It's beautiful how completely mild-mannered people have infected popular culture with some of its most evolved and frightening concepts. There's Burroughs, Crumb, Freddie Laker — and H.P. Lovecraft, for which the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, now in its 15th year, screens films based on Lovecraft's writing. Lovecraft was an author who specialized in weird fiction, writing about a world propelled by colossal, amoral gods still alive in the netherworld of dreams. He wanted this mythos expanded and expounded upon by artists who came after him, and today's festival represents the cinematic fulfillment of his wishes. Screening: the 2008 documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown; 1980s The Music of Erich Zann, the story of a man who discovers music for invisible entities; and the classic mystical splatter of 1985's Re-Animator. All the films' directors will be at the festival, and as I write this — wait, there's something at the door … Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! YAAAHHHHH!

Sat., Sept. 11, 2 p.m., 2010

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