Frank Belknap Long's Great Chaugnar: Lovecraftian Parody?
Apocalypses come in all shapes and sizes, and this one has an enormous appetite, a blood-sucking trunk, and quick-moving stumpy feet. I’m of course, talking about Great Chaugnar, created by Frank Belknap Long, a prolific author who was also a member of the Lovecraft Circle. The rotund cosmic entity Chaugnar, which made its debut in 1931, in The Horror from the Hills, was one of his contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos. Its ultimate goal? To eat the world!
Warning: SPOILERS!
THE HORROR FROM THE HILLS
All things that are now in the world, all creatures and plants and stones will be devoured by Great Chaugnar. All things that are and have been will cease to be, and Great Chaugnar will fill all space with its Oneness. Even its Brothers it will devour.
Algernon Harris, the Curator of Archeology at the Manhattan Museum of Fine Arts, is ecstatic when Clark Ulman, one of his field workers, returns with the infamous statue of the mysterious god Chaugnar. Despite warnings of impending doom, Harris refuses to destroy it and dismisses Ulman’s strange physical changes as the work of a skilled surgeon. Naturally, it doesn’t take long for people to start dying in horrible ways. Because Chaugnar has an ancient prophecy to fulfill - a prophecy that could mean the end of the world! Now, Humanity’s only hope for survival lies with Harris, ethnologist Dr Henry C. Imbert, and former detective/current mad scientist Roger Little.
In the beginning, it looks like this is going to be your typical Mythos story, with a pre-human deity, an ancient cult, and a world-ending prophecy. There’s even some good, creepy descriptions of the effects of Chaugnar’s nursing on Ulman and the god’s first kill. However, it soon descends into what looks like a parody of Lovecraft’s style and themes, with never-ending monologues about evolution, pre-human existences, and multiple dimensions, and a police detective eager to blame everything on foreigners who tells a randomly racist story involving a murderous Italian and his deadly pygmy. Really, this has got to be a parody. Chaugnar’s appearance doesn’t help. I just couldn’t take it seriously after Belknap Long compared it to an elephant. As a statue secretly attacking unsuspecting museum staff and visitors, it sort of works, but not after it leaves the museum. It’s impossible to believe that this hugely fat, stinky creature that also glows in the dark could sneak up on anyone. Surely any prospective victim would’ve seen (or smelled) it coming a mile away. This made Harris’s concerns about Chaugnar being lose in the city more comical than scary even though it did kill some people. There was an attempt at making it greater than what was visible during one of Little’s monologues:
It and its brothers are incarnate manifestations of a very ancient, a very malignant hyperdimensional entity. Or call it a principle, if you wish - a principle so antagonistic to life as we know it that it becomes a spreading blight.
If this was what Chaugnar and its brothers really were meant to be, it makes no sense for them to be so weak. Chaugnar even left their original hideout because of the Roman empire! That was at a time when humans didn’t have nearly has many resources as they did when it finally left its temple. And if this was such a special occasion, you’d think Chaugnar’s powers would’ve been greater than usual, but there was no indication of that. It didn’t do anything impressive - just called a single victim to the museum, and then ran around town killing a few random people. The corruptive curse could’ve been good, but it wasn’t used on anyone other than Ulman. Showing someone being infected by it and slowly changing would’ve no doubt increased the horror. Unfortunately, instead of using these elements to make his creation look like a proper scary menace capable of competing with Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth, Belknap Long decided it was better to add a mention of Chaugnar’s quick moving stumpy legs before Harris, Imbert, and Little try to neutralize it using Little’s entropy-reversing, space-time machine to send it back to a time when it was a puddle of slime. Seriously? Stumpy legs? Did readers really need the mental image of big, fat Chaugnar running on stumpy legs? I don’t think so.
But how did this rotund cosmic menace become so powerful in the first place? By eating his fellow pre-human Earth-dwellers, naturally. One, there’s no way this ridiculous creature was a match for the Old Ones, Cthulhu, the Deep Ones, and all the other Lovecraftian creations we know were around at that time. Two, all this talk of eating and repeated mentions of Chaugnar’s huge bulk feels a little like fat shaming. Anyway, the trio manages to vanquish this compulsive eater… temporarily. In the end, they know that it can still come back at some point in the future, and that it can also communicate telepathically with sleeping humans.
THE VERY OLD FOLK
Belknap Long didn’t mention any Mythos entity by name, but he did include an extended version of The Very Old Folk as a dream Roger Little had, connecting Chaugnar and its lookalike brothers (because, yes, there are more of them) to the unnamed creatures in Lovecraft’s very short story. This should be considered the definitive proof that sometimes less is more when describing supposedly scary beings:
Now silhouetting the mad, leaping, and colossal forms of such nameless beasts as had never a Phrygian priest or Campanian grandam whispered of in the wildest of furtive tales.
The Very Old Folk
The awful and cyclopean silhouettes of things that were neither men nor beasts, but fiendish amalgams of both - things with huge flaring flaring ears and long waving trunks that howled and gibbered and pranced in the skyless night.
