HBOHow does one adapt Lovecraftian horror, which, by its very definition, is that of the unknown and indescribable — “unnamable terrors,” colors “outside of any known spectrum” — for the inherently visual medium of cinema? American author H. P. Lovecraft’s stories are suffused with a sense of cosmic dread. The protagonists, confronted by that which is beyond human comprehension and faced with their own insignificance and helplessness in the face of a vast and unfathomable universe, spiral into madness.Embarking on a proposed adaptation of one of Lovecraft’s works can be just as maddening. It took filmmaker Guillermo del Toro close to two decades to admit that his “bucket list” project, a screen version of At the Mountains of Madness — once envisioned as a big-budget Tom Cruise starrer — was ultimately “too big, too crazy” to bring to fruition. And while James Wan always knew that his Call of Cthulhu adaptation was going to be a “hard sell,” he’s spent nearly a decade developing it, citing the massive budget required to depict Lovecraft’s ambitious visions as a hurdle.Cast A Deadly Spell (1991), however, which released as a TV movie just a few years after the darkly comic body horror and graphic gore of Stuart Gordon’s loose Lovecraft adaptations — Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986) — not only had the pluck to tackle the author’s eldritch horrors, but also fuse them with a wholly different genre, that of film noir. Directed by Martin Campbell, who would go on to helm The Mask of Zorro (1998) and Casino Royale (2006), the film transplanted Lovecraft’s interdimensional terrors into the urban setting of 1948 Los Angeles.If the author dealt with the unknowable, however, this is an LA that’s starkly unfamiliar, an alternate reality where “everybody uses magic,” as per the blunt opening title card. Its presence is so ubiquitous that a character conjures up fire at his fingertips, then uses it to light his cigarette. Later, a mob boss extols the virtues of his zombie henchman — the undead don’t eat, don’t complain and if they begin to rot, he can always have new ones delivered in a pack, “like bonbons.” In one of the movie’s more imaginatively gruesome visualizations of the supernatural, a thief’s comeuppance involves him being enveloped by a swirling tornado of newspaper strips that slash at his face and body: it’s death by a thousand paper cuts.The rare non-magic user in this universe is detective H. Philip Lovecraft (a world-weary Fred Ward), who refrains from the occult on principle and relies instead on old-fashioned legwork. His scruples are the reason he’s hired to retrieve the stolen Necronomicon, what he’s told is a book about esoteric magic — he’s the only detective that can be trusted not to use its spells for himself. What he discovers is that the book is essential to a planned ceremonial invocation of the Old Ones, ancient cosmic beings that will decimate the planet but grant their summoners unparalleled power.It’s Philip’s investigative process that introduces recognizable noir conventions and settings into the film’s fantastical universe. The femme fatale he runs into is a nightclub singer he used to date (Julianne Moore), and the cruel mob boss he finds himself up against is his former LAPD partner (Clancy Brown), on the hunt for the Necronomicon too. While writer Joseph Dougherty’s snappy dialogue comes across as an affectionate exaggeration of Raymond Chandler-esque hardboiled detective fiction — “Bourbon…show it some water but be discreet,” says Philip, ordering a drink — the classic rain-soaked atmosphere of film noir is re-envisioned here as torrents of blood rain that cast a striking red tint over the detective’s office.A young Julianne Moore starred as Detective Lovecraft’s love interest. | HBOThere’s plenty to appreciate in Cast A Deadly Spell, from the gorgeous matte painting backdrops, to fun throwaway bits of worldbuilding like the giggly automobile-wrecking gremlins, brought back from the Pacific by World War II soldiers. For all its playful visions of an alternate world, however, there are sequences in the film that dismally reflect the worst viewpoints in ours, and that haven’t aged well at all. A trans character is deadnamed, called slurs, and assaulted. An act of statutory rape becomes key to saving the world, and is celebrated upon its discovery.Cast a Deadly Spell was successful enough to earn a sequel, 1995’s Witch Hunter, and echoes of it still reverberate through modern horror comedies such as Cabin In The Woods (2011), which likewise culminates in the splitting open of the Earth and the emergence of a giant subterranean entity. Lovecraft purists have every reason to scoff at its silliness but it’s in shrugging off a slavish devotion to the source material that the film is free to embrace a lightness; unencumbered by the budgetary constraints and compromised visions that would come to hinder more weighty adaptations.Cast a Deadly Spell is streaming on HBO Max.