In the Mouth of Madness

John Carpenter is a national treasure.  His movies are badass to the bone and while everyone knows about Halloween, the Escape movies, The Thing (1982) and maybe to a lesser extent They Live and Big Trouble in Little China, there are a couple of his films that fell below the interest of most.  One such movie is In the Mouth of Madness.  ‘Cause you know, if madness had a mouth this movie would be in it?

It’s kind of unfortunate that In the Mouth of Madness got sandwiched between two not good Carpenter movies, Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Village of the Damned, because maybe people would have taken more notice of this little gem.  Or maybe I’m talking out of my ass and nobody would’ve have cared anyway.  The point is that most people didn’t really concern themselves with Carpenter by 1994.  But hey, they missed out on Escape from L.A. and Vampires.  Assholes.

In the Mouth of Madness is about a writer whose novels seem to be turning people into deranged maniacs, but the author himself, Sutter Kane played by Jurgen Prochnow (Das Boot, Beverly Hills Cop II), has disappeared.  So an investigator, John Trent played by Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, Event Horizon, Daybreakers) is called in to find him.  He, along with Cane’s editor, eventually discover a town that they think Cane might be in.  Then the madness starts.  The Cane books describe the town itself and what’s happening in the town exactly.  So this ain’t no ordinary town.  It’s a wicked haunted town.  Trent and the editor have trouble leaving and escaping all the horrible things they see.

Neill was fresh off the live action version of The Jungle Book and was only a year removed from Jurassic Park.  He’s good in this.  Neill’s great when things really start to get out of control and his smug cynical attitude gives way pretty quickly to a frightened and demented one.  It’s really great to watch him go from, “I know what’s going on here” to “I don’t what the hell is going on, just get me out of this nightmare.”  Neill’s face is very expressive and you can always tell what he’s thinking by looking at him and how he carries himself.  And according to Carpenter on the commentary track Neill is a huge Beach Boys fan so he’s ok in my book.

Prochnow does a great job as well.  He plays it down in this and it’s effective.  The stuff that’s happening in the movie is crazy enough so you don’t need to have this character acting like a mad scientist.  Cane is so quietly satisfied with his work and so confident in what he’s doing and it comes across great in Prochnow’s performance.  No word on the Beach Boys thing but he looks like the kinda guy that might dig ‘em.

Carpenter does his usual thing with this.  It’s shot great, looks great and gets to the point.  Carpenter likes to set up his characters quick so he can get to the action and this is no exception.  It was a relatively low budget film and does have that feel to it but John’s great with getting the most out of what he has to work with.  He even does some metafilm stuff but he makes it feel cool and not totally pretentious.

This movie is the last of what Carpenter calls his “apocalyptic trilogy”.  The Thing (1982) and The Prince of Darkness are the other two.  And there’s a lot of good stuff that happens in In the Mouth of Madness but instead of talking about a particular thing I think I’m going to leave it here.  If you’re a John Carpenter fan this isn’t required reading but it’s definitely worth checking out.  It’s doesn’t have that wild west feel that he likes to put into a lot of his movies.  It’s that other Carpenter feel.  The Prince of Darkness, Halloween, Christine one.  Carpenterants out there know what I’m talking about.