It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer.

Yeah, I’d be awesome if I could start my story that way.

This past Saturday I had the sanity-shaking experience of attending the 2006 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland Oregon. This occasion brought a number of new experiences and revelations with it. Most relevantly, it was a chance to see some of the next generation’s finest filmmakers pay homage to an author who helped define the horror genre and, in several cases, lend their unique visions to his work. Less relevantly, it was my first trip from my new home in Seattle to the baffling bridge-maze of Portland. But most prominently and apparently, this trip revealed that, by all accounts, I am a terrible photographer.

Now what—some might ask—does that have to do at all with gaming, tabletop or otherwise? With any luck, the answer lies as close as your bookshelf or media center. The works of H.P. Lovecraft probably influence fantasy gaming—tabletop RPGs and video games—more significantly than those of any other author (okay, sans J.R.R. Tolkien). While Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, and countless others undoubtedly color numerous aspects of dozens of games, Lovecraft’s themes of otherworldly menace, insurmountable cosmic evil, unspeakable awe and dread, and tentacled, gibbering things appear again and again, from D&D to Warcraft and from Eternal Darkness to Lovecraft’s own RPG (and most famous short story), Call of Cthulhu.

Saturday started well enough, albeit at an hour I hadn’t seen since college and whose name I dare not speak. I was excited that I had remembered my camera and counted myself fortunate that I was presented with great views of the Space Needle and a pair of pretty boys sitting on the steps of their apartment building having a cozy morning coffee (Awwww!). I would have posted both of those pictures here if the Space Needle had turned out as anything more than a sun-spotted blur and the cute couple weren’t obstructed by a passing Hummer. Cest la vie.

Getting picked up, meeting with friends, and starting our trip south, what had begun as a pleasantly gray Seattle day slowly started to take a turn for the strange. The search for acceptable breakfast led us to getting a bit turned around in some nameless southern Washington town, and coming face to face with a flock of flightless seagull scavengers grown to unwholesome size. Don’t think that the above picture is a camera trick (God knows I wish I had some of those), them beasties are about the size of that car’s wheel. Needless to say, we chose to eat elsewhere so not to incite the wrath of Pazuzu’s minions.

Finding a safe place to dine, the longest leg of our three-hour drive commenced. Lengthy stretches of evergreen trees dotted by short runs of car dealerships and strip malls (beyond which I assume are small towns) make up much of southern Washington. This seemed like pretty standard Americana to me. At least, it did until we reached Tacoma and the fabled Tacoma Dome. As you can see from the picture, there is absolutely nothing strange going on in Tacoma Washington. We sped up a little out of fear of Trackasaurus and/or the Ice Capades.

Flash forward a few more hours (a little more getting lost) and we finally made it to the actual film festival. Hosted by the historic Portland Hollywood theatre, the building certainly seemed like the place to show a day’s worth of horror films. Beneath the aged, chipping facade I half expected the marquee to read Esoteric Order of Dagon rather than “H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.” Really, I guess either would have been appropriate, though. Since we were still early and the doors were closed, we figured that it’d be a good time to get lunch and check out the game store, Things from Another World.

This turned out to be something of a poor idea. While I wouldn’t say there was a huge turn out for the festival, there probably ended up being around five hundred folks, a good number of which were wise enough to get into line before us. It wasn’t a huge deal, as we had tickets purchased via the power of the interwebs. Standing in line also wasn’t too bad as there was a car fire considerate enough to happen right down the block for our entertainment.

Now. I had mentioned that it had already been a bit of a strange day…

Well, it turns out that some folks don’t need much of an excuse (or any excuse, really) to show their Imperial pride. Surprisingly congenial for a stormtropper, this nice fellow not only let me take his picture (even though some of my fellow Lovecraft fans were giving him the stink eye) but told me about the Star Wars Independent Film Festival that was happening that day as well. Weird. Turns out that Saturday October 7th was a good day to be a nerd in Portland.

