The Father of Serpents is coming...

Minneapolis based filmmakers Paul von Stoetzel, writer/director of the award-winning Erich Zann adaptation Asleep in the Deep, and Tim Uren, one half of the Lovecraftian comedy duo Chuck and Dexter, are developing an adaptation of one of H.P. Lovecraft's ghostwritten tales, The Curse of Yig...


The original story, co-written with Zealia Bishop, revolves around a couple, newly arrived in Oklahoma around 1880, who learn about the local legends surrounding the "Snake God" Yig, who takes vengeance on those who kill serpents by killing them or turning them into half-snake monsters...

The husband who has Ophidiophobia (a fear of snakes), which isn't helped by his wife disturbing a nest of rattlesnakes, and his wife go through rituals to keep Yig away, but they fail in the end, and in fear the woman kills her own husband, thinking he is Yig...

In the end, the woman is taken to an asylum and dies there...but not before giving birth...

image courtesy of josephscrimshaw.com

Actor Tim Uren, whose one man show H.P. Lovecraft's The Rats in the Walls sold out in 2006, produced a two person stage version of The Curse of Yig (with Amy Schweickhardt) that ended it's run at the Minnesota Fringe Festival last weekend...

The stage play (watch the trailer below) takes place in 1929, when a young academic visits the Guthrie Asylum in Oklahoma to explore the native tribal belief in the snake god, Yig. There she is confronted by a bizarre creature, the sole living survivor of the nightmarish Halloween of 1889. As she learns the tragic tale of Walker and Audrey Davis - early residents of the Oklahoma Territory - she too begins to fall under the spell of an unrelenting fear that time cannot diminish...



It is unclear whether the film, which will be shot towards the end of the year, will follow the original story or Tim's stage version, but either way, the filmmakers are traveling in unexplored Lovecraft country and judging from their previous efforts, it will be a welcome edition to the world of Lovecraft cinema...

Anyone interested in helping with the project should contact Paul and Tim through their respective websites, and of course, watch this space for more...

(Thanks to Paul von Stoetzel)