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The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu starts as Professor Lake (Edmund Lupinski) is informed that the missing piece of an ancient relic has been recovered, Professor Lake is told that he must find the last surviving blood relative of horror author H.P. Lovecraft & give him the piece. Professor Lake tracks down Jeff (Kyle Davis) & tells him the full story, many thousands of years ago a huge war broke out between rival alien forces the Cthulhu & the Old Ones for total control of the planet Earth. The bloody & violent war was interrupted by the coming of a meteorite that hit Earth & wiped out the Dinosaur's, the two alien forces hid from the catastrophe with Cthulhu retreating to a castle at the bottom of the Ocean. However Cthulhu subliminally influenced early man & the cult of Cthulhu has sought to release the powerful alien form his watery prison for centuries, the two pieces of the relic is all that the cult need to free Cthulhu. Jeff & his comic book loving friend Charlie (Devin McGinn) are given the relic to protect as Cthulhu's mutant creatures go in search of it killing anyone who gets in the way...

Co-edited & directed by Henry Saine this light hearted horror comedy borrows huge slices of the Cthulhu mythology from horror author H.P. Lovecraft's work but puts a modern self referential comic book fan geek twist on it, although silly & lightweight The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu is quite endearing & likable. At less than 80 minutes long the film starts off quickly & rarely stops, I would say the script tries to mimic the style of Shaun of the Dead (2004) with plenty of in-jokes, horror film references & homages & geeky character's. There are some amusing moments in The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu with some very funny dialogue between the quirky character's, from the geek fan-boy Paul to the fish raped Captain Olaf there's plenty of one-liners ^ dry sarcastic wit as the genre & fandom itself are made fun of although it's never in a mean spirited way & has respect for Lovecraft, comics, horror & geek fandom in general. While the film is good natured & fun the constant horror, fantasy & comic book references do wear a little thin by the end & The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu starts to feel like a collection of small comedy sketches rather than one coherent film. The plot is alright but isn't that tight & could have used a bit of work, the threat from Cthuluhu isn't really demonstrated& the evil red monster thing is killed too easily at the end.

There are some very good special effects in The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu, sure some of the CGI is poor but the practical make-up effects are good with some good monster effects & a bit of gore. The film has constant references to comics & films that I am sure will go over many viewers head, hell I probably missed loads as I admit I have never actually read a H.P. Lovecraft novel. Well shot in full 2:35:1 widescreen The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu looks nice enough & there's a really cool animated insert as Charlie the comic book fan narrates a neat sequence in which the story behind Cthulhu is explained.

Probably shot on a low budget the production values are good, the acting is good too with the whole cast looking like they had a lot of fun making this. Nobody seems to hold back anyway & make the most of the one-liners & material they are given.

The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu is actually a pretty neat little film, sure it's not a serious film & leans towards laughs more than scares but it has a certain energy & likability. All the horror film & comic book references are sure to please fans too, just don't expect anything dark & Gothic like Lovecraft originally wrote & you'll enjoy this for what it is.

The Cult of Cthulhu are searching for part of a relic which is the key that will raise their master from his watery tomb and free him to rule the Earth. The Council of Cthulhu possess the other half of the relic and to stop the cult they send Professor Lake (Edmund Lupinski) of Miskatonic University to take the relic to the last descendant of H. P. Lovecraft and prevent the Cult from raising Cthulhu. This descendant is Jeff Philips (Kyle Davis) who works in a boring job in a cubicle in an office with his comic-book geek friend Charlie (Devin McGinn) and wishes there was more to life.

