I have been re-reading H.P. Lovecraft’s “At The Mountains Of Madness,” and–as much as I hate to say it–I am somewhat glad that the powers-that-be at Universal pulled the plug (Sure, for all the wrong reasons, but whatever).

Don’t take that to mean that Guillermo Del Toro couldn’t have made an engrossing and terrifying film; I think the man could make a horrifying movie based upon the content of a telephone book.

My problem lies not with Del Toro’s abilities, than the material itself.

A lot of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos revolved around the concept that we shouldn’t be ignorantly venturing into the vast unknown, because if we have no idea what terrors, in our naiveté, lie in wait for us.

This unknown is exemplified in beings like Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, among others, who once held dominion over this world, and wait patiently to reclaim that which was once theirs.  We measure time by the clocks of our relatively short lives, while for Lovecraft’s creations, millennia are barely the blink of an eye, or the beating of a heart from one frenzied moment to the next.

And that which can eternal lie can afford to be patient.

Which is the problem.  Lovecraft, deliberately, attempted to create a universe beyond what we know and understand.  As a result, his stories, particularly “At The Mountains of Madness,” is so full of overly florid prose and descriptions of events and horror, as opposed to people actually REACTING to the aforementioned events and horrors, that it comes off somewhat long-winded and wordy.

This is why, looking back, I always enjoyed Lovecraft’s shorter works, as well as those of August Derleth, who brought the terrors down to a more human scale, which made them more intimate, and therefore scarier.

Film makers have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to bring the terrorsof Lovecraft to the big screen.

I will not even mention Daniel Haller‘s “The Dunwich Horror,” (based upon a story by Lovecraft) except to say that there’s little to recommend it, other than an interesting performance by John Stockwell.

John Carpenter was moderately successful with his “In The Mouth Of Madness,” though oddly enough, one of the most successful directors to do so–perhaps without knowing that he was doing so–would be David Cronenberg, who’s ‘Body Terror’ films (“The Brood,” and “Videodrome,” in particular), while not related to the Cthulhu Mythos, often hinted at greater terrors, beyond those revealed on screen.

When all is said and done, I hope that Guillermo Del Toro makes his Lovecraft epic, but the greatest challenge will be in bringing those terrors down to earth, so that the spend less time occupying those higher spheres of R’lyeh, and get where they belong, just below the skin.