Trailer for Prometheus Triumphant, from Mad Monkey Productions
It’s been a while since we had a look at any modern silents – the examples on show at Pordenone last year rather set back the cause of the silent film for today, I thought.
But now we have Prometheus Triumphant, or, to give its full title, Prometheus Triumphant: A Fugue in the Key of Flesh. Reportedly two years in the making, this is a feature-length film shot silent (with intertitles) in German Expressionist mould, as you may judge from the trailer. It was made by Mad Monkey Productions, directed by Jim Towns and Mike McKown, and stars Josh Ebel and Kelly Lynn in a tale of a white-masked young man seeking to raise back to life the dead body of his lover. Mad Monkey’s YouTube section has a number of curious videos about the film’s production.
Much more than that, I cannot tell you, except to say that there’s a plot synopsis on Film Baby, that Cinema Epoch is selling it on DVD, that it runs 79mins, that it reportedly aims to be explicit about the sexuality that the German Expressionists left implicit, and that maybe the German Expressionists knew more of what they were doing than those who have come after them…
The Bioscope 
I quite enjoyed The Call of Cthulhu, with “Mythophonic” Sound:
http://www.cthulhulives.org/cocmovie/index.html
and the trailer is on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHuY2wXTd0o
It’s tongue in cheek about both silent film and H.P. Lovecraft but done with great affection for both (Lovecraft being a harder slog in the affection arena, frankly). It stays true to it’s classic horror film origins by being suspenseful for an hour or so, then suddenly revealing its not-in-the-least frightening Elder God. It was a smash on the festival circuit and I know there were originally plans for the same group to do another Lovecraft tale; I don’t know how that is progressing, if at all.
It’s a film I’ve not seen but would very much to do so (memo to purchase DVD). They certainly know a little more about putting together a trailer than the Prometheus crowd.
I’m trying to work out why your comment got marked as spam by the ever-attentive WordPress gremlins. Maybe it was just the call of Cthulhu.
Maybe the links? or perhaps the mere mention by a miniscule mortal of the dreaded Elder God and his squamous, gibbous name? Like this?
http://www.logicalcreativity.com/jon/plush/01.html
Nope, WordPress untroubled. Maybe they’ve overcome their fears.
It’s a long while since I read anything by Lovecraft, and I just couldn’t take it seriously.
Lovecraft has a very short shelf life. Once you hit fifteen his books rocket past their “sell by” date. But they’re fun before that.
No, wait…no, they’re not. They’re just turgid.
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