When Jeff and Charlie get home to their apartment they find Professor Lake standing there. He tries to tell them about the Cult of Cthulhu but Jeff doesn't believe any of it. Charlie on the other hand knows far too much about it and goes into a comic-illustrated history of Cthulhu and his war with the Elder Ones. Jeff does not think this makes the story any more credible, but Lake agrees that Charlie's story is true but incomplete. He reveals that Lovecraft was disguising truth as fiction and that he seemed to have a natural immunity to the madness inducing powers of Cthulhu and his General Starspawn (Ethan Wilde). The Council of Cthulhu think that this immunity has been passed down to Jeff making him the only person who can tackle Starspawn and stop the end of human civilisation. Lake's story is interrupted when the cult get to the apartment on the trail of the relic and Lake tells Jeff and Charlie to go and he gives the relic to Jeff. Lake then pulls out a large hammer on a chain with a harpoon at the other end from his bag and starts fighting off cult creatures to give Jeff and Charlie time to escape until Starspawn comes in and kills him.

Jeff and Charlie have to fight off a creature with a lamprey-like sucker mouth that fixes itself to their car window. They manage to do this with just a tire iron and then they drive off. Charlie suggests that they go see a guy they went to school with who knows all about Lovecraft. Paul (Barak Hardley) is another geek who lives with his foul-mouthed grandmother. He doesn't believe their story at first but is convinced when he sees the eyes of the relic glowing and he wants in on the adventure. He has a map from a comic-book to a Captain Olaf (Gregg Lawrence) who has told stories of his encounters with spawn of Cthulhu, the Deep Ones who live in the ocean. Starspawn has called up these Deep Ones to help him to get the relic. They come ashore next to a beach party and we see and hear them slaughtering everyone from inside a tent where a woman lies cowering in fear.

Jeff, Paul and Charlie have to get to Captain Olaf who lives in the middle of the desert to see if he has any idea how to defeat Starspawn and the Cult of Cthulhu

A comedy based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft has potential but this was disappointing. It has a very low-budget so it really has very little in the way of effects though some of it was pretty good for the money spent. I wasn't too put off by the large amount of dysfunctional geek comedy the film has. I think I was mainly let-down by how lame the bad guys really turned out to be. Maybe they should have spread a little more madness around because apart from the Deep Ones they didn't seem any more dangerous than any bunch of mooks. And the Deep Ones had a great build-up but after their initial killing spree they were a bit crap. Lovecraft wrote about cosmic horror but there really wasn't much sign of that here. It does show some promise and if they had decent budget they may have delivered something a bit better.

Rating 6/10

This may be a coincidence but if not, it perfectly describes The Last Lovecraft. The theoretical star of this flick, and I'll get into what I mean by theoretical later, is named Kyle Davis. The closing credits also list a "Kyle Davis" as being one of the caterers of the production. Now, it's not unusual for people to do multiple jobs on lower budget films. Director Henry Saine is credited several other times as well. But how often is the supposed star of a movie also the guy who gets the food for everybody else? And how many times have you ever looked at the star of a film and said "Boy, that guy really looks more like a caterer?" Well, Kyle Davis not only looks like a caterer, he emotes like one as well. He's probably the least talented and least physically attractive member of the whole cast…and he's the lead. T o me, that sums up this motion picture. It was made by people who did a nice job with a lot of the little things, but royally screwed up a lot of the big stuff.

Jeff (Kyle Davis) is a miserable cubicle wretch who can't even catch a girl when she throws herself right at him. Charlie (Devin McGinn) is Jeff's fellow gift basket company employee/roommate and a snarky comic book geek. One day, a guy who looks like a fat Derek Jacobi (Edmund Lupinski) shows up and tells Jeff he's the last descendant of H.P. Lovecraft and must protect an ancient relic that could release the monstrous Cthulu to destroy the world. Jeff doesn't buy it until Cthulu's fishy minions show up and he and Charlie have to run to an even nerdier guy named Paul (Barak Hardley) for her expertise in Cthulu mythos. Paul sends them searching for a guy named Captain Olaf (Gregg Lawrence) who has experience in fighting Cthulu's monsters and they hold up in an RV in the desert and have to fight off the squid-man Starspawn (Ethan Wilde) to save the Earth.

