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The work of H.P. Lovecraft has had a rather uneasy relationship with film adaptations. The attraction of his fiction for filmmakers is understandable: this is classic horror, and the cosmic evil on display can potentially lead to huge payoffs. Yet his prose style is very difficult, and most of the attempts at adaptation have been, at best, flawed. Stuart Gordon is the director who most consistently returns to his work, but he doesn’t really have the right touch. Re-Animator is a hell of a lot of fun, and it he...ps that the stories it is based on are Lovecraft being deliberately silly, but there is nothing very Lovecraftian about the result. The closest Gordon has come to getting it right is Dagon (which is actually his long-awaited adaptation of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”).

Most of the other Lovecraft adaptations out on DVD aren’t really worth the effort to track down. There are a few that are rewarding. I’ll mention three. Two are mainstream releases. One will take a bit more effort (but not much) to obtain, and is more than worth it.

Without question, the most celebrated bad director is Ed Wood. He is the portal through which so many people discover the joys of the terrible film. He stands out from so many contenders because his films are not ordinarily bad. They are deeply felt, deeply earnest. He meant what he was saying, whatever that was. And his style, particularly his screenwriting style, is unmistakeable. Insanely purple, banal, and incomprehensible, it cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s work. It is as individual as the writing of the Co...n Brothers, but for all the wrong reasons.

But Wood is far from being the only deity in the badfilm pantheon. There are other directors who vie for his throne. And it is one of those I’m here to tell you about today: Doris Wishman.