I realized about halfway through that it sounds for all the world like a gaming group that's really in the groove. What the voice acting lacks in polish, it makes up for with its own quirky charm. Lovecraft.) I can only guess that this was done to help Carter stand out against the milling crowds and detailed structures inherent in the setting.

In the brief glimpses of his Waking World self, Carter is the spitting image of his creator, H.P. (At least, he so appears in the Dreamlands. Ironically, the weakest art is the image of Carter himself, who appears as a cartoonish, noseless, large-eyed figure with an eggish head and ropey limbs. Based upon the comic book adaptation by Jason Thompson, it captures every ounce of the Dreamlands' mind-blowing baroque wonder. Don't go into it expecting to be blown away by the animation, which consists mostly of black-and-white static figures moving across black-and-white static landscapes with psychedelic color starfields in the background. Of course, those already familiar with the story may simply let the movie's imagery inspire them. (The story itself seems like a solo roleplaying adventure at times, with the protagonist's path looping back on itself in a decidedly dungeon-y manner, and with the 'magic items' he discovers along the way seeing use with mixed results.) Thanks to its the faithfulness to the book – in stark contrast to pretty much every other Lovecraft film I've seen, I might add – this movie can serve the same purpose for the time-pressed GM. The story is as much required reading for Call of Cthulhu GMs running a Dreamlands campaign as is the game's eponymous story for running Lovecraftian horror.

Along the way, he makes a surreal menagerie of friends and enemies, including zoogs, cats, ghouls, gugs, ghasts, nightgaunts, dholes, and even Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. The quest takes him across the length and breadth of the Dreamlands, over land, sea, and even to the Dreamlands moon. Lovecraft's landmark fantasy novella, and so begins the narration of its lovingly faithful animated adaptation – the subject of this review.ĭream-Quest, a tale of ethereal wonder rather than of the nihilistic cosmic horror for which Lovecraft is best known, relates Carter's epic journey through the Dreamlands – a fantastic quasi-medieval realm accessible through mortal dreams – in search of the forbidden city of Kadath, there to plead with the Gods of Dream for access to his own lost city. So begins The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H.P. 'Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it.'

The dream quest of unknown