Necronomicon aka Necronimicon: Book Of The Dead
aka Necronomicon: To Hell And Back (1993)
I warned you more H.P. Lovecraft works were coming up - and this is one of them. This is kind of interesting, because it's basic premise is how H.P. 'found' the Necronomicon and copied stories out of it to present in this anthology. So we have a fictional account of a real writer supposedly copying 'true' stories that are fiction. Confused yet? And we have, yet again, Jeffrey Combs as H.P. himself. Let's see, so far that makes him in the Re-Animator series, this and The Dunwich Horror. He is either a massive H.P. fan, or whenever they make an H.P. movie, they just give him a call for the hell of it. I had to check just how many he's done - so far the total is eight. Whoa.
It is 1932 and H.P. has discovered that a secretive group of monks are guarding the actual Necronomicon which he has been seeking. He makes his way into their 'library' on the premise of looking up information of another sort, steals the key to the locked room the book resides in (not unknown to the monks but they don't stop him), and fervently begins to write down what he finds in it. Since the stories seem to appear to take place in the future the movie insinuates that the Necronomicon is actually timeless. As H.P. writes, things begin to happen inside the room that shows he's getting himself into a lot more than he thinks. The door locks itself, and a 'seal' on the wall cracks open to reveal... another seal. And we go to adaptations of three of his stories (read there are some basics but Hollywood pretty much does whatever the hell they want with them):
The Drowned (Based on The Rats In The Walls): Edward De LaPoer (Bruce Payne) inherits a hotel from his uncle. Learning of the tragic death of his uncle, aunt and a cousin, he reads a letter left to him telling the tale of their misfortune. Upon a boat trip return to New England, a crash on the shore killed his uncle Jethro's (played by the recently deceased, great character actor Richard Lynch) wife and son. Distraught, Jethro bans 'God' from his home. That night, a horrid apparition comes to tell him he is 'not alone', then leaves behind the Necronomicon. Using the book, Jethro brings his family back to life. However, his family are revived as unholy monsters with green glowing eyes and tentacles in their mouths (frequently used as a characteristic of Cthulu). He wounds the monster coming from the floor that apparently 'made' them and commits suicide by casting himself off an upper floor balcony to the ocean below. This hits Edward particularly hard, as a car accident into the ocean is what killed his wife, Clara. So being movie-stupid, even though he knows the results of his uncle's actions, he does the same thing. That night, Clara arrives and asks to be invited in. Edward apologizes for the accident. Clara regurgitates tentacles from her mouth, and in a panic, Edward pushes her away. Clara angrily attacks, but Edward, with a sword taken from a nearby wall, cuts her. She turns into a tentacle leading underneath the floor. Drawn underground from the injury, the creature below destroys the main floor and rises, a gigantic monster with tentacles, one eye and a large mouth. Edward cuts a rope holding the chandelier, jumps to it and climbs to the ceiling. "Clara" again tries to restrain him, but Edward destroys a stained glass window, the sunlight driving her away. Edward pushes the chandelier rope free from the pulley, the pointed bottom piercing the monster in the eye, presumably killing it. Now on the roof, Edward has avoided the same fate that Jethro had years before, and decides to live, although he really doesn't deserve to. Duh.
Done with this story, Lovecraft becomes suspicious he is being watched. The water beneath him (there's a grate and water running below for some reason) churns, and another seal opens, revealing... another seal. Undaunted (or just movie-stupid) he ignores it all and continues on to:
The Cold (Based on Cool Air): A reporter is suspicious of a string of strange murders in Boston over the past several decades. Confronting a woman at a local apartment building, he is invited in only to find the entire place is very cold. The woman he has confronted claims to suffer a rare skin condition which has left her sensitive to heat and light. Demanding the truth, he is told the story of Emily's (Bess Meyer) arrival to Boston twenty years before. Emily rented a room in the building, but is warned by Lena, who apparently runs the place, not to disturb a Dr. Richard Madden (played by an always fun to watch David Warner). After being attacked by her stepfather (her reason for being there) Dr. Madden kills him. Emily is patched up. That night, she sees blood dripping from her ceiling. She goes into Dr. Madden's apartment to find her now dead stepfather having holes drilled all down his neck and back. She assumes, as she wakes in the morning, that it was a nightmare. The next day Emily sees a flyer asking for information about the murder of Sam. She confronts Dr. Madden, and he comes clean: Sam had died from the fall so he just used his body for his 'experiments.' He reveals his copy of the Necronomicon and how he learned of its information on sustaining life. In the greenhouse, he proves this by injecting a wilted rose claiming that as long as it is kept out of the sun, it will never die. The two have sex, with a distraught Lena spying on them. So Lena and Emily have a confrontation. Emily leaves, but when she finds herself pregnant, goes back. She then learns that her lover lives on (over 100 years) because of constant injections of spinal fluid plus the very cold temperatures preserve him.
