Ghost of a flea

Great link, altho I don't think of it as magic realism so much as Gothic pulp. Why aren't there more movies of Lovecraft tales, which ooze with virulent imagery right out of Alien or the Ring. Someone should do The Mountains of Madness, altho it doesn't work as drama, but hey, that's what a good screenwriter is for.

Lovecraft stories do not make good movies because the directors tend to go for the horror rather than the menace. The whole point of Lovecraft's stories were the unknowing rather than the knowing. His tales do not really translate well to film and I don't think they ever will.

It is true there has yet to be a decent film-adaptation of any particular Lovecraft story (though The Dunwich Horror is a camp masterpiece). But I do not believe this means there never will be. John Carpenter's "The Thing", for example, evokes a sense of isolation and mounting horror that is reminiscent of "At the Mountains of Madness". So, for that matter, has the occasional documentary about the Scott expedition. There is no reason in principle a proper adaptation could not be made provided a market could be contrived for one.

Mountains of Madness could be brilliant. The story fails as drama because at the key point where the narrator descends into the frozen alien city, Lovecraft uses a clumsy & unbelievable device - the pictographs - to tell a great story about successive alien invasions.

Solution: Before the ship arrives in Antarctica, insert an anthropologist (probably played by Louise Fletcher) who has already broken the hieroglyphic code obtained from fragments found around the rim of the continent, & which are taken as a previously unknown civilization's mythology. Therefore, when they make the discovery of the frozen city, they gradually realize that it is not mythology at all. And not entirely dead...

Louise Fletcher is an excellent choice. Or how about Lena Olin...

Also good. As long as it's not Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. It's a brilliant setting, because while the Antarctic coast is starkly beautiful, it's not hard to see something malign in its desolation & isolation

I hear that this just-completed independent production of "The Call of Cthulhu" is an excellent film adaptation:

Call of Cthulhu DVD

I'm guessing that the silent film format is a major reason why it succeeds...