Colour from the Dark (2008)
Studio: Vanguard Cinema
Release Date: February 23, 2010
Directed By: Ivan Zuccon
Cast: Debbie Rochon, Michael Segal, Marysia Kay, Eleanor James & Gerry Shanahan
Review By: Annie Riordan

Oh look! The makers of this Lovecraft inspired flick spelled “color” with a U! Just like Lovecraft did when he wrote the short story “The Colour Out Of Space” in March of 1927. Lovecraft preferred using the antiquated forms of the English language, tossing about such words as “erudite” and “eldritch” which were archaic even in his own time. Spelling the word “colour” with a u may have been Howie’s way of placing himself in the Europe of centuries past, an age he claimed to be far more comfortable with than the New England of the late 19th/early 20th century into which he had been unwillingly born. Spelling the word “colour” with a u on the sleeve of a low-budget, direct-to-video adaptation of Lovecraft’s story may have been an attempt to provide succor to Lovecraft’s devoted purists. Hey, didja notice how I slipped the out-dated word “succor” in there? Pretty slick, huh?

You’d think if that was indeed the intent, Ivan Zuccon would have just left the original title intact. But maybe he thought that the word “colour” spelled with a U would be enough to draw fans in. That said, Colour From The Dark is not a faithful adaptation of Lovecraft’s original story, but it’s not a total loss either.

Updated from 1880′s Massachusetts, Colour opens in 1940′s Italy on a remote farm where the lame Pietro lives with his wife Lucia and her younger, disabled sister Alice. Alice cannot speak and, though she has reached the age of 22, she has not developed either mentally or emotionally beyond the age of ten. The family is poor, but devout and loving, eking out a living from the land during the height of the second world war.

Alice suffers from bizarre phobias and increasingly intense nightmares, both of which involve the well in the front yard. When she is sent to draw water one day, and accidentally knocks the bucket into the well’s depths, Pietro retrieves it with the tines of a pitchfork. But he stabs too deep, and the fork punctures the ground below, releasing a putrid gas cloud from beneath the well water. Despite the noxious fumes, the water is seemingly unaffected, and the family continues to drink it and use it for irrigation.

Soon, the farm is exploding with a bounty of ripe, oversized vegetables. Pietro’s leg miraculously heals. Alice even utters her first words! The family believes they have been blessed by God, but their good fortune is quick to sour. Lucia has seemingly been taken over by a demonic entity and is locked in the attic for her own safety. Violent hallucinations and insanity seem to swallow anyone who enters the house. Odd lights flicker in the fields and a sinister mold (or mould, perhaps?) spreads over every available surface. Is it an evil entity? Is it a poison in the water? Or could it be a freak combination of both?

The atmosphere depicted here is great: heavy, fungus-covered, dank, dark, miserable and ultimately doomed. The emphasis on sexual insatiability is a tad overdone: I’ve now officially seen more of Debbie Rochon’s tits than I have of my own. I didn’t really understand why the Colour itself was changed from alien to Satanic. I mean, I’ve seen some nasty mildew in my day: black and green molds covered with white bloated pustules and dense fur, and the thought of unknowingly or accidentally ingesting that shit is WAY scarier than the Devil Himself could ever hope to be, but whatever. I guess no one would want to watch a horror movie about a killer strain of toxic pneumonitis.

If nothing else, The Colour From The Dark is faithful to the spirit of Lovecraft, if not the story itself. I’ve seen some truly shitty Lovecraft adaptations in my time, but this really isn’t one of them. It’s a perfectly watchable entry in the annals of cosmic horror.