10 Prolific Figures Heavily Influenced By H.P. Lovecraft

Known for his innumerable B-movies and help in jumpstarting the careers of future Hollywood stars (Dennis Hopper, David Carradine, and Jack frickin' Nicholson to name a few), even filmmaker Roger Corman was once bitten by the Lovecraft-bug.

Corman’s series of eight film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, known as the “Poe Cycle”, were a pinnacle point of his early career. However, it turns out one of the films, The Haunted Palace, was a Poe adaptation by name alone.

When a screenplay adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward appeared before American International Pictures, Corman jumped at the opportunity to make a horror film that was a break from the previous five Poe adaptations. AIP agreed to let him film it under the stipulation that it retain the title of one of Poe's poems (try saying that five times fast), despite having nothing to do with the plot (I mean, the final verse of the poem is read in the film's ending, but still). Released in 1963, The Haunted Palace was technically the first film adaptation of a Lovecraft story ever made.

The same year, Corman’s film, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, contained similar themes to Lovecraft’s works like cosmic horror and forbidden knowledge that drives the main character insane.

The success of The Haunted Palace precipitated more Lovecraftian AIP releases like 1965’s Die Monster, Die! and 1970’s The Dunwich Horror, prompting the start of many Lovecraft film adaptations to come.