Some horror movies are content to give you a single monster, a single haunted house, or a single cursed VHS tape. Necronomicon (1993), however, is not content with such modest ambition. No, this anthology wants you to feel like you’ve been mugged in a back alley by the entire works of H. P. Lovecraft, then dragged through a puddle of latex tentacles, blood geysers, and cheap Gothic furniture. And honestly? It’s glorious.
Directed by Brian Yuzna, Christophe Gans, and Shusuke Kaneko, Necronomicon is less a “movie” and more a cinematic mixtape, where each director gets to show off what happens when you stare at a copy of Lovecraft’s notebook for too long. The result is part midnight movie, part haunted art project, and part “what the hell did I just watch?”
And that’s why it works.
The Frame Story: Jeffrey Combs Cosplaying as Lovecraft
The anthology is stitched together by a wraparound tale, The Library, where Jeffrey Combs—bless him—plays H. P. Lovecraft with all the understated subtlety of a community theater Dracula. He sneaks into a monastery, swipes the Necronomicon, and starts flipping through the pages like a kid with a Goosebumps book.
It’s absurd, it’s campy, and it’s wonderful. Combs delivers every line like he knows he’s too good for the material but also too addicted to say no. And isn’t that the essence of Lovecraft cinema?
Story One: The Drowned
This first tale is gothic melodrama turned up to eleven. It’s about grief, family curses, and the kind of seaside mansions that always come with free doom. Bruce Payne plays Edward, a man dumb enough to resurrect his dead lover with the Necronomicon, which is sort of like trying to fix your iPhone by pouring seawater into it.
Naturally, things go wrong. Tentacles burst out of Clara’s mouth like she’s auditioning for an H. R. Giger art installation. Before long, Edward’s fighting a giant floor monster with a chandelier like he’s in some kind of deathmatch with an evil IKEA showroom.
It’s ridiculous, it’s operatic, and it sets the tone beautifully: if you came for subtle horror, you bought the wrong ticket.
Story Two: The Cold
Next up: immortality, romance, and enough spinal fluid to fill a water park. Here, David Warner plays Dr. Richard Madden, a scientist who discovers the secret to eternal life, which—surprise!—involves stealing spinal fluid like a vampiric chiropractor.
Emily, our heroine, falls for him despite the fact that he lives in a house that looks like a set leftover from Dark Shadows. Things spiral, as they always do in horror love stories, until we realize Emily isn’t Emily’s daughter but Emily herself—eternally youthful, eternally thirsty, and more than a little stab-happy.
It’s basically a soap opera with gore, which means it’s twice as entertaining as anything on daytime TV. If General Hospital had half the nerve, it would look like this.
Story Three: Whispers
The final tale is where the anthology goes full nightmare fuel. Two cops chase a suspect called “the Butcher” into a warehouse, which is always the horror equivalent of starting a sentence with “hold my beer.”
Before long, we’re in the hands of the Benedicts, a husband-and-wife duo who may or may not be human. Spoiler: they’re not. They’re caretakers for giant bat-monsters who snack on brains like they’re running a midnight buffet.
This segment is relentless, sweaty, and deranged, with a finale that makes you question whether you’re watching a film or having a fever dream. Sarah, our protagonist, wakes up in a hospital only to realize the “hospital” is still the cavern of monsters, her baby has been transplanted into a creature’s womb, and she’s missing half her arm. It’s the kind of twist that makes you scream and laugh at the same time—dark humor at its purest.
The Practical Effects: Tentacle Chic
Let’s talk about the real star of Necronomicon: the effects. This is the kind of movie where latex, animatronics, and gallons of slime take top billing. With talents like Tom Savini, John Carl Buechler, and Screaming Mad George in the mix, it’s basically a monster maker’s playground.
Tentacles whip, eyes bulge, creatures writhe, and skulls explode in lovingly gooey detail. Sure, some of it looks like leftover Halloween decorations, but that’s part of the charm. CGI ages like milk; rubber tentacles age like fine cheese.
Why It Works
Anthology films are notoriously hit or miss. For every Creepshow, there’s a dozen Tales from the Darkside knockoffs collecting dust. But Necronomicon works because it commits to its weirdness. Each director brings their own flavor: Yuzna’s gleeful gore, Gans’s operatic Gothicism, Kaneko’s nightmare surrealism.
And through it all, the tone is consistent: over-the-top, grotesque, and completely unashamed of being pulp horror. It’s not trying to elevate Lovecraft to Oscar bait. It’s saying, “What if Lovecraft stories were pulp comics drawn in blood?”
The Cast of B-Movie Royalty
Beyond Combs and Warner, the cast is stacked with cult icons. Bruce Payne, Richard Lynch, Belinda Bauer, Maria Ford—these are actors who know how to chew scenery like it’s filet mignon. Nobody phones it in. Everyone commits.
Even when the dialogue sounds like it was written by a caffeinated philosophy major—“The flesh is eternal if the soul is willing!”—the delivery is so sincere you can’t help but grin.
A Symphony of Absurdity
What makes Necronomicon special isn’t just the monsters, or the gore, or the Gothic theatrics. It’s that it feels like a love letter to everything that makes horror fun: the melodrama, the pulp, the slime, the sense that the world is one bad ritual away from being overrun by squid gods.
Yes, it’s uneven. Yes, it’s campy. But like the Necronomicon itself, it has power. The kind of power that makes you stay up at 3 a.m. muttering, “Just one more viewing.”
Final Thoughts
Necronomicon is not for the faint of heart or the snobs of cinema. It’s for the midnight movie crowd, the VHS junkies, the fans who think “too many tentacles” is not a valid criticism. It’s a carnival of the grotesque, a Gothic funhouse ride that leaves you sticky with fake blood and grinning like a maniac.
If you’ve ever wanted to see Jeffrey Combs sword-fight a sewer monster, David Warner syringe people into eternity, and bat-creatures run a human brain nursery, this is your film.
