IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS
Probably the longest review you'll ever read
Man, oh man! The movie that kept me up at nights for a year, the movie I foisted upon my friends knowing all the while they'd never appreciate it like I do (typical response: "Funky."), the movie people keeps saying "Huh?" to when I tell them my favorite films. Dare I put pen to paper (well, finger to keyboard) and gather together my Dagobah-sized swamp of thoughts on this movie? Usually, no - it'd take too long. But tonight, I dare. (okay, I'm cheating. This review is actually several days in the writing. And this is the first movie I've ever reviewed that I actually had to watch twice in a row to formulate my thoughts on it, even though I'd seen it many times before.)
It's not really possible for me to get into why this movie affects me so much without getting into some, uh, personal details. So, if you don't care and just want a straightforward, level-headed criticism, LOOK SOMEWHERE ELSE. I know of no other way to look at films than through the same eyes that have beheld all of my joys and sorrows. Please, no comparisons to the "reviews" of Harry Knowles - blathering on endlessly about what led me to the mental state I was going into the movie with is not something I indulge in often.
February 7, 1995. In The Mouth Of Madness had been in release for about four days, and I was feeling pretty good about things. I was rebuilding from an extremely difficult ordeal from the year before, I was settling into a station in life where for the first time ever I knew what I wanted, and I had a darling girlfriend who I loved more than anything in the world. Yeah, Sheila lived in Vancouver (details, details) then, but we'd been going 2 ½ years strong, and she was my moon and stars, bringing forth the kinds of feelings from me I'd previously only heard the likes of in bad chick movies. My affection for her was the inevitably absolute, probably unhealthy kind of attachment that you can only get from somebody who spent a very lonely teenaged life as a bit of a pariah to his female classmates. It kind of figures that my first girlfriend would live out of the province entirely.
Yeah, I was a happy guy. So, the first day I was available to do so, I went out and saw In The Mouth Of Madness, by myself because I didn't think anybody else I knew would have been interested. (they were, but I didn't find that out until later) February 7 was a Tuesday. So I went out, saw this movie, and was impressed as hell. I was worried for John Carpenter when his previous project, to the best of my knowledge then, was straight to video (Body Bags). But this movie, oh, wow. It was unlike anything I'd seen before, also quite unlike Wes Craven's New Nightmare, to which it had been compared by critics, most of whom panned it. (by this point, I was well aware that the overwhelming majority of critics don't know how to approach horror movies) How often do I see a movie that's really unlike anything I'd seen before? Especially when it's in a good way? (hey, Armageddon was unlike anything I'd seen before, too) My faith in Carpenter, who hadn't directed a full-length horror movie in eight years, was restored.
So when I went home, I was soaring, I tells ya. If I was living with my parents, they'd have been searching my room for drugs. That I had thirteen hours of classes the next day was of no concern; I was downright bouncy. And then, at about two minutes after midnight (being when the long distance rates drop dramatically, and thus Sheila's and my phone-call time), the phone rings.
Well, you can see where things are going here. The bottom line was, she was attracted to other men, and wanted to explore that. She later admitted that the man in question was gay, though I don't know if this was true, or some insanely-reasoned attempt to spare my feelings. (Regarding this, I felt much like our protagonist in the final frames of this movie, reacting at first with laughter to the absurdity of it all, and then tears when I understood just what it actually meant.) I won't go so far as to say I sympathize, but I do understand (now) that this wasn't an easy decision for her. But that didn't change the fact that the girl who shortly before had said that she'd be perfectly happy spending the rest of her life with me was now telling me that a chance at being with someone else was more appealing to her than what we had. The girl who was my first, well, everything, just about, was now also, inevitably (I see that only in hindsight as well), my first heartbreak.
And thus, like Donovan Bailey with a jetpack strapped to his back running full-bore into a brick wall studded with razors and nails, came to a crashing halt that happy time.
Enough of that for now, it's just preamble, and will come up later anyway. On to the film.
In The Mouth Of Madness opens up with a wild-eyed madman (Sam Neill) being hauled off into a seaside mental institution. Putting up quite a struggle, he obviously doesn't want to be here. When he's locked into his padded cell, he stumbles up to the window and cries out "I am not insane!" (prompting a chorus of other patients who holler "Me neither!" "I'm not if he's not!")
