We all have certain movies we love. Movies we respect without question because of either tradition, childhood love, or because they’ve always been classics. However, as time keeps ticking, do those classics still hold up? Do they remain must-see? So…the point of this column is to determine how a film holds up for a modern horror audience, to see if it stands the Test of Time.
DIRECTED BY JOHN CARPENTER
STARRING SAM NEILL, JULIE CARMEN, JURGEN PROCHNOW, CHARLTON HESTON
No bullshittin’, beyond HALLOWEEN, what is your all-time favorite John Carpenter film? Better yet, what is your favorite Carpenter horror flick made in the 1990s?
Truth be told, after ascending as one of the preeminent horror voices in the 70s and 80s, Carpenter had been viewed as an effete version of his former self in the 90s. Much lighter, campier fare like BODY BAGS, VAMPIRES, and GHOSTS OF MARS took precedent over the truly terrifying display of his halcyon day genre classics. A perfunctory paycheck director he seemed to devolve into, making movies for anything but the love of. The one outlier? Of course, Carpenter’s genuinely head-spinning macabre monstrosity, the lethally Lovecraftian IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, is not only his best movie of the 90s, it still ranks as an underrated film in his Horror Hall of Fame oeuvre. As the flick just celebrated the 25th anniversary of its North American release, now is the perfect opportunity to judge how IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS fares against The Test of Time!
THE STORY: Written by Michael De Luca, who has since become an Oscar-nominated producer after working his way through the ranks of New Line Cinema, the story is one of the better foundational pillars Carpenter’s been able to skillfully craft. In fact, it’s a multilayered meta-narrative. On the surface, the story begins with insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill), who has taken up the case of Sutter Kane (Jurgen Prochnow), a Stephen King-like pop-horror scribe who has vanished without a trace ahead of his new book release, entitled In the Mouth of Madness. Trent meets Kane’s publisher, Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston) and his assistant, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), who insist Trent delve into Kane’s tomes to get a better idea of where he may be hiding out.
Trent does so, and is instantly affected by the frightening prose found in Kane’s books. Wittingly, Trent cuts the covers off six books and composites them together to form a map. The map leads to a fictional town of Hobb’s End, the locale of one of Kane’s most celebrated books. Trent and Linda hit the road for New England (another Kind nod) to find Hobb’s End, and here is where the movie abruptly transitions from grounded realism to abject surrealism, as Linda drives the car on a freakily transcendental highway that takes the two to the fictional Hobb’s end, where the conjured imagination of Kane becomes a mortifying self-fulfilling reality. As Trent works to unravel the mystery, he becomes complicit in his own story, leading to an icky incursion of slime-ridden ghouls upon the material world. Madness indeed!
WHAT HOLDS-UP: Having just seen it again, there is so much to still admire and enjoy about the film. But if we had to reduce the awesome sauce down to a few seminal ingredients, it’d have to be the excellent premise and corresponding theme, kickass Sam Neill performance, and the eye-bugging FX work by the KNB team!
The literary conceit of the film is top-tier. Not only does the film pay tribute to and poke fun at King and Lovecraft, the overriding theme of the piece contends that fiction is becoming dangerously close to becoming a reality. In fact, one of the taglines for the film reads “Reality isn’t what it used to be.” Moreover, the idea that if you think it, it will come is a perfect adage to incorporate into the life of a horror fiction writer, as the film ultimately becomes a treatise on, if not Murphy’s Law, an approximation of such that suggests that if you conjure something in the mind, it will come to fruition in reality. This is a scary proposition written brilliantly by De Luca, and directed even more deftly by Carpenter, who has a blast weaving in and out of fiction and nonfiction as it relates to Trent. The film adroitly raises the notion that pop fiction can shape reality, but also skewers that notion at the same time, making for a fascinating dynamic.
Not only does Carpenter nail the balance-beam of realism and surrealism, fiction and nonfiction, but he cast an actor in Sam Neill who ably carries us along for the ride. Neill gives a great performance in the film, never once indicating whether or not he’s playing a scene in the meta-narrative or the surface level reality of the story. His performance is pitched perfectly to be the conduit to guide us through such a weird, wild and bewildering onslaught of imagery. He’s confused when we are, skeptical as we can be, madder than hell when driven to such, and in the end, double back on himself as a loopy schizoid trapped in the annals of his own horror story. With a lesser actor, the film would interminably suffer.
But the number one thing that holds up above all else is the splendidly eerie FX work by Howard Berger, Greg Nicotero and the peerless KNB FX crew. These guys were at the top of their game in 1994, using physical props and practical FX work to create some of the most unnerving monsters in Carpenter’s career. Take the freak shot of Styles’ upside-down head while on all-fours. According to IMDB:
The effect of Julie Carmen spinning her head around was done by having a contortionist stunt-double wear an up-side down prosthetic mask of Carmen's face. Since the stunt double couldn't see, the filmmaker had to guide her on where to go by sound.”
That’s ingenuity right there! The same goes for the ferocious finale, in which a legion of monsters coming “pouring in” to the material world. Per IMDB:
The ‘Wall of Monsters’ at the end was not several monsters being controlled individually. Instead, it was one single special effect that was attached to a vehicle-like wheelbase and had to be pushed along with a crank. During the filming of this scene, the Wall of Monsters accidentally ran over Greg Nicotero's foot and he had to be taken to a nearby hospital.”
That’s a sacrifice in addition to ingenuity! The end result amounts to a movie that does not show its age, at least in terms of the FX, even 25 years after being made.
WHAT BLOWS NOW: IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS is the third leg of Carpenter’s self-proclaimed “Apocalypse Trilogy” after THE THING and THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS. Having found serious aging issues with PRINCE a couple of years ago, I sort of expected similar here. Not the case. IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS is better than THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS when viewed in 2020, with very little other than a prolonged second-act to whinge about.
THE VERDICT: True talk. IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS not only holds-up 25 years later, it also holds serve as one of Carpenter’s best films. Not just of his films in the 90s, but his entire film canon! What makes it a lasting piece of durable Carpentry is the excellent premise by Mike De Luca, the concomitant theme which forewarns against and obliterates the culpability of the notion that fiction conjures reality, the commanding turn by the great Sam Neill, and the unparalleled FX work by KNB. Like any great piece of literature, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS has made short order of the last quarter-century!