The Tomb (2007 film)
The Tomb, AKA H.P. Lovecraft's The Tomb, The Tomb - Condemned to Agony, H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams of the Witch-house, Witch-house
Summary
"Eight nails, who fails? Curiosity will lure you in." A being known as "The Puppetmaster" holds victims captive in a tomb and tortures them.
Details
- Release Date: 2007
- Country/Language: The Shadow Factory Inc.
- Genres/Technical: Horror ("torture porn"), Thriller
- Runtime: 1 hr 21 min
- Starring: Victoria Ullmann, Christian Behm, Gerard Griesbaum
- Director: Ulli Lommel
- Writer: Ulli Lommel (story and screenplay) H.P. Lovecraft (unfairly gets the blame)
- Producer/Production Co: The Shadow Factory Inc.
- View Trailer: (link)
Ratings
MPAA Ratings
- Rated: R (ultra-low-budget Violence, Profanity, Sexual Situations, Adult Content, Nudity)
Tentacle Ratings
A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:
- s____ (Half Tentacle: Lovecraftian in name only)
I've not seen this film yet, but it appears to be a low-budget "torture porn" film (clearly ripped off from the Saw franchise) with nothing to do with Lovecraft or his work except having Lovecraft's name and the name of one of his stories ("The Tomb (fiction)") printed on the label, and maybe even a lazy and cynical name-drop or two somewhere in the dialogue. Note that Lovecraft's original story is about a young man who becomes obsessed with an ancestor's tomb, sleeping beside it and imagining himself buried within it, until he is finally institutionalized; a later exploration of the tomb, which the young man has clearly never physically entered, reveals a surprise "punch line" for the end of the story; there doesn't seem to be much room in Lovecraft's short story to accommodate this film's plot about a sadistic madman who locks two victims in a tomb and plays a game with their lives.
Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.
Reviews
Review Links:
- (review needed)
Synopsis
Spoiler Section (Highlight to Read)
A film-maker makes a low-budget "torture porn" film about being known as "The Puppetmaster", who holds victims captive in a tomb and tortures them, and claims this film bears no resemblance whatsoever to a completely different film about a being known as "Jigsaw", who holds victims captive in a tomb and tortures them, but instead was inspired by a randomly-selected public-domain work of a randomly-selected famous horror author; the film-maker then forces an audienceto play a sadistic "game" and kill each other off, or be forced to watch the film all the way through....
Notes
Comments, Trivia, Dedication
Associated Mythos Elements
- TO DO
- race: Human Cultist(?) (more like a vaguely Satanic-themed rip-off of "Jigsaw" from the Saw torture/slasher franchise)
- fiction: allegedly based on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Tomb (fiction)" and/or "Dreams in the Witch House (fiction)"
- locations: The Tomb and the Witch House from Lovecraft's stories are mentioned briefly
- characters: the names Richard Upton Pickman and Charles Dexter Ward (who have nothing to do with either of the two stories this film was allegedly based on) seem to have been mentioned somewhere in the film
