Despite having being billed as an audio horror movie, The Dunwich Horror isn’t something completely new. Instead, think of it as a radio play plus plus: one where the sound design has all the nuance and attention to detail of a feature film.

In fact, during an illuminating team Q&A after the film, production team Savalas revealed that they had spent nine weeks on the sound design. The hard work paid off: some of the audio effects were genuinely threatening in themselves, even outside the context of H.P. Lovecraft’s unsettling short story.

Set in New England, The Dunwich Horror is one of the central tales in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology. Wilbur Whatley is the son of an albino mother and something not quite of this world, and seeks to open a gateway for eldritch creatures called the Old Ones to return. In order to do so, he travels to the Miskatonic University in Arkham to find an unabridged copy of the Necronomicon, the Book the Dead. The librarian, Dr Henry Armitage, refuses to let him take it with him, and Wilbur decides to break in late at night to take it by force. The guard dogs kill him, but that’s only the beginning of the horror that unfolds …

Mercifully, the drama doesn’t take itself too seriously, although it’s careful to stay on the right side of campy. Furthermore, Lovecraft’s stories don’t lend themselves to visual adaptations, so the otherworldly creatures that populate this story are arguably far scarier than they could ever be in a traditional film. It’s just a shame about the voice work, which lets the production down by being inconsistent and of a far lower quality than the soundscape they inhabit.

The communal atmosphere of the packed-out Filmhouse added to the fun – there were laughs and simultaneous intakes of breath a-plenty – but I hope Savalas decide to release an audio download of the film. For me, the best possible auditorium would be a car, driving through the New England countryside in the dead of night.