I can’t really recommend this ultra-low-budget horror comedy, but I have to say it has its moments, and back in college watching it late at night with friends I’d have had a blast.

A professor at Miskatonic U shows up at the home of a twenty-something nerd to inform him he’s the closest living relative of H.P. Lovecraft and hence needs to take custody of an ancient artifact, since only close relatives of Lovecraft can deal with the horror of Cthulhu without going insane. Fortunately, he and his best friend (and would-be fellow comic book creator) know something about the Cthulhu mythos — and at one point deliver the best and most succinct explanation of it I’ve ever seen — but for real expertise they seek help from an even bigger Lovecraft nut, a chunky, bearded guy who lives with his grandma.

(You might be concerned that two of these three people dealing with the relic are not related to Lovecraft and hence vulnerable to its effects. You don’t need to worry. They’re not all that sane to start with.)

The three guys wind up on a quest to find one Captain Olaf, who might be able to help them. En route they’re attacked by members of the Cthulhu cult. The Lovecraft über-fan heroically takes off running to lure them away, but he soon has to stop, panting and holding his side. Noticing that his pursuers are standing around not even breathing hard, he manages to gasp, “You guys must … exercise or something.”

Eventually after various escapes from narrow scrapes the trio of protagonists wind up at Captain Olaf’s home, a cheap RV parked in the desert because he wanted to be as far from the ocean as possible, and there our heroes have to make a desperate last stand when the cult, including one of Cthulhu’s space-spawned non-human allies played by an actor in a whole-head mask and a unicorn T-shirt (and later some CGI tentacles), shows up to retrieve the artifact. There’s also a lethargic fish-man named Gary around, no relation.

This trailer is better than the movie (not that this is a rare occurrence):

Despite an anticlimactic ending and other flaws, the film is at times entertaining and moderately funny and must have been loads of fun for the people involved. It seems they intended to do a sequel but there’s no sign of one that I’ve been able to find.

I’m not sure what this implies, but I see that while Apple’s spelling checker doesn’t recognize the names “Lovecraft” or “Miskatonic,” it has no problem with Cthulhu…

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