Cosmic Horror

This Halloween, comedian and filmmaker Mike Handelman has created a new vision in terror: a family restaurant called Verne Wells Lovecraft! With the help of director Joe Whelski, artists Rocco George and Dylan Mars Greenberg, and musicians hot glue and the gun, this short begins as a commercial for a family dining establishment that soon becomes something far more sinister. If you love Adult Swim’s surrealist brand of comedy, then this is a must-watch.

“Verne Wells Lovecraft was inspired by my time doing spooky improv comedy dinner theater at New York’s Jekyll and Hyde Club. It was an extremely cheesy (but fun) sort of Mel Brooks-ian animatronic experience where the fantasy was the restaurant run by magic, full of public domain characters like Frankenstein, the Mummy, and Wolfman, and of course, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So for this project, I thought of making my own restaurant using a different set of public domain IP.

Because three is better than one, and it felt so weird and specific to the kind of crazy person who’d open a place like this, I went with Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and HP Lovecraft. And rather than Manhattan, which has been done, I put it in nearby Jersey City, for its own weird history and because New Jersey is kind of a joke unto itself (apologies to anyone from there, at least it’s not Long Island).

Verne, Wells, and Lovecraft, besides being in the public domain, come with such rich worlds and established fans, but the one I’m most drawn to is Lovecraft, because what’s funnier than cosmic horror? I’d love for Verne Wells Lovecraft to become a movie or TV show, but for now, I’m just happy I got to make something cool with my friends that incorporates my own weird sense of humor, puppets, Dylan Mars Greenberg’s amazing 3D world-building, and of course, music!”