFE!! He then takes the couple minutes he bought with the half -
installed deadbolt (at a net time loss of like a minute and a half--I
haven't seen an investment idea this miserable since the 'All Enron and
Haitian Penny Stock Portfolio'.) to take his skinny, hundred and fifty
pounds soaking wet body to try and break down the door into the room
next to his.
This guy's not the sharpest tool in the shed, folks.
And if you've ever wanted to see a man's face removed manually, Dagon is the title for you.
The
biggest problem with Dagon is that it doesn't seem to have much of a
point. It's a wandering, rambling discourse about an incident that
happened in a town full of monstrous mutant prosetylizers. It's like
Night of the Living Dead meets the Mormons. Random plot elements,
including the worst cliche of all, find their way into Dagon. The
cliche?
"(Fill in the Blank), I am your (circle one) father /
mother / sister / cousin / uncle / other _____________ / bookie /
former roommate."
Yes, it's one of THOSE movies...isn't it
bizarre how family members you never knew you had suddenly crop up when
you're stranded in an evil little town by the sea? You have to wonder
what these parents tell their kids.
"Gosh, son, you really
aren't an only child...we just don't talk about your sister because
she's a half human, half squid running the cult of Dagon on some island
somewhere."
It's like the Maury show on crack!
Although
you have to hand it to Lovecraft's bastardizers for sheer depth of
continuity. All the Lovecraft - based films I can recall seeing in the
last five years plug Miskatonic University in one way or another.
Someone somewhere in the film is invariably named 'Howard' out of
homage, and Dagon is no different in either regard. As always, prime
baddie Cthulhu is mentioned.
All in all, Dagon is a horribly
confused contrivance that can never seem to get off the ground. Too
much script effort was blown on making sure the piece was self -
referential, and not enough was spent on making sure the piece made
SENSE.
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