Del Toro's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS

A few years ago, there was a significant buzz that Guillermo Del Toro was going to direct a big budget version of H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness".  It seemed like a good match of director and subject, and it was apparently one of Del Toro's dream projects that he'd tried unsuccessfully to do before. Del Toro himself scripted the film with Matthew Robbins. But sometime afterwards, interest seemed to dry up, and Del Toro moved on to other things. 

Recently Del Toro and Robbins's script began circulating on the web.  I understand this is an early version, but at least we now get to experience as a brain movie something of Del Toro's vision.  Alas, I found it second-rate---much more of an expansion of John Carpenter's The Thing (itself excellent) along Lovecraftian lines, than something truly Lovecraftian.  Dole in a heap of movie cliches, and a heavy reliance upon special effects, and I can see why no studio would want to fund this project.  (Of course, compared to what studios want to and do fund, this script should have seemed like a real box-office winner.)  But don't trust me.  Read it for yourself.  Currently I found it online at The Lovecraft eZine.  Direct link here.