Now, there's some okay comedy mined out of a loser, a geek and a nerd playing the roles of Mankind's saviors and there are some comic booky animation sequences here that are fairly well done. Barak Hardley is by far the most amusing and entertaining presence on screen, followed by Gregg Lawrence and then…well, there was this guy who played a catatonic mer-man who probably takes the third spot, which should tell you how bad pretty much everybody else was. Kyle Davis has this weird thing going on with his right eye, like it's lazy or glass or something, and Fat Derek Jacobi stands around with his mouth open whenever he's not reading his lines like it's the first time he's ever seen them. Devin McGinn is like a kid's toy with two settings: Annoying and Super-Annoying.

McGinn truly has to take most of the criticism for The Last Lovecraft being less of a "B" movie and more of a "C". He's both writer and producer of this thing, which means he probably had the last word on all the stuff that sucked. Like, for example, casting Kyle Davis as the main character. I don't mean to beat up on the guy 'cause it's not really his fault but practically anyone in the cast, even Fat Derek Jacobi or one of the extras, would have been a better choice for the part of Jeff. McGinn makes it even worse by giving Charlie far better lines and better scenes than the guy who's theoretically the star. If you didn't show people the credits and asked them which member of the cast they thought wrote The Last Lovecraft, everybody would name McGinn as the culprit. So, he casts an unappealing shlub as the main character and then totally undermines him by writing an over-sized 2nd banana part and then giving it to himself. Why McGinn didn't just make himself the star, I'll never know.

The costumes and special effects aren't bad and the action scenes, for filmmakers who don't have a lot of money or expertise to pull them off, are perfectly acceptable. The movie would definitely have benefited from cramming at least 20% more humor into it. For example, when Starspawn first appears he's wearing a goofy unicorn t-shirt. I'll skip over the reasons for that. It's not a great visual gag but it works. He then wears the shirt for most of the film before, without reason or explanation, slipping into a black robe. Why not have him wear the t-shirt for the whole thing as a running joke and let the other characters, especially our heroes, crack wise about it? Why not at least have a second joke after the initial laugh that spurs him to tear off the shirt and don the robe? There are some funny bits but there's also room to wedge in more.

If anybody tells you The Last Lovecraft is an exceptionally putrid mess, that person is far too full of themselves. I have seen stuff that is exponentially more atrocious than this movie. It is too flawed for me to recommend it but somebody else might enjoy it a lot more than I did.

Because honestly, when the father of Horror fiction is reduced to cheap gags, he just ceases to be scary.

I give the creator kudos for knowing his Lovecraft Lore. He gets all the characters and names right, for what it is worth. But the problem is, they just aren't very scary.

Two Customer Service Slackers discover that they are the keeper of a relic that will release C'Thulhu from his tomb. They go on a Nerd-Rage fest of travels across the desert to keep ahead of Deep Ones and Star Spawn in bad costumes.

I guess it's a horror comedy that fails to be either scary or funny. I just dropped my rating another point on the notion.

I knew from the title that this was going to be a rather low-budget production, so I knew from the start I was not going to see big name stars, extravagant sets, awesome special effects or spectacular creatures. What I really didn't expect was that it would be so much fun. It was uneven, could have been paced better and the ending indicated that there would be a sequel, which hasn't happened to my knowledge and may never happen, since the movie came out some 4 years ago. The movie had what people now call "heart." This is a passion for the project that shows in the actors, many of whom shared other jobs in the production. The Last Lovecraft was a movie which took the elements of many of HP Lovecraft's stories and combined them into an entertaining and light concoction. Purists will scoff; those who expect mega-studio production values will scoff and those critics who insist a motion picture must be art and have deep meaning and subtle subcontexts will be scathing, I am sure. But for people like me who enjoy a little levity mixed with my horror and who can really appreciate the work and sweat and tears that go into low budget independent film making, this one is a winner. No spoilers here. If you know the Lovecraft canon, then you know what to expect. If you don't this film might encourage you to pick up some of his tales and be introduced to a fantastic new world.

