In the Mouth of Madness

November 09, 2015

In the Mouth of Madness

****

I finished John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, considered by some of his fans (like yours truly) to be his last classic film. I think there’s perhaps merit in the critique of how difficult the film is in its translation, how lost some might be in trying to simplify a plot that doesn’t want to be so easily discernible. I think that is a good thing, actually. Why does the film have to be so simple? I do think the essence of the plot is in its tagline, “Lived any good books lately?” I personally enjoyed how Carpenter melds Lovecraft (the “old ones” are finding their way back into the world that was once their domain) with the popular horror books craze (the consumption of horror, with a playful inclusion of Stephen King in a choice piece of dialogue regarding the character of Sutter Cane, the horror novelist, who seems to outsell him!) and burgeoning apocalypse.

I think maybe fans would have preferred the film stay in the city instead of have Sam Neill’s insurance investigator, known reputably for outing fraudsters, and an agent for the Sutter Cane novelist (the sultry Julie Carmen), travel to a secluded town in New Hampshire called Hobb’s End (included in Cane’s new novel) to find the publishing company’s (ran by none other than Charleston Heston) chief money-maker. I think perhaps in doing this, the film loses some (if not a lot) of its audience. No me, necessarily, as the whole point is for us to realize that fantasy and reality are blurred and non-existent…one in the same.

Because of our fear that gives life to what is read within the pages of a novel and be so beholden to the material that we actually believe in what opens up to us, the story becomes real to us. That the creatures out of Lovecraft use this, with Sutter Cane (Jordan Prochnow) being their tool to unleash the apocalypse on the earth so that those who read Hobb’s End become mad, killing each other, with the remnant turning into monsters themselves, with humanity no longer what it once was, In the Mouth of Madness is quite a horror show. KNB were responsible for the icky monster effects, but Carpenter decided not to really spotlight them, instead only revealing the Cthulu creatures in small increments. The “old lady who runs the end” turning into a hideous creature out of The Thing certainly is a surprise, but Carpenter also shows that Cane himself is “losing himself” as a monster is shown emerging from his person (also Carmen is silhouetted with wings and wormy tendrils emerge from under a door; eventually she climbs out backwards from Neill’s car, body contorted, doing a Linda Blair Exorcist spider walk).

I think the bleeding of fantasy into reality and how Neill is eventually established as a *fictional character* kind of flummoxes people who watch this. I saw some similarities to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare…how the artist (Craven) gives birth to a real monster as he writes the script for a new project (Freddy Krueger) does favor how novelist Sutter Cane (with the monsters from a netherworld influencing the power to do so) gives birth to the apocalypse which involves a supposed real character (Nancy Langenkamp in New Nightmare, Neill in Madness) trying to defy the evil that is gradually enveloping him/her.

The early scene with Neill being drug to a padded cell, with quite a story to tell, and the ensuing end of humanity just outside (he mentions how he feels safer in the cell!), with psychiatrist David Warner listening to his narrator weaving this crazed tale, with the ending showing the hero seeing his own movie play out, laughing in hysterics as anyone would when confronted with such, I think the title of the film fits this whole enterprise. We, like Neill, are taken right into the mouth of madness.