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If you read this column the day it goes live, you'll be reading the day I'll be attending the first day of this year's H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival & CthulhuCon (http://www.hpfilmfestival.com) in Portland, Oregon. In brief, H. P. Lovecraft is perhaps one of the most influential horror writers of the past 100 years, with contemporary authors like Clive Barker, Stephen King and Brian Lumley citing the man's work as influential and important. The festival has been a Portland staple since the 90s, and I've been attending the event consistently since 2001. Festival Director Andrew Migliore works tirelessly year after year to create what I've come to call my "official start of the month of October."

When I first started attending the Festival, I didn't realize there were so many films that were either adaptations (so-called and otherwise) of Lovecraft's original works or influenced by Lovecraft. Sure, we've got Stuart Gordon's work (Re-Animator and From Beyond), and John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (and The Thing to a lesser extent) is certainly Lovecraft-based or Lovecraftian, but I had no idea of the breadth and depth of movies that fall under these categories. I thank Andrew and the festival for putting so many great (and sometimes not so great!) movies in front of me over the years.

Before I fail my sanity check trying to watch every month the festival has to offer this year on all three screens all at the same time, I wanted to take a moment to think back on the movies I've seen over the years at the festival that have managed to find their way into my DVD collection and Eldritch-cinema-cluttered memory.

• AM1200. Writer/director David Prior's short horror film blew me away at last year's festival. Prior was selling DVD copies of his movie in the lobby before the movie's showing, and I was tempted to buy the movie sight unseen, but my friends convinced me to wait until I saw the movie before deciding to buy it. We went to the showing, and immediately afterward, I went to Prior's table and bought the movie. I needn't have waited. This is a slick production, filled to the brim with atmosphere and mood. The story revolves around Sam, a young businessman who finds himself in a Psycho-like situation involving a financial decision gone wrong. While driving away from his problems, he stumbles across a distorted and distressed signal coming from an isolated radio station. He finds the radio station, and finds the source of the distress, and the audience loved it. John Billingsly and Ray Wise have small roles in the movie, and the sound design plays just as big a part in the movie than any of the actors. There's something unnatural underneath the radio station, and its influence can still be felt by those audience members that were lucky enough to watch it on the big screen one year ago.

• The Call of Cthulhu. The HP Lovecraft Historical Society's silent film version of The Call of the Cthulhu is certainly not the first movie made to simulate the style of earlier filmmaking techniques, but it's probably one of the most authentic. The HPLHS' Lovecraft-era props are second-to-none, and they applied this same level of detail and technique to everything about this movie. They called their process "Mythoscope," and if you're not careful, you might feel like you're watching an actual silent film from the 1920s. Everything from the make-up to the special effects to the over-the-top score (which is top notch thanks to Troy Sterling Nies, Ben Holbrook, Nicholas Pavkovic and Chad Fifer) makes this movie work on nearly every level. While some might find the flashback-within-a-flashback style of the story to be a bit off-putting, it's actually quite a clever way of adapting a story that is told in a similar fashion. This isn't gimmicky; director Sean Branney brings everything you'd need to put a fulfilling Lovecraft story on the screen, and it works (and I'm really looking forward to the HPLHS' next movie - a "talkie" version of The Whisperer in the Darkness!)

• Cthulhu. Yes, the Cthulhu with Tori Spelling. (It's not too bad - she's not in it for very long.) Dan Gildark's film isn't exactly an adaptation of any one specific Lovecraft story. Instead, it lifts elements from several stories and contemporarizes them, weaving a very modern story about a young gay man coming back home to a hometown that never truly accepted or understood him in the first place. Jason Cottle plays his role of Russ with a stoicism that would be at home in a traditional Lovecraft story, and he's returned to the small coastal town out of duty and little else. Eventually, he discovers that he's even more of an outsider than he originally thought while rediscovering his place in the town and in his family. The movie is deliberately paced, the colors are muted, the performances are subdued, and together, Gildark has created a movie that resonates with more than just Lovecraft fans. That said, it might be Lovecraft fans that find the most worth in the movie - H. P. Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi has praised the movie, saying Cthulhu "maybe the best Lovecraft adaptation I have seen to date."

• The Yellow Sign. I saw this the first year I attended the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, and it blew me away. It made me realize that you can have a Lovecraftian movie that isn't based directly on Lovecraft, and filmmakers wanting to see what's possible in making a low-budget Lovecraftian movie should cast their critical eye on this movie for lessons. Director Aaron Vanek is no slouch - he's made several Lovecraftian shorts - but it's his The Yellow Sign that has wormed its way into my brain. Shawna Waldron plays the lead role of Tess Reardon, and she's so watchable and charismatic in her role, that as a viewer, I couldn't help but feel immediately drawn into this story, which is based loosely on the Robert W. Chambers' short story. The Yellow Sign became a springboard for me, and through this short movie, I've discovered Chambers' work, and I'm the better for it.

• Out of Mind: The Stories of H.P. Lovecraft. I did not see this at the Film Festival. Instead, I bought it after watching actor Christopher Heyerdahl give a reading of Lovecraft's "What Amateurdom and I Have Done for Each Other" . . . in the voice of Lovecraft. Heyerdahl plays Lovecraft in Out of Mind, and, based on research he did of the speech patterns of Rhode Island-ers, he adapts what I would imagine to be the best approximation any actor has achieved in playing the writer (with apologies to Jeffrey Combs!). The story is passable - it tells the story of someone discovering he's related to someone Lovecraft wrote about, and eventually, they both meet (and, amusingly, Lovecraft wonders aloud what his face is doing on a t-shirt of a modern day fan of his work). Ultimately, it's Heyerdahl's performance that sells this movie; that's not to downplay the story as it's also interesting, but it's this portrayal of the writer that his influenced the horror genre so much that makes Out of Mind almost required viewing by anyone who considers him- or herself a fan of the man's work.

If you find yourself at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival this weekend, or any weekend in the future, you'll want to pay special attention to the movies, because you may just see something that you won't forget for years to come. Also, keep an eye out for me - I'll be busy buzzing around, snapping pictures, recording interviews, and just having a great time.