{"id":17102,"date":"2015-08-03T01:16:03","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T00:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=17102"},"modified":"2015-08-03T01:16:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T00:16:03","slug":"occult-gestures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2015\/08\/03\/occult-gestures\/","title":{"rendered":"Occult gestures"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dunwich1.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Dean Stockwell freaks out: The Dunwich Horror (1970).<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m off to the NecronomiCon<\/a> later this month so HP Lovecraft and all his works will be a predominant theme for the next couple of weeks. I’m also extremely busy right now so posts may tend to be brief.<\/p>\n

One of the films showing in Providence for the convention is Daniel Haller’s 1970 production of The Dunwich Horror<\/em>. I have a low tolerance for bad horror films, and this is a bad one despite being closer to its source than other AIP quickies. Dean Stockwell plays Wilbur Whateley whose goatish qualities are here reduced to a gesture which even the filmmakers may not have known as “the Horns of Pan”, a borrowing from the famous photo of Aleister Crowley in his magician’s robes. I noted an earlier borrowing of this gesture some time ago after stumbling upon an obscure silent film serial, The Mysteries of Myra<\/em><\/a>. The use in The Dunwich Horror<\/em> provides another odd link between Lovecraft and Crowley, and makes me wonder whether any other films have nodded to Crowley in this way.<\/p>\n

\"crowley.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Aleister Crowley in 1912.<\/em><\/p>\n

Another stray connection worth noting: Dean Stockwell was good friends with Dennis Hopper, and the pair are described in a number of sources as living for a while in a house run by Marjorie Cameron, an artist with a direct connection to Crowley via her husband, Jack Parsons. This may be rumour but Hopper and Cameron did appear together in Curtis Harrington’s beguiling Night Tide<\/em> in 1961.<\/p>\n

\"dunwich2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Finally, the gesture appears again on the cover of the soundtrack album which AIP smartly titled Music of the Devil God Cult: Strange Sounds from Dunwich<\/em>. The title was too much for easy-listening maestro Les Baxter to live up to but he does have the distinction of being the first composer to record a piece of music entitled Necronomicon<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 NecronomiCon Providence 2015<\/a>
\n\u2022 The horror<\/a>
\n\u2022 Die Farbe and The Colour Out of Space<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Mysteries of Myra<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dean Stockwell freaks out: The Dunwich Horror (1970). I’m off to the NecronomiCon later this month so HP Lovecraft and all his works will be a predominant theme for the next couple of weeks. I’m also extremely busy right now so posts may tend to be brief. One of the films showing in Providence for … Continue reading “Occult gestures”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,7,22,26,3,16],"tags":[391,1375,2959,7529,1373,1687,5065,7531,121,320,7530],"class_list":["post-17102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-film","category-horror","category-lovecraft","category-music","category-occult","tag-aleister-crowley","tag-curtis-harrington","tag-daniel-haller","tag-dean-stockwell","tag-dennis-hopper","tag-hp-lovecraft","tag-jack-parsons","tag-les-baxter","tag-marjorie-cameron","tag-necronomicon","tag-the-dunwich-horror"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4rQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}