Timothy Glaraton
Human sacrifices, alien gods, hookers giving birth to mutant babies. These are the ingredients for a particularly potent piece of trash cinema. Most of the time, a so-bad-it’s-good-movie comes out of a promising premise executed…questionably—think any number of comedically bad ‘80s slashers. But the film I present you with tonight is the exact opposite: the premise is one hundred percent pure B-movie trash, executed with an almost astonishing level of competence and sincerity. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s talk…about Call Girl of Cthulhu.
As you might have guessed from the title, Call Girl of Cthulhu is indeed a retelling of the Cthulhu mythos crossed with the heartwarming love story of a sensitive young artist and a cynical call girl—one who just so happens to be the destined bride of the Great Old One. Our story starts, in true Lovecraftian fashion, with a framing device: a nervous young man in a heavily monitored room being questioned by an attractive, no-nonsense, chain-smoking mid-30s female detective. She wants him to recount the events of the past few days, events that have resulted in no less than forty-three dead bodies—at least she thinks it’s forty-three, grimly noting that it’s hard to tell when you can’t piece all the parts together.
This twitchy, terrified man is Carter, a sensitive young artist who, as he tells our hard-nosed detective, was in a bad spot at the start of our story: lonely, depressed, fetching condoms for his cute goth girl roommate and her boyfriend, and jerking off to a porn star. He’s been waiting to meet the right girl to lose his virginity to, and after a chance encounter with a call girl named Riley, he thinks he’s finally found her.
Meanwhile, dark forces are afoot nearby: Sebastian Suydum, the very image of the classic archetype of the sinister, mysteriously wealthy man—mid- to late-40s, silver hair, with a tailored suit, Necronomicon, and a cane with an idol of Cthulhu at the top—has been killing his way through the local call girl population with the help of his cultists. He’s in search of a specific call girl with a cephalopod-shaped birthmark on her right buttock, believing that she is destined to bear the child of Cthulhu, and Riley just so happens to be the girl with that very birthmark. This, unfortunately, gets Carter unwittingly caught up in the cult’s attempt to awaken the Great Old Ones and the efforts of Professor Curwen to thwart their plans and avoid the end of the world.
Firstly, Call Girl of Cthulhu goes hard with the Lovecraft references. Deep Ones brand condoms. Cool Air brand aerosol. Carter’s roommate and eventual love interest is a musician named Erica Zann and the porn star he’s infatuated with at first is named Missy Katonixx. The film never gets too deep into the unknowable cosmic horror that was Lovecraft’s trademark, but the filmmakers have clearly done their homework and have a deep reverence for both the source material and the tropes found in classic horror films.
Secondly, the directing, acting, and editing are all surprisingly solid. David Phillip Carollo gives an impressive performance as Carter, considering he was a last-minute casting choice and had never acted before. He brings a near-perfect balance of likability and cluelessness to his character, keeping us invested in his search for love in all the weirdest places even as events grow increasingly strange and apocalyptic. Dave Gamble chews every ounce of scenery he can, and Melissa O’Brien’s Riley and Nicollete La Faye’s Erica are both well fleshed out, along with some genuine sincerity to be found in the eventual romance that springs up between Erica and Carter. Meanwhile, damn near every transition is accompanied by some variety of visual pun or turn of phrase—the professor’s accomplice telling her “you’d better move your ass” cutting to a lovingly framed shot of Riley doing just that and Riley telling her handler he can “kiss her goodbye” if he’s late picking her up cutting to a pair of lesbians making out are just a couple of many standouts. The only other thing I’ve seen put this much effort into their transitions was the Watchmen comics.
Finally, the prosthetics and character designs are shockingly well done given the film’s limited budget. Zombies, tentacles, and pieces of melting flesh all have that classic Stuart Gordon sliminess, and at times even veer dangerously close to Brian Yuzna/Screaming Mad George territory. There’s something truly grotesque to behold in Riley’s transformation, and even the cult members are surprisingly characterful in their appearance—the high-ranking ones clad in ski masks, goggles, leather jackets, and pacifiers and the lesser ones wearing what can only be described as dirty pillowcases shredded to mimic Cthulhu’s tentacles.
But despite the numerous ways in which Call Girl of Cthulhu punches above its weight, it never loses sight of its true identity. This film is B-movie trash through and through and makes absolutely no effort to hide it. Blood and breasts fill the screen with equal measure, heads explode and bodies melt in extraordinarily gooey fashion, and Riley’s soon-to-be former clients are a colorful gang of weirdos with very specific fetishes, most of which are exploited in a memorable mid-film rampage, the highlight of which is Riley obliging her client’s request for a…let’s just say golden shower only to wind up getting a face(melting)ful of acid. It’s great stuff, but it’s definitely for film fans of a certain kind of taste.
But if you’re in the mood for a goofy, gooey good time, pick up your phone and dial up Call Girl of Cthulhu, a film that I can’t recommend highly enough. Come for the blood, breasts, and black magic, stay for a surprisingly well-written, well-acted story that is, dare I say, lovingly crafted.
