Her character is a "seductress," said Grant Cogswell, the Seattle screenwriter who wrote the Cthulhu script. Cottle plays a gay college professor from Seattle who returns to his home on the Oregon coast when his mother dies and gets mixed up with a mysterious cult and a sea monster whose name is the title of the movie. The script is based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Cogswell said.

Budgeted at $450,000 and directed and co-written by Portland-based filmmaker Dan Gildark, the picture will be shot primarily in Astoria, Ore., and Seattle, Cogswell said.

The Phoenix Fire Department's Urban Search and Rescue team has been suspended from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for deploying armed police officers to protect firefighters in violation of the agency's rules.

As a result, Phoenix officials now are threatening to refuse some of the most dangerous deployments in the future or possibly even pull out of the federal agency altogether, unless the rules are changed to allow teams to bring their own security, even if that means police with guns.