Soon, one psychiatrist (David Warner) arrives, hoping to interview this guy. The doctor in charge (John Glover) makes a cryptic comment about how "things must be pretty bad out there to bring you fellows in", and tells him that the madman in question has made only one request - one black crayon. Entering the cell, the detective sees crosses drawn everywhere. EVERYWHERE. The floor, every wall, all over the skin and clothes of the patient. (that's one long-lasting crayon)
"Things are turning to shit out there, aren't they?" says the patient. The psychiatrist, obviously trying his best put aside whatever horrors lay outside the asylum walls, insists on beginning the interview, and thus the patient tells his story.
Our patient's name is John Trent, and until this afternoon he was an insurance investigator with a great track record. "I bust frauds, I bust phonies. I love it." He attributes his success to his own cynicism; "Anybody's capable of anything. If you can think of it, they've done it. Think of the upside, it doesn't leave you much to be disappointed in...the sooner we're off the planet, the better." Amid a backdrop of media activity regarding a bestselling horror novelist named Sutter Cane (there are numerous ads for his books visible, and a news story about how riots erupted at bookstores that cannot meet the demand for his upcoming book), he is attacked by an axe-wielding maniac. The maniac in question is gunned down by the police, enabling Trent to happily go about his day to his next client: as it turns out, Sutter Cane's publisher, Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston).
Cane, as we learn, is the best-selling novelist in the world, outselling even Stephen King. His writing has been known to produce a certain effect on his less stable readers; what is described sounds like they really are being driven mad with fear, like the ads for his upcoming book boast. As it turns out, that maniac with the axe? Cane's agent, who'd just read the beginning of Cane's new book.
Seems Mr. Cane is missing, and before Harglow files a claim on the guaranteed moneymaker of a book that Cane's been promising, Trent has to determine of he's on the up-n-up. For some research, Trent purchases six of Cane's books, all paperbacks, and reads them apparently overnight. He finds them more effective than he'd expected, and when he looks closely at the covers, he notices a pattern in the artwork. It's hard to make out on VHS, and might be as well on a digital format on a small screen, but the covers are all drawn with squiggly red lines through them. When the covers are torn off and cut along the red lines and re-assembled, they form a map of what appears to be New Hampshire. And the red dot on the map apparently represents Cane's fictional town of Hobb's End.
Trent being Trent, he sees this as a fairly obvious publicity ploy and assumes that Harglow is pulling a scam, and says as much to his face. But he takes the case anyway, and Cane's editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) is sent to tag along with him in the search. So Styles and Trent drive on out to New England and, while one of them is asleep and the other is having enough trouble staying awake, drive across a covered bridge in the middle of the night to find themselves in Hobb's End, in the daytime. What they find there just begins at exactly what you'd expect.
The acting is good all around. Neill is terrific in his role, both playing the logical-to-the-point-of-ludicrousness skeptic and the wigged-out believer. It's basically everything that Neill's fans love about him and his detractors hate about him; lots of squinting, and a sense of being a wiseass who's just enough in the know to actually deserve his indulgence in being a wiseass. He might be a ham, but there's no other kind of actor I'd rather see in such a role.
Speaking of hams, Heston is comparatively restrained, not that his role offers much to restrain against. Carmen is appropriately kind of low-key sexy for most of her screen time, although she tries entirely too hard in her entrance. Prochnow is sort of playing God here, and he's having fun with the role, understanding his power ("I think, therefore you are!") but not actually believing its source is within himself ("For years, I thought I was making all this up"). Cane seems loosely based on a mixture of H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King (note the lettering for his name on his books; looks a lot like that of so many of King's).
Now, the whole "rubber reality" subgenre of horror is old now, and was pretty long in the tooth in 1995. Completely undaunted, Carpenter went ahead with it anyway, trying not just to blur the lines between fantasy and reality, reality and cine-reality, and fact and fiction, but to give us a design behind it all. Sutter Cane is living within his own creation to create his greatest work; writing it from the inside. (at one point he tells Styles "You can edit this one from the inside, looking out") It's not so much a case of reality collapsing so much as simply entering another reality entirely. Styles tells Trent "Reality is just what we tell each other it is. The sane and the insane would switch places if the insane found themselves in the majority." Cane's fiction, from the inside, is a reality where the universe itself is insane, and at one point the movie makes a Candyman-like suggestion of the power of mass belief in such stories to make them real. If enough people believe strongly enough in such an insane reality, then who knows what reality their belief will forge, not only supernaturally (such as in this movie), but politically, economically? Cane isn't just the most popular novelist in the world; his fans are fanatical enough that many of them actually believe his stories are true. Cane calls his latest work "the new Bible". "Established" holy books are scary enough the way they are; how'd you like to see a religion as prominent as Christianity or Islam, formed upon the works of this guy?
