Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams (2018)
Directed by Darin Coelho Spring
Featuring Donald Sidney-Fryer, Harlan Ellison, S.T. Joshi, Cody Goodfellow, Skinner

Clark Ashton Smith, one of the “Three Musketeers” of the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales (with H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard) has sadly not received the popular attention that the creators of Cthulhu and Conan have benefited from. This new documentary hopefully will remedy that situation.

Smith lived from 1893 to 1961, primarily in the Gold Rush town of Auburn, CA. For about 50 years, he resided in a cabin there without electricity or running water. He never attended high school, but educated himself by devouring all of the books in the local library. He developed an incredible vocabulary and style that soon established him as a promising poet and the protégé of the “Keats of the West Coast,” George Sterling.

Lovecraft encountered Smith’s poetry and began a correspondence to state his admiration that blossomed into a lifelong friendship, all expressed through the mail, as the men unfortunately never met in person. The title of the documentary comes from the first line of Smith’s poem “The Hashish-Eater”, which Lovecraft praised in his Supernatural Horror in Literature.

Smith’s influence helped inspire Lovecraft’s “Fungi from Yuggoth” sonnet-cycle, and HPL in turn provided encouragement for the fiction writing Smith undertook to help support his ailing parents. While Lovecraft started with a realistic foundation for his stories of cosmic dread, Smith preferred to invent completely original worlds, flora, and fauna for his characters to adventure in. These incredible environments included fabled Atlantis; the magical civilization of Hyperborea with its monsters and sorcerers battling the Ice Age; the medieval French kingdom of Averoigne infested with vampires and werewolves; and Zothique, Earth’s last giant continent, where wizardry and the old gods have returned to mankind under the rays of a dying sun. Smith’s science fiction was also popular in Hugo Gernsback’s magazine Wonder Stories, which published his masterpiece, “City of the Singing Flame” (1931), which Harlan Ellison claimed to have read over 200 times. He also created the toad-god Tsathoggua, which Lovecraft and his disciples incorporated into the “Cthulhu Mythos” of horror yarns.

C.A. Smith never left California, but spent the last years of his life in a contemporary household, accomplishing all he needed to fiction-wise after the death of his parents and Lovecraft. He continued to write poetry, and paint and sculpt marvelous chimeras, often of the magicians and fabulous incubi which populated his written work. Smith left this mortal plane to enter the realm of the Singing Flame in 1961. He authored 17 books in his lifetime, several from Arkham House, the publishing firm created by August Derleth to preserve Lovecraft’s fiction.

It’s always difficult to depict the life of an author or poet without doing a dramatization. However, director Spring does a good job by featuring a myriad of rare photographs of Smith and friends (including one with him and Forrest J. Ackermann), as well as a great assortment of Smith’s paintings, drawings, bizarre stone carvings, and the beautiful art that has adorned his book and pulp covers throughout the years. Spring interviews a star-studded group of weird fiction aficionados such as Lovecraft and C.A. Smith historians S.T. Joshi, Scott Connors, and Ron Hilger; Lovecraftian authors Cody Goodfellow and W. H. Pugmire; psychedelic artist Skinner; and our genial tour guide, poet Donald Sidney-Freyer, author of Arkham House’s Songs and Sonnets Atlantean (who personally visited twice with Smith). Most touching of all, however, are lengthy tributes given by the late Harlan Ellison, who reads from Smith’s “The Chain of Aforgomon” and confesses as a kid he shoplifted the library book where he first encountered Smith’s stories. In addition, a plethora of other poets, authors, devotees, and relatives share their recollections of “Klarkash-Ton” (as HPL affectionately called Smith).

The film also explores the beautiful and often eerie landscape of Crater Ridge, strewn with strange rocks that Lovecraft said looked like hieroglyphics from a pre-human civilization, that served as inspiration for Smith’s unique visions. Leeman Kessler, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lovecraft, delivers a stirring eulogy in character to Smith in character, from beyond the grave. Clips are included of the rare screen adaptations of Smith’s stories, including the Night Gallery episode “Return of the Sorceror” (featuring Vincent Price) and the short film Mother of Toads, directed by Richard Stanley (of Hardware and Dust Devil fame), who is also briefly interviewed. Possibly the most fascinating artifact of all included in the film is an audio recording of Smith himself, reciting lines from his poem “High Surf”.

Known as “The Bard of Auburn”, Smith and his poetic and prose legacy thrives to this day through numerous reprints, including a 2018 Penguin Classics collection, The Dark Eidolon. Harlan Ellison noted, Smith was “the voice of magic”, and added that “real talent always prevails.”

The film is streaming on demand at these locations:
VIMEO: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theemperorofdreams
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Clark-Ashton-Smith-Emperor-Dreams/dp/B07JDZV3N2/

DVDs and BluRays are available from Hippocampus Press. Just click HERE.

Reviewed by Alan Tromp