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Dagon

Dagon

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Salute to the Lovecraft Mythos
Review: Based on the MANY poor interpretations of the works of H.P. Lovecraft, one would generally be swayed away from watching anything that claimed to be based on his work. But every once in a while, there comes a movie that successfully claws its way out of the sludge and backwash the other films leave behind. Dagon is such a movie.
Not only is it wonderfully accurate, but also envelops the whole notable dark and disturbing atmosphere that is so important to the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Also, there are many little things in the movie that only Lovecraft readers would grasp onto... the reference to Miskatonic University, and the town "En Boca" in which the story takes place, cleverly means Innsmouth. I highly suggest this movie to anyone who is a fan of the genre... they will not be disappointed.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not A Vampire Movie, Don't Be Fooled By Video Box.
Review: A young couple and an older couple are traveling in a houseboat. The young man continues to have vivid dreams that he has had before. After awakening, he feels everything has changed somehow. His girlfriend says it is because they are now rich. To him it is something else. He doesn't even feel like having sex at this point. Out in the ocean, they see a strange, wild thunderdtorm hovering over a small town. The storm moves over them and madly rocks the houseboat. The sea is mad. The older woman is injured and can not move her leg. The boat is filling up with water. The young couple go ashore to this town where everyone is so pale and weird and it is always raining. They try to ask for help in a church and later the woman and ultimatly the man is told to go to the hotel. That is just the plot for starts. Lepers, zombies, human sea creatures and a giant octopussy are abound. Plays like those old 1970's Italian/Spanish films. May hold your attention, but do not be fooled by the video box, this is not a vampire movie. DVD includes two audio commentaries, storyboards, production art and movie trailer.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Now That's a Horror Movie!
Review: Fantastic H.P. Lovecraft adaptation! I enjoyed it immensely. Not for the squeamish though.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: I am not quite sure what to think
Review: This movie is so strange. The plot of the movie was???? It was a weird movie and I really didn't care for it. It just wasn't scary, just really weird and the characters. Weird is all I can say.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not "DAGON", but "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"
Review: This fairly well-done film based on an H.P. Lovecraft story, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", is obviously not a high-budget film. That being said, it is a great effort to put to film the great writing of Lovecraft. Though both stories, "Dagon" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" are great stories, it is obvious this is based on the later, and has little to do with the former.
The lead character and his girlfriend are enjoying a yacht trip with another couple when they become stranded near a creepy fishing village. The first pair decide to go to the village for help, and are quickly embroiled in the conspiracy of men who are part sea creature. They become more ichythysian as time goes on, and don't want outsiders discovering their secret worship of the god Dagon or their condition. They perform rituals in the praise of Dagon, and wear human skin during these rituals. The merefolk have a sinister purpose and evil designs against the couple as they battle through a "Night of the Living Dead" type scenario against "Creature From the Black Lagoon" type beings.
This film is well done, and a lot of fun (especially fun for people familiar with the Lovecraftian mythos). The plot is familiar to American audiences, with nothing too unusual (aside from Lovecraft's bizarre ideas mixed in). Would Lovecraft have approved? In general, Lovecraft didn't like films, so he probably would have disliked this one with rest. As is the usual, this film does not live up to actually reading the story, and does not live up to the "Dagon" story at all, but it is Lovecraftian in intent and thrust, and fans of Lovecraft and horror films will not be disappointed.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: For Cthulhu fans only!
Review: First, I bought this video from an Amazon associate and got excellent service and a great price. Second, the quailty of the tape was brand new and played well for several viewings with a crystal clear picture and good sound quality. Third, as a fan of anything associated with HP Lovecraft, I enjoyed the movie a heck of a lot. The film might be too over-the-top for the non-initiated into the mythos of Lovecraft, but is a good flick nontheless. It's about a group of people who get stranded on a remote island off the coast of Spain that is inhabited by a strange, reclusive people of amphibious extraction. Based upon the classic, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" by HP Lovecraft, made by Stuart Gordon the director of "Re-animator." A must see for any fan. Also check out Tales Out of Innsmouth: New Stories of the Children of Dagon (Call of Cthulhu Fiction) by Robert M. Price (Editor), Inc Staff , Enjoy!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: He's slimy, misunderstood, and he needs your love
Review: ...If you've ever read the story "Dagon" you know it's just a short about a castaway that sails into a morass and sees a nasty green behemoth capering around an oblelisk, just Lovecraft meat and potatoes. This movie is actually based on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", though it's bottlenecked on an island instead of the coast of New England. I thought this was the best (and only decent) Lovecraft movie since T.D.H. with super hot Sandra Dee. There are major differences, of course, such as the addition of the hero AND his girlfriend. Lovecraft seemed to stay away from the chick factor whenever possible. And there is the fact that a hybrid priestess is involved, and the fact that Dagon's spawn, the Deep Ones, were a roughly bipedal version of fish and frog: In here, they tend towards octopoid traits, which makes you think of the main man Cthulhu. So don't worry, it's still cool.

