IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1994 - HORROR / LOVECRAFTIAN FLICK) **** out of ***** OR 8 out of 10
(I'll be damned if I go to that fucking town on my next vacation...)
CAST: Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Charlton Heston, Jurgen Prochnow, David Warner, John Glover, Peter Jason, Frances Bay, Bernie Casey.
DIRECTOR: John Carpenter
(WARNING: Some SPOILERS and compelling reasons not to read any Sutter Cane novels - straight ahead)
IT'S LIKE THIS: In our next "31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN REVIEW" we explore just how powerful the written word can be. It's titled IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, and it revolves around mysterious horror writer Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow) - who is apparently like Stephen King plus James Herbert multiplied by six or seven pounds of hallucinogenic shrooms. Let's just say that Cane's books have had a history of affecting his more unstable readers - to the point where they go Full-Tilt Cuckoo and go chop-chop-happy with sharp instruments. Given that a lot of his readership ends up either in jail or shot dead by the police, will someone please explain to me how this clown is racking up the sales that he is?
Anyhow, as popular as Sutter Cane is, it only stands to reason that he'd be noticed when he goes missing - conveniently, on the eve of the publication of his latest horror opus, titled "In The Mouth Of Madness". Hired to find Cane by Cane's publishing company is John Trent (Same Neill), a hard-nosed insurance investigator who has as much faith in humanity as a bleeding seal does that a Great White shark will leave it alone. According to John Trent, everyone has an angle and no one is to be trusted. And he quite candidly tells Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston), the CEO of the company, that he believes they are committing insurance fraud by purposefully hiding Cane as a publicity stunt for his next book.
Harglow shrugs off this accusation and sends his best (and best-looking) pit bull book editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), to accompany Trent on his search for Sutter Cane. I should also add that Linda is Cane's editor and she exclusively worked on his manuscripts to shape them for publication - so, besides Cane, she's the one most familiar with his work. Then, through visual clues involving pictures on Cane's novel covers that would make Ernie and Bert on Sesame Street proud, Trent hypothesizes that Cane is in some town called Hobb's End in New Hampshire. The problem is there is no record of any town called Hobb's End on any map of the state, anywhere. Linda basically rolls her eyes and goes along for the ride, though, because Trent looks like Sam Neill and I would soooo tap that. I mean, Linda would...
After driving for what seems like 17 years without finding the town of Hobb's End, it starts to seem like the fucking place (if it exists) should really change its name to "Ass End" because that's where it's apparently located. Thankfully, though, before the audience can decide to say "fuck it" and go watch some stupid romantic comedy instead, Linda and Trent eventually come across a quaint little New England town called... Hobb's End. And let's just say you couldn't pay me to hang out there for all the Guidos in Italy. And that's saying something because I like my Guidos...
You see, while Hobb's End appears all picture-postcard-perfect on the surface, it's basically a sludge pile of evil crap underneath. First of all, the place is deserted, with the occasional visible residents only being a bunch of running kids with fucked-up acne and bad teeth. Or maybe they're just like the demons in Cane's novels. Eventually, Trent and Linda wind up in some creepy-ass hotel run by some creepy-ass old chick named Mrs. Pickman (Frances Bay). Throughout this all, Linda is getting more and more freaked out because all of it is looking... familiar.
Soon, Linda tells Trent that Hobb's End is the setting of Cane's latest novel, "In The Mouth Of Madness", and that everything they've seen so far jives with everything in Cane's book. As Cane's exclusive editor, Linda is the only other person who has read his novel - and she's convinced something awful is going on and she and Trent are trapped in something nightmarish. And something even worse is about to happen - not just to them, but to the entire world, as well. And it's all been foretold, somehow, in the pages of "In The Mouth Of Madness."
But what is it? What is about to happen? And what powers do Cane's books have? Why do they seem to have the ability to come true? Why can they drive someone mad? And is Linda right when she says that the only way she and Trent can stop what is coming is to... change the ending of "In The Mouth Of Madness" somehow? Is that even possible? Or is their fate already sealed? Will they ever get out of Hobb's End? And even it they do, what's waiting for them back in the outside world?
Three words: hell-on-Earth....
BUT SERIOUSLY: H.P. Lovecraft was a very influential American horror writer and his work has had massive influences on the Horror Genre. You often hear descriptions for certain books and films as being "Lovecraftian". This basically means the piece under discussion has the same traits that made Lovercraft's stories and novels so singularly frightening and distinctively eerie. Whereas a lot of horror writers dabble in the supernatural and psychological, Lovecraft added to that mix unexpected elements based in cosmic, alchemic, and mystical sources with a dash of the pseudo-scientific. Quite frankly, there is no horror writer like him.
IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS is another horror movie that has distinct ties to H.P. Lovecraft. This tale of our world threatened by malevolent forces from another dimension that begin to alter our reality and destroy our world through the power of the written word, is singularly Lovecraftian. Like the best of Lovecraft's works, this movie paints a world that seems to be constantly shifting between different planes of reality, where nothing is what it seems and no one is truly safe. It makes for a very unsettling experience.
Director John Carpenter is perfect for this film, since he'd been showing signs of Lovecraft in most of his output from the 1980s. Such films like THE THING, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, and (to a more humorous extent) THEY LIVE all have "cosmic-scientific" threads that perfectly complement the horror. Quite often, these elements actually lend the proceedings a more cerebral air, making the plot feel more intelligent and thought out.
Carpenter brings the same sense of dread and atmosphere that he did in THE FOG, which was also about a small town in the grip of something evil. Just like that movie, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS builds its scares in a subtle way, but also gives you a visceral kick in the guts (no pun intended) when you least expect it. He's also amassed an impressive cast with the dependable Sam Neill heading up a group that includes the lovely and talented Julie Carmen, and such vets as Charlton Heston, David Warner, and Jurgen Prochnow. They handle their roles like the pros they are.
In the end, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS is a solid apocalyptic thriller than starts out like a supernatural detective story. It may not quite reach the stellar heights of THE FOG and HALLOWEEN, but it comes very close and is definitely the strongest of Carpenter's later work. I wish Carpenter would go back to making movies like this that depend more on imagination and eerie chills than blood and gore.
Before our "31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN" reviews are over, we will also examine two more JohnbCarpenter films: the solid VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED and, of course, his seminal classic: HALLOWEEN...
