In the 1980s, the HP Lovecraft Historical Society received a mysterious handwritten libretto for a parody musical called A Shoggoth on the Roof. That would be a Lovecraftian spin on A Fiddler on the Roof if you didn’t catch it. It turns out, the manuscript wasn’t just the creation of an off-kilter Lovecraft fan (actually institutionalized and unidentified in the documentary). His team came very close to producing the musical in 1979.

A Shoggoth on the Roof: The Investigation is a documentary short about the history of one of the strangest musicals to almost get produced in American history. The HP Lovecraft Historical Society uses a dub of rehearsal footage and a press release to track down the surviving members of the production.

The documentary has its tongue firmly planted in cheek. The facts do not stop everyone involved from suggesting that maybe the catastrophic reach of the Old Ones stop A Shoggoth on the Roof from being produced. The logical explanation is that A Fiddler on the Roof is not public domain and the parody defense doesn’t work so well when you’re lifting orchestrations and arrangements wholesale from the Broadway score. Music and theatrical licensing have very different rules. The shortcut is sound alikes are okay, using the underlying composition without licensing is not.

What we’re left with is a very silly and entertaining look at a bizarre musical concept. I used to read and watch a lot of Lovecraftian art for a panel I did at conventions about cinematic adaptations of Lovecraft. The dense psychological prose and racism/anti-semitism/anti-everyone not straight white male make it very difficult to adapt Lovecraft to other storytelling media. It doesn’t exactly sing, though I did try at one point.

From what the documentary shows, A Shoggoth on the Roof takes the safest approach. If you take Lovecraftian elements and combine them into a new story, you’ll come pretty close to getting the feel just right. The HPLHS did that themselves in their brilliant silent film The Call of Cthulhu, which combined three stories into an investigative narrative about cults. The musical suggests a small town filled with Cthulhu cultists and an actual Old One living on the roof of the protagonist’s house. Other stories intervene throughout.

A Shoggoth on the Roof: The Investigation does what any good documentary short should. It keeps the story moving. It presents the theories, the interviews, and the evidence in a clear sequence with some surprises along the way. The more staged elements–bribing an actor with Altoids to talk about the production–are just strange enough to work in a documentary about a Lovecraft musical.

The best part? Though the video is tiny, you can watch the entire documentary online for free. It’s worth it.

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