Iä, Iä, Cthulhu Fhtaghn! Call Girl of Cthulhu (2014)

Carter Wilcox (David Phillip Carollo) is in the mental hospital after witnessing something spectacularly horrifying. He was found among the bodies of countless dead, raving like a madman. Under a chemical regimen, he’s maybe better now. Or so Detective Rita LaGrassi (Leanna Chamish) hopes. She’s come to take Carter’s statement on the events that went down at the Church of Starry Wisdom. What he says is pretty unbelievable.

It all starts with a girl. Not Carter’s musician roomie Erica Zann (Nicolette le Faye), though she and her dickish boyfriend Rick “The Dick” Pickman (Alex Mendez) will have roles in the yarn to come. No, it really starts with Riley Whatley (Melissa LaMartina), a dancer and call girl with a regular line of customers. She’s special, an It girl with a certain something that makes her customers fall for her hard. Carter certainly falls for her, and when he lucks into one of her business cards, he works up the courage to call her. Set up a date. Paint her—make a painting of her, not actually daub colors on her skin the way some of her other, oddball clients might wish to do. There’s no sex involved because Carter’s pretty meek around the opposite sex. However, that nude painting is how he realizes two things, she’s got an unusual birthmark on her buttcheek and Carter might be falling in love. Both of these facts will become relevant.

Meanwhile, a face off is happening elsewhere in town. Professor Edna Curwen (Helenmary Ball) and her able sidekick Squid (Sabrina Taylor-Smith) are challenging the Church of the Starry Wisdom for control of an ancient text. The Church’s leader, a wide eyed madman called Sebastian Suydum (Dave Gamble) has an army of tentacle masked followers, two pacifier sucking asskicking servants in gimp masks, and a second army of bodily mutated Gore Whores—prostitutes who failed to live up to snuff and were transformed into monsters with spooky contact lenses and devil horns sprouting from their foreheads because this squad is always hungry and … wait for it … horny (wah, wah, wah, waaaaah).

When Dr. Curwen’s team gets the book, they have a short amount of time to manufacture a replica and need an experienced artist to copy the drawings. Can Carter balance his work life with his budding love life? When the Church of the Starry Wisdom learns that Riley is the marked sacrifice they need, can Carter and his new allies free her from the cult’s clutches? Or is she doomed to become Lord Cthulhu’s chosen, the bearer of a monstrous legacy, and the spreader of a surprisingly goopy STD? Co-writer Chris LaMartina helms a sexy, splattery, horror comedy spin on Lovecraft’s works with the kooky, goopy, and entertaining Call Girl of Cthulhu (2014).

Some movies are much better than they really ought to be. And at least two of them have been directed by Chris LaMartina. First of these is the adorable and spot on spoof of televised “News Events” from days past, WNUF’s Halloween Special (2013), which lovingly documents the Hallowe’en night an on-the-streets journalist heads into a haunted house. If you haven’t seen it, the film is a treat. The low budget is used well, the flow of information is spot on with the sorts of “keep them glued to their seats” techniques such specials used to keep viewers waiting to see what waited in Al Capone’s vault or what have you . . . The second movie LaMartina directed that is lightyears better than I could have expected, is this one: Call Girl of Cthulhu.

The title is a groaner. The cover art is . . . eye catching but underwhelming.

Aside from the low budget and exploitation antics—the nudity, the slime, the gross out moments of heads exploding and bodies mutating—Call Girl of Cthulhu reveals itself to be a cleverly constructed, cheeky spin on not just the Cthulhu Mythos but a film steeped in references to all kinds of Lovecraftian and weird fiction. So, we see a UltharCats rock band shirt, tipping its hat to the Dreamlands set story, “The Cats of Ulthar.” We get nods to the Yellow Sign from the fiction of Robert W. Chambers. We get a weaponized version of the music of the spheres (“The Music of Eric Zann”) flipped to be composed by Erica Zann and her burned CD album cannot be named, so of course it gets the Sharpie-written title Unnamable, to reference the story of the same name. We get a strip club called The Shining Trapeze, which references The Shining Trapezohedron from both Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark” and the Robert Bloch penned “The Shadow from the Steeple.” We get a restaurant called Dagon Wok, which takes its name from the submarine short story “Dagon” or the male half of the Father Dagon/Mother Hydra deities of the Deep Ones … In fact, the old gent from Providence gets an on screen reference in the form of a condom company, “Love Crafts,” whose flagship product is, of course, Deep Ones. Even the magic symbols are taken from that paperback copy of The Necronomicon by “Simon” (actually a bunch of sf writers) which used to live on occult shelves at Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Booksellers … It’s cute, silly stuff that nevertheless manages some deep dives into the Cthulhu Mythos and adjacent writers.

