Color Out Of Space
Dir. Richard Stanley / Dur. 111 mins / Country. USA
Festival Strand:- Cult
In A Nutshell:- Based on an HP Lovecraft short story, the arrival of a strange meteorite has an impact on the local alpaca farm run by Nathan Gradner (Nicolas Cage) and his family.
The Good:- Director Richard Stanley has had a less than easy career - his first film Hardware was successfully sued by 2000AD for plagiarising one of their Future Shock short stories and he was famously fired from his last film prior, the Marlon Brando-starring The Island Of Doctor Moreau in 1996. This is a long awaited comeback and an enjoyable one it is too. Stanley has crafted a suitably Lovecraftian adaptation which manages to capture the feel of Lovecraft while steering clear of some of the less savoury parts of the man’s work (notably his misogyny and racism). Nicolas Cage gives a reasonably restrained performance to start with - of course, it’s not long before he’s given the opportunity to go full Cage. The nature and intent of the alien is suitably vague and that feels in keeping with the source material. There a sense of combined horror and wonder at times too.
The Bad:- There are some nice homages to other films, notably The Thing, although it does feel a little like it begins to stray slightly closer to copying rather than homage at one or two points. There are also some character reactions which feel a little odd and choppy but I suspect that’s a conscious choice.
The Verdict:- It’s a fun and stylish slice of sci fi horror with a good helping of Nicolas Cage going mental. What’s not to enjoy?
The Venue / Intro / Q&A:- The Vue West End for this one and Richard Stanley was on hand for the intro and Q&A. This was very much a labour of love in some respects for him - he’s a lifelong Lovecraft fan, having had the stories read to him by his mother while he was a child (!); he later returned the favour by reading them to her as he nursed her while she was dying. The film itself came about off the back of the success of the film Mandy - the producers of that film were looking for something else non-conventional to go with next. Nicolas Cage himself was instrumental in the project (and allegedly ran up a £30k bar tab on the night he called Stanley to talk about it!).
Having broken my way into Q&As, I was back with another question this time - I was curious as to how much of a Nicolas Cage performance is down to the director’s influence and how much is pure Cage. Apparently, he’s not as crazy as you would expect in real life. When it comes to allowing him to go his own day, they sat down beforehand and identified four or five scenes where he could improvise; the rest were as scripted.
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