To make a rubber-reality flick work today, you've gotta go that extra step, and here it's all handled with surprising freshness. In The Mouth Of Madness most definitely goes that extra step. There's a real kitchen-sink kind of approach here; this film manages to squeeze in mob attacks, axe murders, people turning into monsters, screams in an insane asylum, paintings that change before your eyes, writhing tentacles all over the place, packs of wild dogs, police brutality, a juggernaut column of hideous creatures, city streets in ruins, walls that sweat, car accidents, rips in the fabric of space, one guy with a whole different face on the back of his head, suicide, being disbelieved about your harrowing ordeal, not actually having a road underneath your car, doorways that disappear, getting stuck next to an old lady on the bus who can't stop talking about life during the Depression, eternal damnation, Lovecraftian Ancient Ones, cannibalism, rapid-fire grisly visions, a big scary church, the pollution of time itself, creepy kids, people contorting themselves impossibly, a sweet old lady "who chops her husband into coleslaw", being unable to tell which is the nightmare and which is the nightmare WITHIN the nightmare, people bleeding from their eyes, naked, withered old men, three-legged dogs, roads that only lead back to where they began, inverted crosses, the end of the world as we know it, and horror of horrors, geeky teenagers with acne OH PLEASE GOD LET THE HORROR STOP!!!
Yep, Carpenter leaves no stone unturned here, and tries every trick in the book (and more than a few I'd never seen before) to scare you. Only The Thing comes close to this movie in the sheer obvious effort that the guy put in to directing it. Curiously, neither film was written by him. Anyway, he somehow manages to throw all this in and still be restrained; the ample creature FX are barely glimpsed, and they're so awesomely well done that one is amazed that Carpenter could hold back from showing them off. The effect is a bit perplexing intellectually (that's an awful lot of effort for about fifteen seconds of screen time), but it's creepy as hell to behold. The scariest beasts are, of course, the ones you barely get to see.
Yessir, the FX are pretty much out of this world. The boys at KNB must have pulled out their hair when they saw just how fleeting are the glimpses the viewer gets of their work. These things are so...so ALIVE! Okay; axe-wielding tentacle-lady, maybe a little less so. But what higher praise can you bestow upon a creature-FX team than to say that their creations are convincingly alive?
And if having your head messed with isn't the kind of thing you look for in horror movies, then there are lots of good, visceral thrills as well. One scene where Trent is approached by a mob of axe-wielding hooligans resolves itself in a particularly unexpected, horrifying way. For that matter, that first axe-wielding maniac is given a cooly relaxed, low-key entrance (all things considered) as he sort of (saunters) onto the scene in the background, while the action in the foreground becomes hard to focus on because of this approaching axe-wielding maniac! Possibly the most chilling moment of the film involves what we see in the form of shadows on the wall as seen through a window; the first couple of times I saw this movie, I could barely watch this part.
This movie also contains one scene of unbearable suspense, when Trent looks into a chasm and hears the imminent arrival of, well, THEM. It wouldn't have been satisfying if we actually saw them crawling up, nor if one of them jumped out at us, nor if nothing happened at all. But the way this sequence unfolds is satisfying, resulting in a climactic moment which caused about half of the people I've seen it with to actually duck and cover, forgetting that they're watching a movie. I've seen a lot of people jump from being shocked, but to see them duck and cover, man, it's so rewarding to know that people can get that involved in watching a film.
Admittedly, there are a couple of moments when the story becomes more dumb than weird. Take one scene where a mob of rifle- and shotgun-toting men collapses into complete uselessness at the sight of a few attack dogs, and are subsequently mauled without firing a shot. (Maybe they're all members of PETA.) Or the sudden, you'd-think-she'd-have-revealed-this-by-now, no-consequence revelation that Styles has already read what Cane's agent read.
