Director Dan Bianchi cleverly adapted what are arguably Lovecraft’s two signature novellas into two-handers for Eric Whitten and Frank Zilinyi, who play off each other rather nicely. The first, Call, lends itself particularly readily to this approach, because there is a lot of telling in Lovecraft’s tale. Indeed, the first section is entirely flashbacks, as John Raymond Legrasse of the New Orleans Police Department seeks some background information from an anthropology professor regarding the Cthulhu worshipping voodoo cult he recently busted. Of course, the academic is only too familiar with Cthulhu, who has been driving the psychically sensitive mad with bizarre dream imagery. When Call’s narrative finally starts advancing forward, Legrasse and the academic set out to find the ancient entity’s lair guided by the professor’s own dreams. Unfortunately, they find it.
Though it is still cool and creepy, Reanimator does not work quite as well in this format, perhaps since it was originally written as a serial novella, there is just so much accursed plot. Also, many will be familiar with the good Dr. Herbert West from Stuart Gordon’s loose film adaptation of Reanimator, which made a cult superstar of Jeffrey Combs among the Cheetos-smelling fanboy set, so some may compare and contrast accordingly.
In both radio-plays, Whitten takes on the role of the twitchy man of science, while Zilinyi plays his man-of-action partner. Yet, the latter are hardly boring characters. In fact, Zilinyi is especially unsettling in Reanimator as West’s loyal narrator-colleague, who might have harbored a latent homosexual attraction to the mad doctor and is most surely insane (whether that was a result of their misadventures or a preexisting condition is open to interpretation).
(Photo: Dan Bianchi)