And then, there are the lovelier twists and script flips. Sure, the protagonist is a frail man who is unprepared for the horrors he’s about to witness (hell, he can’t even really hold conversations with women that don’t involve paying the rent). But at least three strong women are present, including the asskicking African American slayer, Squid. These are the kinds of characters Lovecraft would never write about. And such elements don’t take away from anything happening in the sex and violence and body horror plot. I’d say it adds an extra layer of Easter eggs for afficionados and fans of the Cthulhu Mythos who are maybe a wee bit tired of frail protagonists who go nutty at first sight of the indescribable otherworldly.

It’s not a movie trying to present its subject matter in a serious light, though there is a sense of stakes and gravity to the fate of the world. LaMartina’s vision has more in common with the anarchic spirit of Brian Yuzna’s The Bride of Re-Animator (1990) or Society (1989) than, say, Stuart Gordon’s more controlled adaptations of Lovecraft. This is picture that winks at us when it isn’t trying to scar our brains or turn us on. And it seems adroit in all three efforts.

Melissa LaMartina brings a sensibility to the classic archetype of the hooker with a heart of gold and a tattoo of cosmic alien evil. Okay, so that last part is really beyond the original archetype. The character is no nonsense, sweet when she needs to be, assertive, focused, terrified of letting her vulnerability show. LaMartina brings these qualities out organically. She also manages to act through increasing layers of makeup and latex prosthetics, and though the actor inside the suit used in the final act is unrecognizable, I assume she’s in there still.

David Phillip Carollo is a treat as the meek protagonist who is asked to face cosmic horror. The role is a familiar one from any number of Lovecraft stories, but Carollo beings out the more sympathetic qualities to the character. Carter Wilcox is a beta male straight out of Christopher Moore’s fiction, dippy, likeable, and mostly dealing with internal challenges. Carollo gives us a feel for the character and, if we let ourselves, quite a few feels.

Dave Gamble is a treat to watch. His character encounters no scene that he doesn’t want to dominate, and Gamble is more than up to the task. Sebastian Suydum does not have a moustache, but if he did we can fully expect he’d give it a twirl from time to time—in fact, the character has a walking stick he twirls instead. Gamble has magnetism, and we get the sense that he’d both giving the role his all but having quite a bit of fun while doing so. Also, he works props like a master, bringing to mind the great Donald Pleasance, so we have plenty of things to watch while he delivers his Bad Guy Exposition. It is unsurprising to me to learn this actor played Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing as one of his many theater credits—and I’m sure he did the part more than justice.

Nicolette le Faye can manifest punk rock sensibilities and a terrific “bitch, puh-lease” glare, both of which work wonders to make the Erica Zann character memorable. She’s kind of in the background for the opening stretch, but once she gets pulled into more of the cosmic horror shenanigans, the character quickly ascends into coolness.

Helenmary Ball is enjoyable as the academic who knows more about the monsters than about self-defense. And Sabrina Taylor-Smith is great fun as the butt-kicking, motorcycle riding, sneering while taking care of business slayer.

Here’s a line I never expected to write with a straight face: As Lovecraftian films go, there are many that are made with better budgets, but there are few that succeed at marrying the blood, nudity, Lovecraft lore, and general storytelling cleverness as Call Girl of Cthulhu. It’s a surprisingly enjoyable film.

#

I first caught Call Girl of Cthulhu on Tubi, and for all I know it’s still there as well as a VOD edition. The film is sadly not available in DVD or Blu-ray editions. They’ve all gone out of print.

Writing for “Iä, Iä, Cthulhu Fhtaghn! Call Girl of Cthulhu (2014)” is copyright © 2023 by Daniel R. Robichaud.

Disclosure: Considering Stories is a member of the Amazon Associates. Under that program, purchases made using the product links in any of our articles can qualify the Considering Stories site for a payment. This takes the form of a percentage of the purchase price, and it is made at no additional cost to the customer.