The Horror from the Hills
First, a quick reminder that the prancing is being done on stumpy legs. Now, this and Belknap Long’s other modifications did nothing to improve the original, which was a vivid dream Lovecraft described in a letter. I don’t like The Very Old Folk that much, but the shorter, leaner tale is much more effective, even with Lovecraft’s usual lack of detailed descriptions. That small excerpt may not be all that by itself but works well within the final sequence that sees the Roman soldiers face their doom. Apart from the ridiculous creatures, Belknap Long’s version, that had already wasted too much time getting to the hills, just goes on for longer than it should have and lowers any possible spookiness to zero. Still, considering all the changes he made, I’m surprised that he didn’t try to link Chaugnar and its brothers to Hannibal’s elephants. I’m not saying it would’ve been better, I’m just saying I was surprised he missed the opportunity of shoehorning them someplace else.
COMEDY OR HORROR?
Of course, some of the criticism in the previous paragraphs wouldn’t necessarily apply if The Horror from the Hills were a parody of Lovecraftian horror. However, the problem with making a parody of Lovecraft is that Lovecraft’s style - overly dramatic with elaborated sentences and old-fashioned words - can possess a certain campy charm that occasionally comes across as unintentionally amusing. Parodying that is a bit difficult (and unnecessary) and you can easily end up with nothing but a poor copy. I could see the joke in Ulman’s monologue about evolution and Dr Imbert’s about the evolution of primitive deities and the limitations of human madness as an explanation for the wildest of these creations, even if they went on for way too long. On the other hand, Little’s many monologues were just too much and would’ve benefited from Belknap Long picking a subject for him and sticking with it. The detective’s insistence on blaming foreigners was too heavy-handed and the story about the pygmy being true rather than something he’d heard somewhere was a weird choice if the goal was to subvert (Lovecraftian) expectations. I just didn’t get what Chaugnar was supposed to be. Was it meant to be scary or ridiculous? Ulman’s predicament and the notion of Chaugnar’s touch corrupting the flesh appeares to indicate the former, while its outward appearance and that final run points to the latter, but Belknap Long didn’t seem to commit either way. It’s a shame that he didn’t develop Ulman’s theory that the cultists had been looking for a way to get rid of Chaugnar and had the high priest Chung Ga be called to Manhattan by the god he thought he’d never see again. That could’ve been funny. Maybe the humour would’ve been clearer in a movie adaptation? It wouldn’t change the fact that the monologues needed some editing, but with some good acting, it could’ve worked. Menacing Chaugnar would’ve been hilarious.
The Horror from the Hills wasn't a very good horror comedy and if it was meant as pure horror, it was even worse.
WHEN CHAUGNAR WAKES
The first Chaugnar story I read was actually When Chaugnar Wakes, a poem also by Belknap Long, that was published in 1932. It was pretty standard cosmic horror stuff, which presented Chaugnar as an evil, super powerful entity living in space whom the narrator fears could set its malignant sights on Earth. Here are the final two stanzas:
When Chaugnar wakes, its mindless
hate
Will send it voyaging far;
It may set Sirius adrift,
Or seek a humbler star.
A humbler star with satellites,
Small planets in its train:
And that is why I kneel and kneel
Before Great Chaugnar’s fane.
If you read the full poem, you’ll notice that there was no description of the titular Chaugnar, so I didn’t get the chance to picture its stumpy legs moving rapidly as it travelled across space. This portrayal of Chaugnar doesn’t really match what we were told in The Horror from the Hills. When I tweeted about it, I joked that after having been temporarily defeated by Little’s machine, Chaugnar had taken a nap and eaten some lava. However, nothing in the poem acknowledges the events of the previous tale as Chaugnar’s possible future interest in Earth seems random. Is this that hyperdimensional entity of which that other Chaugnar and its brothers were part of? Still, you’d expect some mention of their defeat. Could it be a prequel? In the poem, Chaugnar is said to be 'A billion miles beyond the suns/Which gild the edge of space', though, and The Horror from the Hills not only stated that it (or part of it) came to Earth in pre-human times, but also that it only became a god (or godlike) after eating other space entities that dwelt there at the time. So, who could the fearful worshipper and the 'explorers from the world we know' possibly be? If they’re all aliens, then there should’ve been some hints. There’s no mention of its brothers, either. Since 1931/1932 are publication dates, could the poem have been written first and reflect Belknap Long’s earlier conception of the character? Because the only thing that matches is Chaugnar’s ability to contact people through their dreams. Oh, and that they’re essentially clichéd Lovecraftian cosmic entities.
Despite the differences between them, the danger in When Chaugnar Wakes is the same as in the previous story - that this rotund bundle of cosmic menace will eventually destroy the Earth. So, there’s no escaping the chubby Apocalypse.
VERDICT
Neither version of Great Chaugnar is a worthy addition to the Mythos pantheon, being poor copies of Lovecraft’s own creations. It talks to people in dreams like Cthulhu, it created a race of helpers like the Old Ones, it’s a sleeping menace like Azathoth, and has its own cult like everybody else, but it’s not as memorable as any of them. If you have the original, why bother with a copy? Belknap Long should’ve put more emphasis on the two unique elements - being part of a greater hyperdimensional entity and its infectious nature. As for the Apocalypse according to Chaugnar, we’re told that it’s going to consume everything and everyone. Well, okay, that sounds like a good slice of cosmic horror. But then, when it begins its rampage, it’s a very hands-on approach that makes it look as if it’s going to physically munch on the entire world. And that, much like The Horror from the Hills, is more ridiculous than scary.
By Danforth