In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

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Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: Michael De Luca

Cast: Sam Neill as John Trent; Julie Carmen as Linda Styles; Jürgen Prochnow as Sutter Cane; David Warner as Dr. Wrenn; John Glover as Saperstein; Bernie Casey as Robinson

[Major Spoiler Warnings]

Surprisingly difficult to see in the United Kingdom, especially as Carpenter is as popular here as anywhere else, but between this and his collaboration with Tobe Hooper for television called Body Bags (1993), it's one of the few blind spots in a career where even the 1979 Elvis TV movie was released on physical media in the UK. This is a shame as, lore tells us, that In the Mouth of Madness was the last great Carpenter film, which isn't as accurate as that claims but is a tag that was given to one of his most underappreciated works. The nineties was held as where his career wavered, ironically my first films of his Vampires (1998) and Ghosts of Mars (2001) as they were early Sony Pictures DVD released when I grew up with that format becoming a big thing. Before then, Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) was seen as a big slip as his first film of the nineties - not as bad as its reputation suggests, but definitely a film lacking his personality. Village of the Damned (1995) has actually grown on me, but it was not seen a powerhouse, and we'll see if the special effects and surfing in Escape from L.A. (1996) are as bad as it sounds.

The first positive credit to In the Mouth of Madness is actually to the screenwriter Michael De Luca, whether his work was adapted exactly from the page or modified out of his hands, as that is a huge factor to this film. His CV as a screenwriter only has three films alongside this, more of executive producer in his career, which include the divisive 1995 Judge Dread film with Sylvester Stallone and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), the most derided of that series barring the 2010 remake; in comparison he managed here however to hit the ball out of the park. This film does suggest it's going to be pure cheese, a big metal guitar riff on the John Carpenter and Jim Lang soundtrack just when Sam Neill's name is on the opening credits, but this alongside Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), rectifying that previous Nightmare on Elm Street film, are two incredibly fascinating meta horror films that came out the same year, certainly a superior pair to Craven's own Scream (1996), which felt pointing out the clichés but not subverting them beyond plot was enough. De Luca with this script found a take on the meta-texture, significantly, which is truly weird and, without nasal gazing, is still idiosyncratic today.

That, in lieu to the King of Yellow, in which author Robert W. Chambers envisioned a text that drove people insane, this film envisions a text, the work of a prolific horror writer Shutter Cane, which will induce nervousness, anxieties and fear upon reading. That's his usual work, and Cane has done so well he's ended up breaking reality itself, as insurance detective John Trent (as played by Sam Neill) is sent on his trail; believing its all a con, Trent instead wanders into the plot of a pulp horror film and eventually an actual pulp horror nightmare land. Its pulp in the truest sense, but it chills the bones a little when Cane, revealed as Jürgen Prochnow with a giant spread of white hair, talks about his work being more wildly read than the Christian Bible. Star Wars has a religion, Jedi, and more people are more likely to know the innings and outings of Harry Potter lore than actually read the Book of Revelations all the way through.

Now imagine if this new book was even more infectious and could poison people further, to madness and violence, even the apocalypse, and In the Mouth of Madness is the closest John Carpenter touched upon the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft, in which beyond the perception of fragile mortal humankind, a novelist can distort reality and be a vessel for horrifying Old Ones to appear through. That they might've been created by him, as it's entirely subjective what exactly his work is or not in what we see, is even more terrifying. It's far more terrifying, as reality eventually splits, the tear reveals that a) the protagonist is a created character, and b) reality has no rules and for a man who believed in logic that term losing meaning is more frightening than monsters. This review has a major spoiler warning, but you couldn't get the true effect of any plot point without the images themselves.

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Carpenter as always is a classist who shots the film with elegance, famously a man who grew up admiring film makers like Howard Hawks, wanted to make films like his in genres like Westerns, but came about in a time where he proved a daub hand in horror and sci-fi. Any moments of broadness - a bicyclist turning husk-like or the guitar riffs in the score, don't undercut the tone in the slightest or his precise filmmaking. In fact the film itself eventually gets around to mocking plot points in pulp horror, like Neil's counterpart, Julie Carmen, suddenly trying to seduce him in the nightmare town "because the author wrote it that way". (Which is hilarious as, whilst he didn't write the film but collaborated on it greatly, Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) despite being one of my favourite horror sequels has this absurd cliché depicted completely seriously).

The distinction here to Carpenter's other films is how over-the-top and phantasmagoric this gets. We've had The Thing (1982) in terms of body horror, but In the Mouth of Madness is lurid and intense with this from the beginning. All when a publicist goes axe happy, the film gets increasingly weirder and more grotesque in body mutations and freakishness as the film draws from horror as a genre in general, the Lovecraftian horrors against a pastiche of Stephen King's popularity, apt as by this point even TV let alone film gorged on adapting King's books.

The film finds the right balance of credibility by having seriousness against this, because it plucks symbolism from the entire genre - terrifying possessed children; monstrous entities; religious horror; plenty that is slowly drip feeding and helped by Sam Neill being the cynical sceptic who plays the anchor. We realise his fate already - the film starts with him in a mental health hospital as he tells his story to David Warner - but Neill finds the right tone for a man who is stoic even to the most horrifying things until it gets too much, not surprising as whilst the New Zealand born actor as always come off as meek and affable, he was in Andrzej Żuławski's Possession (1981) going batshit insane, so this film would've been a cakewalk.

The build for the film, when it's already gone off the deep end, is still slow burn because Carpenter finds idiosyncratic ways to move the film's nightmares. A reoccurring image of a police officer randomly beating a man up in a dark alley or how the author's favourite colour drives a man to screaming are among such examples; all never heavy handed because the film is so over-the-top its gone to that tone the moment you encounter Hobb's End, the nightmare town whose own name is even a reference to Quatermass and the Pit, giving you an idea how in depth some of the references are.

The other aspect, in honesty, that whilst H.P. Lovecraft is an author whose work is still innovative and powerful for me, I am also aware that a reader can find his elaborately descriptive vocabulary and exaggerated tone utterly ridiculous, befitting this film's many moments of absurdity, like strange fish-like Old Ones they wisely left as shadows only, and possibly another reason why it's been a huge issue to adapt his work straight rather than evoke for cinema. Befittingly like those stories, insanity is the end, though few would watch themselves in the film they have seen when they finally snap; between this and Wes Craven's New Nightmare we had two of the best of these meta films as far back in the nineties, where more well known films like Scream and The Cabin in the Woods (2012) just come off as flaky in comparison. This, really needing to be more easily available, is definitely as well a gem in John Carpenter's crown.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Surreal/Meta

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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