A minute & a half comedy film, The Call of Cthulhu (2008) assumes Cthulhu (Alan Hawkins) is just a lame dork with a squid-face.

He freaks out women on dates, not necessarily because he's a hideous monster, but he's kind of nerdily intense, uncool, & needy.

He's was set up on a blind date with Becky (Heidi Martinuzzi) who is trying to wheedle out of giving Cthulhu her phone number after a their date playing miniature golf, which seems not to have gone as well as Cthulhu would like to spin it.

This wee film is funny though slight, with a nice mask for the Cthulhu-dude (made by Kevin Clark). Paula Haifley posts her short-short comedies at youtube under the homonymous nom de plume Hey Flea, & I recommend her small ouvre.



Not done with with the cool cthulhu mask, Paula also filmed The Cold Call of Cthulhu (2008), with Alan Hawkins reprising his role as Cthulhu the dufus dude.

Cthulhu is a real estate agent at R'lyeh Reality, who makes cold-calls on the phone trying to get clients to sell their houses before the world is destroyed "by me!" At a hair under two minutes, every second is hysterically funny, putzy Cthulhu having superb comic timing.

There are great lines: "Joe, Cthulhu. I'm your god! Yeah, that Cthulhu. Hey, get the guys, I made a sale. Margaritas on me baby."

Or his complaint, "The guy in the next cubical keeps throwing calimari at me." This whole Cthulhu-the-dork act is good enough to take on the road.



In the continuing adventures of Cthulhu, the two-minute film Rehearsing The Call of Cthulhu (2008) presents our lonely dork pretending to call up up Jane on the phone trying to get a second date, rehearsing the intended actual call.

He is never satisfied with the lines he comes up with. So he makes a list of "good things about Cthulhu" such as "likes to jog," "good with kids & small dogs," "sometimes has kids & small dogs sacrificed to him."

Finally he gets the nerve to call up Jane, but it turns out she only gave him the number of a pizzo joint.

These tiny films are brilliant, thanks chiefly to the excellence of Hey Flea's leading man, & the delightful goofiness of his simple costume/mask.


About four months after these films were made, they were edited together as a single five & a half minute film called The Call of Cthulhu (2008). It adds a quick introductory text that explains Cthulhu has been awakened by his cult a bit too soon, so has to knock around the world as a regular Joe until it's time to destroy everything.

The order of the components in this edit is a bot different from the order in which I first viewed them. No longer with their original individual titles, the components are run together in this order: The Cold Call of Cthulhu is followed by Cthulhu rehearsing a call he wants to make to Jane to see if he can't for once have a second date, concluding with the date with Becky.

Far less effective, from the same director, is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (2008). At only three-quarters of a minute, it hinges on a poor pun, that there is a beer named Charles Dexter Ward, & some random guy has a case of it to drink with his night of television.

For the Cthulhu episodes, however, Paul Haifley has written, & Alan Hawkins has delivered, something truly to delight.

Continue to the modern silent film classic:
The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl