Howard Phillips Lovecraft, born August 20, 1890 is an American writer and journalist who worked in the genres of horror, mystery, fantasy and science fiction, combining them in an original style. His work is so unique that the works of Lovecraft stand out in a separate subgenre — the so-called Lovecraft horror. The core of Lovecraft's work is the Cthulhu Mythos - works thatunited by a kind of common mythology.

Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his life. During Lovecraft's lifetime, his works were not very popular and published in cheap tabloid magazines, but after his death, they had a huge impact not only on the formation of modern horror literature, but also on world popular culture as a whole.

He was an author of "cosmic horror" and truly creepy creatures from other worlds. He had a huge influence on other writers, movie directors and game creators and Cthulhu is the most impressive creation of all Lovecraft's Myths. In 2018, it began to appear in the stories of Stephen King, Andrzej Sapkowski and Neil Gaiman, in the music of Metallica, dozens of games, movies and animated pictures.

Among the writer's fans, the game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is still considered a cult game — it was released in 2005 and was mostly based on the story "The Shadow over Innsmouth". From there, the creators of the game took an unfriendly coastal town, fishmen with bulging eyes and the famous scene in the hotel. The one where the hero, detective Jack Walters, running from one room to another and hastily closing the doors on the bolts, tried to escape from the townspeople, some of whom had already grown gills.

Frogwares Company has two more good and already released games, which unexpectedly found a place for "Cthulhu Mythos". The first is Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, an adventure game about how Sherlock Holmes fought cultists on the shores of Scotland and prevented them from summoning Cthulhu. Sometimes developers used specific creatures from the "Cthulhu Mythos" in their games, but took them out of the "Lovecraft" context and placed them in their own worlds.

It just so happens that indirect and unofficial film adaptations of Lovecraft in the movies outshine the official ones in both fame and budget. Guillermo del Toro for many years was going to make a film based on At The Mountains of Madness, but could not agree with the studio about the age rating of the picture.

However, in 1994, John Carpenter released the most popular unofficial adaptation of Lovecraft — the film In the Mouth of Madness starring Sam Neil and Julia Carmen. The Director himself considers the film the end of his "apocalyptic trilogy", which also includes "The Thing" and the very Lovecraft’s “Prince of Darkness”. If it were not for Howard Lovecraft, modern culture would be completely different.

Mekezhanov Yerassyl librarian of the Department of the International Boo