The hero and his girlfriend get stranded on the island, and the girl is immediately abducted by the freakish Dagon cultists. The hero, Paul (Marsh) is constantly plagued by dreams involving a nice looking little chick who frequently displays tentacles, fins and fangs. He ends up in a moldering, filthy hotel (check out the toilet in that place!), like the classic scene from Shadow Over Innsmouth, waiting for the return of his girlfriend, not knowing that she's been taken. This affords a kind of comical part of the movie, where all the flounder-eyed, webbed and tentacled freaks come to pay him a visit. He ends up escaping, crashing through a window, running through a gauntlet of cultists, until he eventually finds the poor old drunk guy, the only human on the island, that explains to him the advent and degenerate worship of the god Dagon. In the movie, Dagon takes on an uncharacteristic alpha male love-hungry mode, demanding female sacrifices to carry his unholy seed. The result of these sacrifices is a race of hybrid creatures that eventually shed their human vestigies to become blissful, ageless sea monsters.

Marsh eventually finds the flesh and blood girl of his dreams, drawn to her in ways he doesn't understand. She is the local high priestess, no less, a blood descendant of the seafaring captain that originally brought the Dagon theology to the island. When he pulls back the sheet and sees that she's a little more monster than chick, he freaks out and is on the run again. All of the running with the shambling, loping and crawling man-monsters only a breath or two behind him, kind of creepy and yet funny too, really captures the essence of Shadow Over Innsmouth. I didn't get the whole ritual thing with the skinning and tanning of human hides, though. The cultists wear ther skins to their ritual ceremonies; I think maybe they watched Chainsaw Massacre about two or three hundred times too many.

Near the end of the movie, expect a cameo by the big man himself, Dagon, who just needs a little love and understanding. I hope that the effort that went into this movie might mark the future efforts of other attempts. What about At the Mountains of Madness? Shadow out of Time? Or the Call of Cthulhu? Yeah baby. If you like reading Lovecraft, you'll like this movie. if you don't, it might not be your cup of tea.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A truly horrible parody of a Lovecraft novel
Review: What you see (on the DVD cover, that is) is exactly what you get: a C-rated horror flick "based" on H.P. Lovecraft's "Shadows over Innsmouth." The fine novel is ruthlessly dissected, basic plot is ripped out of it, the rest thrown away. If you are into rubber tentacles and generously spilled cranberry juice, if Lovecraft stories for you are nothing but a bunch of monsters, then hurry to get this movie. Otherwise, just get comfortable, grab the story and enjoy it in its entirety - dark athmosphere, wonderful language - all that makes Lovecraft's fiction so much appreciated.

As for the movie, there is one thought that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. I know that one day The Great Cthulhu will rise and he will summon those who created this atrocious movie in front of him and they will pay a horrible horrible price for what they have done.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A must for Lovecraft fans
Review: First off, while this movie is called Dagon, it's actually based largely on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," one of Lovecraft's most successful stories. Of course, it has been modernized, but it I think it still held true to what Lovecraft was shooting for. Even though the film was made by Stuart Gordon, who directed the other two best Lovecraft movies (The Re-Animator and From Beyond), I wasn't expecting much when I picked this one up. However, I was wrong to underestimate it.

The movie, although undoubtedly "B", was spectacular. The scenes were erie, suspenseful, and ominous, the acting quite decent (Ezra Godden from Band of Brothers plays the overwhelmed, nuerotic lead), and I didn't even mind the sometimes poor CGI special effects. As far as the movie goes, it is much more like From Beyond than Re-Animator, in that it attempts to be more wicked and dark than campy. Although it's not too violent, there are one or two somewhat gory scenes. It was shot in spain, and the run down town was very effective at provoking a sense of the macabre.

As far as the plot goes, it's about a group of friends in a boating accident that forces one couple to seek help on a nearby island. When they get to the run down island village, they found out that it is inhabited by a race of subhuman creatures that worship a dark sea god. It's not long before they realize they would have been better off drowning.

I really liked it and if you are a Lovecraft fan, or if you enjoyed Re-Animator or From Beyond, you will want to give this fair go at Lovecraft on screen a chance.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great film but beware
Review: Fantastic low budget horror film. Great lovecraftian horror, skinnings, tentacles, the mythos, ... the works!

Beware though- the audio mix is screwed up. It blew the centre speaker on my surround system :(


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