13 Nights of Shocktober: Dagon

by A.J. 

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 10: Stuart Gordon Memorial Night

“Now you serve Dagon.”
Dagon

Earlier this year notable horror filmmaker Stuart Gordon passed away at the age of 72. He was one of the only filmmakers daring enough to tackle adapting the unspeakable eldritch horrors of author H.P. Lovecraft, with varying degrees of success. Without a doubt his most famous film is the cult classic Re-Animator, adapted from the Lovecraft story Herbert West, Re-Animator. This film mixes shock visuals, gross effects, lurid nudity, and dark, offbeat humor. Scenes involving a decapitated head that won’t shut up and the glowing green syringe of reagent, used to bring the newly dead back to life, are well known to horror fanatics. I have to admit that though I’ve seen Re-Animator a few times, it never struck a chord with me the way it has for countless horror movie fans. 

His 2001 film, Dagon, however, I found very entertaining. I can’t say it is a good movie exactly, but it is definitely an awesome movie. With its exploitative sensibilities, gory violence, monsters, and lurid nudity, it feels like the Tales From the Crypt movie that wasn’t but should have been. If you’re a fan of Tales From the Crypt, Roger Corman movies, or Stuart Gordon’s own Re-Animator, you’ll have a good time with this Dagon.

Dagon is actually based on two Lovecraft stories: Dagon, a very short story about someone encountering a strange creature on a small strange island and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, from which the film takes its plot. Dagon moves the setting from a small, isolated New England seaside village (Innsmouth) to a small, isolated Spanish seaside village (Imboca); it’s worth noting that numerous Spanish production company logos appear in the opening credits. After a storm causes a yacht to strike rocks and begin to sink, a young American man, Paul (Ezra Godden), and his Spanish girlfriend, Barbara (Raquel Meroño), seek help at a nearby village. Right away nothing seems right. The village is eerily deserted and the people they do find have deformities like webbed, claw-like hands.

Paul and Barbara are separated and as he searches for her he has a strange vision of a mermaid, is chased by a mob of grunting villagers in raincoats, and stumbles into a shed straight out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but somehow more gruesome. He meets an old drunk, Ezrquiel (Francisco Rabal) who tells him the dark history of the village. We see in a flashback to when Ezequiel was a boy that the village gave up Christianity in favor of worshipping the sea god Dagon, in exchange for gold and fish. When the gold stopped coming, they began offering human sacrifices to Dagon and now the villagers are changing “into the sea.”

All B-movie qualities aside, of which Dagon has many, Francisco Rabal’s performance as the old drunk is genuinely great. He died shortly after making Dagon and the film is dedicated to him. Paul also finds the beautiful mermaid of his dreams, Uxia (Macarena Gomez), though her bottom half is more squid than fish. At first Uxia seems vulnerable and helpless and Gomez does a good job playing these traits. Then she’s revealed to be a crazed mastermind and Gomez does a great job at this, going completely over the top, which just makes the movie fun. Raquel Merono gives a solid performance as Barbara but she unfortunately doesn’t have many scenes. The weak link in the cast is Ezra Godden; his performance does not break the movie but it’s carried by everything else working in Dagon’s favor. I suppose in its own way his performance fits the B-movie sensibility.

The budget is low and the visual effects look cheap but are still gross and effective. The CGI effects however look very fake. The mob of villagers is obviously people in masks and fake monster hands; it’s a good thing it was raining so they could wear big raincoats that cover everything else. There are some horrific and upsetting visuals, most notable a man getting his face flayed off in full light. It is incredibly gross but also impressive from a technical point of view. There’s also some implied offscreen horror that is very disturbing. Still, Dagon, even in its goriest, darkest moments never feels dreadful or sadistic towards the audience. Unlike the Saw or Hostel films, Dagon isn’t out to make you feel awful; it wants to leave you entertained. Dagon is a B-horror movie at its best.