The time for the festival to start finally rolled around, and after the initial crush of folks scrambling for tickets and rushing to theaters, we got our copies of the Daily Lurker, the festival’s newspaper, guidebook, and schedule, and headed off to our first film of the day: Cthulhu! (Yes, the exclamation mark is part of the title, or at least it was in the schedule.)

Cthulhu! was what it was. Unfortunately, that was a six-year-old Australian movie filmed on a budget of maybe $40 with a soundtrack created entirely in a metal shop (turns out that the warbly horror movie saw noise CAN get old). That the film tried to mesh a half-dozen Lovecraft stories into two grainy, hard to hear hours didn’t help it. In its defense, though, it did have a zombie mannequin and a car explosion.

After the film finished—and we woke one of my friends—we headed out into the packed exhibit hall. Although there were maybe only ten vendors, there was some pretty cool stuff. Lovecraft-related memorabilia, fiction, and clothing have a pretty good segment of the gamer gear market cornered and there was plenty of it to show off. One of the coolest booths was the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, a group that put out an impressive silent film version of “The Call of Cthulhu” a year or two ago and now sells some very authentic looking sculptures, props, and even a period duplicate of the Engel box featured in both the movie and short story.

Aside from Cthulhu magnets and lots of black, many-tentacled T-shirts—like the awesome, At the Brokeback Mountains of Madness shirt —there were a few other non-sequiters. My favorite was the one vendor hawking Lovecraft anthologies and hentai. Two great tastes that taste great together!? Is Lovecraft’s major impact on Japanese culture tentacle porn? This one guy seemed to think so.

Dark Horse Publishing was also there with a modest little booth. I was kind of impressed to see them. The film fest seemed like small beans and it was cool to see Dark Horse shipping out some folks to pay their respects. The guys from Dagon Industries were also there, with a bunch of Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green gaming books and the awesome Mother Hydra’s Mythos Rhymes.

Speaking of cool things to see in the exhibit hall, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of cute gamer boys there. Don’t get me wrong, the average age of the typical festival-goer was probably a grizzled 35, but a few cuties bucked the trend. Unfortunately, my “too-sly-for-my-own-good” camera work and desire NOT to be too much of a stalker meant that my series of cute Lovecraft boys didn’t come out too well. I did salvage one less-than-flattering shot of the Northwest Horror Professionals booth boy, though.

With more than a two hour break for dinner, we took a short break from the film festival and (after only a brief period of being lost) wandered into the bowels of Portland. There, we visited Powells Books, a three-or-four-floor bookstore that takes up an entire city block. The place is awesome, and I’m only bring it up now as an aside because it is so super cool. If you’re ever in Portland, go to Powells. Aside from millions of books, one of the neater parts of Powells are a few posts that bear the autographs of authors who have previously visited. I took the shot above showing off Perdido Street Station author, China Mieville’s signature. I had Neil Gaiman’s too—along with his grim reaper sketch—but fiddling with the flash ruined that one.

After an awesome dinner at the Laurelwood Public House & Brewery, we headed back to the Hollywood for a two-hour set of Lovecraft inspired short films. Animation, claymation, traditional film, the set was very impressive and alleviated the reservations Cthulhu! had left me with. The festival’s guest of honor, horror writer Ramsey Campbell was even on hand to introduce the 30 second to 20 minute-long films.

In my opinion, this was were the festival felt less like a bunch of middle-aged goth guys crammed into a theatre and more like a real artistic event. I was so impressed with these that I started taking down notes so I could show them to you fine folks. I missed the first few and some didn’t have websites or information I could find, but here’s what I’ve turned up:

Pan’s Labyrinth: This one was cheating, but still incredible: a trailer of the Guillermo del Toro’s December opus. After the awesome preview, Mr. del Toro poped onto the screen, greeted everyone at the festival, and told them to head over to Powells right away. Pretty cool! Del Toro is already scheduled to be a guest of honor at next year’s H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival (and is constantly rumored to be working on an “At the Mountains of Madness” script), so it’s pretty exciting to see him showing off his honest Lovecraft-cred. You can see the full trailer for Pan’s Labyrinth below.

