IN THE MOUTH OF
MADNESS (John Carpenter, 95 min, color, 1994)
What's Happening: Horror writer's fans become an evil
cult intent on destroying the world
Famous For: Greatest Lovecraft movie to date
Maybe it was the four-year gap between They Live and Memoirs of an
Invisible Man. Maybe it was the change
from the 80s into the 90s. Whatever the
case, sometime around 1990, genre fans turned away from John Carpenter. If you check the IMDb, not only are
Carpenter's 90s movies rated far lower than his 80s movies, they also receive
far less attention, garnering half or perhaps only a quarter as many ratings
votes.
But as I've said elsewhere, I think fans are missing
out. Though he no longer made one masterpiece
after the next, Carpenter's 90s movies are still very good. And one of them - In the Mouth of Madness - is almost as good as anything that the
B-movie master has ever done.
|
The story is a crescendo of weirdness, steadily paced but
marked with episodes and cycles.
Carpenter is known for precision construction, and Madness might be the most expertly constructed of them all. Every scene builds on the previous scene but
also brings something new and strange.
There's some gore, some sexuality, but nothing exploitative
or overplayed. For a movie about a
Cthulu-type cult of homicidal maniacs, it's uncommonly subtle and
restrained. Hellraiser this ain't.
|
There are a few perfectly placed moments of humor (such as The
Carpenters at the beginning, the popcorn at the end, or "you drive"
in the middle), and there are one or two "boo" scares to shock you, but
it's mostly strange and serious with some of the most compact and literate
dialogue (by Michael De Luca who's most famous as a producer) that Carpenter
has ever worked with.
The cast could not have been better. Sam Neill (who has a short but impressive
horror resume) makes our investigator-protagonist smug and cynical but brave
and honest. Julie Carmen (Fright Night 2) is the harried but
sensible heroine. Jurgen Prochnow (Duke
Leo from Dune) is the frightening
Sutter Cane. Bernie Casey (Gargoyles) has a good small role as an
insurer CEO. Charlton Heston (in his
only Carpenter film) has a good small role as a publisher CEO.
|
Like Videodrome
before it, Madness depicts a descent
into insanity where reality, fiction, illusion, and nightmare have become
indistinguishable. The two films make a
nice comparison, with Videodrome more
scientific or biological and Madness
more spiritual and cosmic. Videodrome is also explicit where Madness is intellectual.
|
Now let's discuss Madness
as an H.P. Lovecraft movie.
Its predecessor in the Carpenter oeuvre, Prince of Darkness, was also
Lovecraftian with secretive cults, forbidden knowledge, bodily transformations,
"supernatural" beings akin to aliens, and more, including a tendency
to tell more than show, and an atmospheric crescendo plot structure.
But Madness is the
real Lovecraft movie, and perhaps the greatest Lovecraft movie ever made. Here's why.
|
First, the title refers frankly to Lovecraft's "At the
Mountains of Madness."
Next, the town of Hobb's End, where half the film takes
place, is clearly based on Lovecraft's fictional towns of Arkham, Dunwich, and
Innsmouth, with the monster in the greenhouse referencing the monster in the
barn (among elsewhere) from "Dunwich Horror" and the mob of mutated
townsfolk chasing our protagonist as in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."
Also as in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," Hobb's End
has a "black church" that once was Christian but has since been
appropriated by a monstrous cult.
While "Sutter Cane" sounds like "Stephen King,"
the publisher "Arcane" clearly sounds like "Arkham" - i.e.
not just the town of Arkham but Arkham House, the publishing company founded by
Lovecraft's disciple August Derleth back in 1939.
Next, the octopoid monsters, some of whom sport multiple
eyes and whipping tentacles, are clearly based on Cthulu, shoggoths, various
Old Ones, and other Lovecraftian beasts.
|
Speaking of beasts, the film also depicts people mutating
into monstrous forms as in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "The
Dunwich Horror," and elsewhere.
Next, like Lovecraft's most celebrated tales ("Dunwich
Horror" being a rare exception), the movie has a first person structure -
not with narration per se but with a frame tale that shows the protagonist
relating his story to an interlocutor.
It's a middle aged bachelor protagonist, the norm for
Lovecraft. And the protagonist follows
the Lovecraftian hero's pattern of doggedly investigating something forbidden
and sinister, step by step, at first merely skeptical or curious, but
eventually subsumed by his new knowledge and (perhaps?) driven insane by it. By the end, the protagonist is driven toward
violence and scarcely knows who he is (as in "The Shadow Out of Time"
or "The Rats in the Walls").
Next, the villain specifically mentions the Old Ones as his
masters, and he uses a Necronomicon-like book to revive them.
|
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Madness evokes cosmic horror better than any other Lovecraft picture. It's not just a few people or a single town
that lies in peril, it's the entire planet.
A dimensional doorway has been opened (as in "The Music of Erich
Zann"). A worldwide cult (as in
"The Call of Cthulu") is about to usher in the equivalent of an
apocalypse where the Old Ones (from "At the Mountains of Madness" and
several other Lovecraft tales) will return to (re)claim the Earth as their
own. Mankind is insignificant, with even
Sutter Cane himself merely a vessel to bring the Old Ones back.
|
The New Line DVD includes commentary from Carpenter and his
cinematographer, recorded 1995. It's unusually
technical, with lots about camera and lighting technicalities, filters, focuses,
and so on. This can be boring for some
viewers but fascinating for anyone interested in the details of the filmmaking
process. Carpenter also discusses
actors, locations, sets, particular shots, virtually everything you could hope
for - if you're into the details.
He says little about themes, like most directors in their
commentaries, but he does say one theme is "things that reoccur over and
over again" and he proclaims it the culmination of his Apocalypse Trilogy
after The Thing and Prince of Darkness. He also calls it a "journey into
madness." He tried to be (somewhat)
subtle when the monsters reach the tunnel because "as in Lovecraft you
don't want to show that which is so horrible." Both Carpenter and Sam Neill like the film a
lot.
|
A few more notes: It was filmed in and around Toronto. The "black church" with its
210-foot tower is real (it's the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Markham,
Ontario). The scene with Linda's head
upside down (64:00) was shot with a contortionist wearing a Linda mask.
Are there any flaws?
Perhaps the mutating painting in the hotel lobby was a little too
obvious. Along the same lines, perhaps
the monsters at the tunnel were on screen a little too long or were too well
lit (though I know Carpenter tried to be subtle).
You might also wish Madness
were more spectacular toward the end. In
De Luca's original story, the whole town gets magically sucked into the book
(!) before Sam returns to the "real" world. But to reduce the budget (from 15 million to
10, as Carpenter says), they made a book/paper illusion culminating when Cane
pulls open the wall at 71:30.
I still think this works well - the CGI "rip in
reality" effect - especially since the real culmination of the story,
including the excellent movie theater coda, is still to come.
Check out also Spock's Beard's "In the Mouth of
Madness" prog rock song from 1998.
Action: 7. Gore:
7. Sex: 4. Quality: 9. Camp: 4.
Don't miss: Re-cycled
Quotable line: "Anybody's capable of
anything."
…
Review post date February 23, 2020
* * *
|
|
|