The three struggle, during which the good Doc is accidentally set on fire. The heat causes the best special effect and decent gore of the movie - he begins to 'melt' and for some reason, tears himself apart down to the skeleton, which then collapses on the floor. Lena's pissed and shoots Emily. As she's prepared to finish her off, Emily confesses she's pregnant. And is allowed to live. The reporter, movie-stupid but at least having a little brain power suspects this was all actually happening to the woman he's talking to, although she claimed to be Emily's daughter. Sure enough, Emily did NOT survive the gunshot wound but to keep her (and the still unborn and apparently never going to be born) baby preserved, she herself now takes the spinal fluid injections. Which she needs from the reporter, who she has drugged. And he's done, and so is this story.
Lovecraft continues to read. Suddenly feeling paranoid, he begins looking around, grabbing his cane and brandishing it. The head monk looks through a trap door to confirm Lovecraft is indeed with the Necronomicon, and tries to open the door leading into the room where Lovecraft is, but finds that it is locked. A third seal opens up as Lovecraft continues to read.
Whispers (Based on The Whisperers In Darkness): In Philadelphia, a pursuit of a suspect known as 'The Butcher' is in progress. The two police officers, Paul and Sarah, are at the same time arguing over whether she will keep their baby. Not paying attention and driving like people do in movies, they crash. Paul having a hissy had unbuckled his seatbelt, daring her to kill him and so is knocked out and dragged off, presumably by 'The Butcher'. Sarah is still conscious, and manages to get out. She sees Paul's blood trail but is unable to call for help, and so pursues him alone. Inside an old warehouse, Sarah follows as Paul is taken down a service elevator. Sarah trips on a rope and falls through to the floor, saved from impact by the rope around her ankle. The rope breaks a second after. As she gets up, she finds a man in glasses, Mr. Benedict (another great character actor Don Calfa) says he is the landlord and 'The Butcher' is only a renter. He offers to take her to him. This leads to a blind Mrs. Benedict. She says the two only met a couple of weeks before, although Mr. Benedict says they have been married a long time. Fed up, hurting and afraid for Paul, she takes the two at gunpoint down to the basement where 'The Butcher' is presumably living. On the way, Mrs. Benedict claims he's actually an alien (another common theme in H.P.'s work). After wandering endlessly in tunnels with weird carvings that Mr. Benedict claims predates men themselves, and no God down here either, he says that The Butcher is not an alien, he just works for them. The Butcher, of course is Mr. Benedict. Mrs. Benedict is a 'queen' of sorts to the aliens. Before Sarah can make sense of this, the two shove her into a hole full of fresh and not-so-fresh corpses. Among those is Paul, who jerkily gets up and faces her. Great gore here to as we see that although he has a face and some of his head, it is hollow and his eyes are gone. Nice. He comes at her and when she shoves him away a strange creature bursts from the body. Paul's disembodies voice comes from a bat-like creature (the description of what it looked like would take too long) warning her to watch the walls. Sure enough, the walls come alive as dozens of the things burst forward and attack her... and she wakes up in a hospital. She tells her doctor (Mr. Benedict of course) about her dream and he claims it is only a side effect of the accident. Asking after Paul, she's told he's in the next bed. This is true - the shell of him is. The 'reality' of the hospital melts away and she's right back in the same situation she was before - except Mrs. Benedict has taken her baby and placed it in her own 'womb', the flying things are everywhere, and Sarah's limbs have been chopped off so the things can drink the marrow (a treat for them). Sarah's mind goes and the story ends to her maniacal laughter. Oh, and this was the least similar of three stories presented here. The only thing the Mi-go (the aliens in the story) and these things had were wings. Massive duh.
H.P. is now confronted by the head monk. Since H.P. conveniently dropped the key to the door, he couldn't let him in even if he wanted to. The final seal has come open, and a monster in the churning waters below attacks H.P. He grabs his cane, which conceals a sword (I have GOT to get one of those) and chops the thing off of him. The monk impossibly squeezes through the bars on the door, and in the struggle with H.P. is revealed not to be human. For some reason H.P. tears at him, basically stripping his 'human' costume off, revealing some kind of alien being. The portal, now open since the seals are broken, shows that some kind of monster is coming and coming for H.P. He's a crafty little dude (besides he has too many stories to write) and so puts the alien in front of him, who is taken by the monster and down some type of abyss. The seals close, the door opens, and H.P. grabs the Necronomicon and hotfoots it out of there without notice. 
As usual, Jeffrey is great, however the treatment of H.P.'s stories leaves a lot to be desired.
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