Collectall and Hyde: A creepy, rhyming claymation piece with some good ol’fashioned Lovecraftian mental illness. You can see the whole thing right here.

Asleep in the Deep: A rather new and very modern retelling of Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erik Zhan,” this longish short won third place for best short film. Its pretty barebones IMDB page is here.

From Beyond: Second-place winner in the awards following the show, From Beyond is another creepy claymation-style film. There whole thing isn’t online, but a trailer for it is here.

Binding Silence: One of the most professional looking films of the entire festival and first-place winner, this piece had all the feeling of a Lovecraft story that Lovecraft didn’t write. You can check out the director’s page here.

Dredd Manor: A less subtle, episodic piece from the same guys who did From Beyond. It’s got a pretty cool werewolf. You can see the whole thing here.

The Thing With No Head: Probably one of the cutest things to be inspired by Lovecraft since Cthulhu Elvis, I was really hoping that this short, black and white, rhyming piece would be online, but it isn’t. You can check out pictures from it on its TTWNH website here.

Those were the ones I got notes on, but you can check out the festival’s shorts website for some links to other films I didn’t get a chance to see.

After the shorts, there was a quick break, during which both the most fortunate and unfortunate event of the day occurred. On my way through the theater (alone, with no witnesses, of course) I noticed I was walking right behind Ramsey Campbell. So, with the courage having a camera gives you, I approached the world-famous author and asked if I could take his picture, to which he kindly agreed. Raising my camera and taking aim as the polite British author smiled patiently, I pressed the button… and nothing happened. I did it again, and the green “low battery” light came up. Screaming all the curses I know as loud as I could while still keeping them in my head, I apologized for my equipment, thanked Mr. Campbell for his time and for traveling around the world to be there, shook his hand, and got out of his way to fiddle with my piece of $#!% camera—which, of course, immediately started working again. So, I got the candid shot here of Mr. Campbell—both a gentleman and a scholar—and headed off.

Not many people came to the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in costume—probably because it’s hard to dress like “unspeakable horror.” While there were a few people I considered asking to pose for pictures, they were mostly the type of folk I could imagine being very angry as they informed me that they’re not in costume. Therefore, when I found a girl actually dressed as Cthulhu I was eager to get a shot. She seemed to be excited to be asked as well, striking a pose and giving a little wing flap.

We finished off the film festival with Alex Turner’s sadly straight to DVD film Dead Birds. I don’t know the man so I won’t presume to say one way or the other, but the slightly “swishy” and seemingly honestly excited Mr. Turner was there to introduce his work. In Dead Birds it’s the 1860’s and a group of Confederate soldiers spend a night in a house haunted by a Lovecraftian “something.” Yay! After one “meh” film and some cool, but still amateur shorts, it was pretty awesome to close out the night with a real live, high production value movie. You can see the movies unofficial myspace site here or check out the trailer below!

So that was pretty much it for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival! We closed out the theater and started our three-hour trip back north around 11:30. There were other horrors that night (friends don’t let friends have chocolate milk and beef jerky), but no more of the Lovecraftian variety.

If you’ve read this, aren’t familiar with the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and want to learn more, let me recommend an awesome primer _The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. If you want proof of Lovecraft’s influence on video games, I’d point you toward the most blatant examples, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requim here and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth here. Finally, if you’re looking to find Cthulhu in tabletop games, Dragon magazine #324 has a lengthy article on Lovecraft’s influence on RPGs (specifically on Dungeons & Dragons) called “The Shadow Over D&D,” and you can’t get more Lovecraftian than Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu RPG, Wizards of the Coast’s d20 version, or Fantasy Flight Games’ Call of Cthulhu CCG and Arkham Horror board game.

Phew! Thanks for reading! If there’s any Lovecraft-related games—tabletop, video, or otherwise—that I missed mentioning, please drop us a comment! And please, drop by the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival website and offer your support however you can!