History YMMV / TheDunwichHorror

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: The film is literally imbued with 60s, which in combination with loud psychedelic melodies and bizarre direction turns it into a full-fledged acid trip.

* TheWoobie: Lavinia. She's ugly, deformed and ill physically and mentally. Isolated in squalor, she depends on her batshit insane and abusive father for everything. The same father who [[spoiler:is implied to have killed her mother and]] sacrificed Lavinia to Yog-Sothoth in the first place. When he dies, she finds herself in the mercy of her [[spoiler:demon-spawn]] son who openly hates her for no reason [[spoiler: and soon enough kills her]]. To make matters worse, [[spoiler: it seems that while her father and son's souls escape the demonic whippoorwhills at their deaths, they catch hers. Even after death, she can't catch a break.]]

** If Wilbur is anything like [[spoiler:[[Literature/TheGreatGodPan Helen Vaughan]]]], then he might not actually be biologically male--he could have assumed a shape agreeable to most people's image of physical maleness, [[spoiler:just as Helen Vaughan wears a pretense of physical femaleness but is, in fact, an eldritch monstrosity that changes sex according to the situation.]]

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Enough that Stanley Sargent wrote ''The Black Brat of Dunwich'' which recast Wilbur as the ''hero'', seeking the ''Necronomicon'' in order to banish his more monstrous brother back to big daddy Yog-Sothoth. Meanwhile, [[spoiler:Professor Armitage was EvilAllAlong, having been born in Innsmouth (and thereby strongly implied to actually be a Deep One hybrid) and in cahoots with Old Man Whateley right from the beginning, and the account the original story described, [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis was actually written by Armitage himself, being his attempt to cover his tracks and keep his plans secret]]]].

* UglyCute: The Horror himself. He's particularly unsightly even by the standards of Lovecraft's creatures, being a house-sized blob of animal body parts with a human face, but it's also abundantly clear that he's essentially a giant child mentally and may indeed have little to no idea what's actually going on, unlike his brother and grandfather. His last words are a pained cry for his father Yog-Sothoth to save him.
* TheWoobie: Lavinia. She's ugly, deformed and ill physically and mentally. Isolated in squalor, she depends on her batshit insane and abusive father for everything. The same father who [[spoiler:is implied to have killed her mother and]] sacrificed Lavinia to Yog-Sothoth in the first place. When he dies, she finds herself in the mercy of her [[spoiler:demon-spawn]] son who openly hates her for no reason [[spoiler: and soon enough kills her]]. To make matters worse, [[spoiler: it seems that her father' and son's souls escape the demonic whippoorwhills at their deaths, but she, they managed to catch. Even after death, she can't catch a break.]]

** There's also a theory that [[spoiler:Yog-Sothoth possessed Whatley Senior to impregnate Lavinia.]]

* TheWoobie: Lavinia. She's ugly, deformed and ill physically and mentally. Isolated in squalor, she depends on her batshit insane and abusive father for everything. The same father who ((spoiler:is implied to have killed her mother and]] sacrificed Lavinia to Yog-Sothoth in the first place. When he dies, she finds herself in the mercy of her [[spoiler:demon-spawn]] son who openly hates her for no reason [[spoiler: and soon enough kills her]]. To make matters worse, [[spoiler: it seems that her father' and son's souls escape the demonic whippoorwhills at their deaths, but she, they managed to catch. Even after death, she can't catch a break.]]

* TheWoobie: Lavinia. She's deformed and ill physically and mentally and isolated in squalor, she depends on her batshit insane and abusive father for everything. The same father who sacrificed her to Yog-Sothoth in the first place. When he dies, she finds herself in the mercy of her [[spoiler:demon-spawn]] son who openly hates her for no reason [[spoiler: and soon enough kills her]]. To make matters worse, [[spoiler: it seems that her father' and son's souls escape the demonic whippoorwhills at their deaths, but she, they managed to catch. Even after death, she can't catch a break.]]

* TheWoobie: Lavinia. She's unattractive, deformed, isolated, lives in squalor with a batshit insane father (who brought down Yog-Sothoth to impregnate her in the first place), and is eventually [[spoiler: killed by her unholy spawn whom she had begun to fear.]] To make matters worse, [[spoiler: it seems that her father' and son's souls escape the demonic whippoorwhills at their deaths, but she, they managed to catch. Even after death, she can't catch a break.]]

* UglyCute: The Horror himself. He's particularly unsightly even by the standards of Lovecraft's creatures, being a house-sized blob of animal body parts with a human face, but it's also abundantly clear that he's essentially a giant child mentally and may indeed have little no no idea what's actually going on, unlike his brother and grandfather. His last words are a pained cry for his father You-Sothoth to save him.

* CompleteMonster: [[BigBad Wilbur Whateley]], child of Lavinia Whateley and [[EldritchAbomination Yog-Sothoth]], seeks to unleash the Old Ones on humanity. Practicing HumanSacrifice and intending on making young student Nancy the victim to open the gateways, Wilbur seduces her, mind controls and rapes her, killing his grandfather when the man tries to stop him. Unleashing his horrific twin on the town of Dunwich, Wilbur attempts to kill Nancy to return the Old Ones and [[KillAllHumans annihilate humankind]].

* TheWoobie: Lavinia. She's unattractive, deformed, isolated, lives in squalor with a batshit insane father, and is eventually [[spoiler: killed by her unholy spawn whom she had begun to fear.]] To make matters worse, [[spoiler: it seems that her father' and son's souls escape the demonic whippoorwhills at their deaths, but she, they managed to catch. Even after death, she can't catch a break.]]

** If Wilbur is anything like [[spoiler:Helen Vaughan]], then he might not actually be biologically male--he could have assumed a shape agreeable to most people's image of physical maleness, [[spoiler:just as Helen Vaughan wears a pretense of physical femaleness but is, in fact, an eldritch monstrosity that changes sex according to the situation.]]

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The soundtrack of the film is just a treasure trot of catchy psychedelic rock music, not to mention a rather cartoonish, but memorable main theme.

* AwesomeMusic: The soundtrack of the film is just a treasure trot of catchy psychedelic rock music, not to mention a rather cartoonish, but memorable main theme.

** Conversely (and perhaps likelier, given his own decidedly inhuman physiology), Wilbur Whateley had a more exotic genome himself; it's not as though his DNA was ever tested in the story.

** Going by real(-ish) biology, the alien who fathered him [[RequiredSecondaryPowers must have]] human-like chromosomes to have viable offspring with a human woman. Of course, a very inhuman but sufficiently powerful EldritchAbomination could also simply [[AFormYouAreComfortableWith fashion]] whatever genome (and anatomy, for that matter) that was needed for the task. Conversely (and perhaps likelier, given his own decidedly inhuman physiology), Wilbur Whateley had a more exotic genome himself; it's not as though his DNA was ever tested in the story.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Enough that Stanley Sargent wrote ''The Black Brat of Dunwich'' which recast Wilbur as the ''hero'', seeking the ''Necronomicon'' in order to banish his more monstrous brother back to big daddy Yog-Sothoth. Meanwhile, [[spoiler:Professors Armitage was EvilAllAlong, having been born in Innsmouth (and thereby strongly implied to actually be a Deep One hybrid) and in cahoots with Old Man Whateley right from the beginning, and the account the original story described, [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis was actually written by Armitage himself, being his attempt to cover his tracks and keep his plans secret]]]].