As anyone exposed to even ONE of Lovecraft's weird horror tales will recall, the great bulk of these stories are set and play off all the coarse, deformed distant off-shoots of the white people who descended upon Massachusetts a ship or two after the Mayflower. These people, whose ancestors were indentured servants (or white slaves) to the Mayflower folks, were forced to inbreed to produce subsequent generations of tools for rich folks, as the Puritans were too snooty and uppity to intermarry with poor peons. Eventually, according to Lovecraft, they went back down the evolutionary ladder enough rungs to attract the amorous attentions of the debauched progeny of various pre-human intelligent life forms long relegated to existence deep underground or in the ocean depths. For anyone who has seen the genetic decay evident even today in the boondocks of Massachusetts (and certain sections of Greater Boston, as well), Lovecraft's tales still ring true. However, uprooted from gloomy New England to sunny southern California, they're totally laughable (a result which LAST LOVECRAFT writer\producer Devin McGinn and "star"\cast-and-crew-caterer Kyle Davis may have been shooting for). Unfortunately, every minute of this movie elevates the duct-tape anchored skits in BE KIND, REWIND to the level of THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION by way of contrast. A few homophobic jokes, crude cartoons, clumsy costumes, cheesy "special" effects, grandparents reading lines (badly), and stolen literary allusions do not an entertaining movie make. Chalk this effort up as A LOVECRAFT TOO FAR: REJECT OF CTHULHU!

First off, if you've never heard of H.P. Lovecraft just stop reading now. This film is not your style.

If however you've read (or read of) any of his works or have played D&D more than 3 times in your life then read on.

This movie is crap. It has terrible effects, mediocre acting, a stupid storyline, and poor continuity. It is also FREAKING HILARIOUS. I laughed myself silly watching this.

The entire film feels like a bunch of friends got together at a party, and after several rounds of drinks said "Hey! Let's make a movie!" -and then went out and made it.

SPOILER ALERT: The wonderful thing about this is that you, the viewer, feel like you were along for the ride. You were there in the back yard with your buddies helping with the pool noodles and monster mask. You shot the animation and comic book sequences. You were the one shaking the the tents at the beach and the RV in the desert.

What makes this movie special is that even though it is crap you can't help but love it. You feel emotionally invested in it, and that is a very rare an magical thing.

I will be buying the DVD as soon as possible.

Honestly,

I split a gut several times laughing at this B-Movie style piece. Forget the Lovecraft Afficionados who would condemn this to the ash-heap of film history. It has several very funny scenes and lots of gag that spoof the very people who are writing those bad reviews.

Two geeky slackers who don't even know when a pretty girl(Sanjuta Day) is propositioning them are stuck in an endless number of work-days performing meaningless tasks in their cubicle-bounded world. All of a sudden one of them - a Last Lovecraft Descendant - gets called upon to somehow keep the nefarious Cult of Cthulu from reuniting the two halves of a lost relic that will allow Great Cthulu to rise again from his sunken city and take over the world.

The rest of the movie details their floundering attempts to do same whilst surviving all kinds of one-liners, spoofed characters, silly situations - and a fair amount of gore. Special FX are minimal and the movie pretty much goes downhill slowly in plot and sensibility as the movie proceeds.

Nonetheless, I repeatedly found myself laughing out loud at the silly gags and very funny characters they run in to. It has little to do with Lovecraft other than hijacking his name and some of his monsters but it is still worth a watch fer sure. There is some gore and there's a lot of language such as f-bombs too. There's also a lot of sly satire at the expense of the various characters - For example, a pitiful half-man/half-fish is kept alive by one of the Good Guys by sprinkling tropical fish food into his drooling mouth. You get the idea. Six stars for the laughs only but worth a watch.

-Rock_Bustin