Adam Curtis Goes to Arkham

Ominous music begins playing. Narration begins interlaced with an overhead shot of a city.

"In 1925, the unthinkable happened. In the small town of Arkham, Massachusetts, Dr. William Maleson, an Associate Professor of physics at Miskatonic University, unleashed never before seen eldritch horrors onto the streets of Arkham while experimenting with a device that could bend the flow of time itself. Maleson wanted to control temporal forces to bring back his deceased wife, defying all conventional laws of physics as we know them. But instead of bending reality to his will, he unleashed forces that he could not control.

Meanwhile, David Renfield, an occultist and eschatologist, ran ads in the Arkham Advertiser heralding the end of world at the hands of an unknown alien menace while peddling snake oil disguised as strength enhancement serum. The masses bought it in droves once Maleson unleashed his monsters onto the town. But it did not save them.

The politicians and other government officials were dumbfounded. None of their plans to restore normality succeeded. That is until a man by the name of Benjamin Rook approached them with an unprecedented strategy. Mr. Rook was a time traveler. He came from the future to try and stop Maleson from completing his device. But each time he intervened, he failed, dooming those that he tried to help. This time, however, Rook had enlisted the help of a British documentarian from the 21st century to film the catastrophe and unleash it into all timestreams. Hopefully, Maleson would see it and halt his experiments. But then, something unexpected happened. The documentarian became trapped in a card game."

This is a thematic deck based on the life and films of the British documentary maker, Adam Curtis. I find that his films sometimes fit the theme of Arkham Horror. He highlights little known stories and individuals in history that he connects to broader historical events and conspiracies. He then wraps them all together with archival footage to create very dreamy, sometimes nightmarish films. Go check one out if you haven't seen one.