Most baffling to me is one claim from Carpenter himself. Carpenter has repeatedly claimed that all of his films are westerns underneath. Why he's never directed a movie that's western on the surface too, I don't know. "HA!" said I. "In The Mouth Of Madness isn't a western." Poke, prod, look around, find me some western elements in this movie. There ain't a shard of western here, not a scrap, nary a grain of dust blown off of Clint's Stetson has landed in a single frame of this movie. Then, in the commentary at the beginning of my Escape From New York tape, Carpenter says that this "is basically an odyssey western. It's a balls-out horror movie, okay, but it has western elements to it." Anybody who can explain to me what the hell he's talking about is invited to do so.
Western or not, this movie kicks ass. It's spooky, scary, fun, imaginative, and totally wild. It's fairly thought-provoking too; it sure got me thinking about the possibilities of a "Church of Cane/Lovecraft". And that's the basis on which I'd recommend this movie to anybody who likes fantastic films, its effect on me aside.
So where does that ex-girlfriend of mine come into the picture, you might wonder.
Well, the night I got the news, I fell asleep fairly quickly - I was exhausted. But the next day, I just kind of stumbled around in a daze wondering what went wrong. (In hindsight, it's fairly obvious that 500 miles of distance will kneecap any attempt at a committed, indefinitely long romantic relationship.) A friend's mother saw me in the halls, asked me if anything was wrong; I unconvincingly stammered that I was just fine (got a worried call from my friend the next day). I somehow managed to tough out those thirteen hours of classes and, exhausted again, I stepped out into the night to take the bus home.
Then thoughts of Sheila were pushed aside for the time being, and that movie began to really haunt me.
It wasn't the images, however striking. Nor was it really the apocalyptic ending, which I've heard many people's reservations about but I find it the best of its kind I've seen. Strangely, it was the notion of fate as presented in the movie. To this day I don't really take seriously the notion of predestination, at least not as a supernatural or divine game-plan. And I didn't take it seriously then, either; I rode home on that bus mostly toying with the ideas presented; imagine having people act only insofar as they move forward a story you wish to tell. If a man's literary creations had consciousness, how would they like being manipulated so? (in the film, an old man on a bicycle pleads "He won't let me go!" in a boy's voice, when moments before, we'd seen a boy on the same bike in the same clothes. In another scene, another character steps into a grisly demise after saying "I have to; he wrote me this way!") What if the author makes a character act in a way that wasn't previously in its nature? Would this character be grateful for or frightened by the change? And if they weren't moving the story forward, or if their deaths or removals would provide the ailing tale with what it needs (more drama, resolution to conflict, whatever), how would they like being written out?
So I got home, mulling these issues. I was reminded of Roy Batty in Blade Runner, doomed to a four-year lifespan and demanding of his creator, "I want more life!" And laying in bed that night, wondering how I might possibly patch things up with Sheila, it hit me.
Not that things neither could nor should have been patched up; that she'd written me out.
I'd let her become the author, if you will, of my happiness, and when you do that, you run the risk of that author not including you in further chapters. (I would've done well to heed Type O Negative's warning in the liner notes to the Bloody Kisses CD: "Base not your joy upon the deeds of others, for that which is given can be taken away." Also included was the dedication "This entire opus is respectfully dedicated to all those who have loved unconditionally only to have their hearts unanaesthetically ripped out". Too bad it was another year or so before I'd even heard of this band!)
We don't need the notion of supernatural fate, of a divine game-plan, to scare us with unending aspects of life that can hurt us over which we have no control. Five words from your spouse could shatter your family and finances. Two words from your boss could smash your best-laid plans (though, depending on how good your best is, that's a "could" and not a "would"). That guy sitting across from you on the bus could take out a gun and shoot you in the head, if he was nuts enough. It doesn't matter whether or not it's all predestined; there's still nothing you can do about it. Likewise, nothing's really stopping YOU from pushing a stranger off of a subway platform, or telling your spouse you've been sleeping with his/her boss, or just going batty one night with a high-powered rifle and picking off people from an elevated position. We are all, in a sense, at each other's mercy. Yeah, I know, that's what paranoia's all about (who was it who said "The good thing about paranoia is that you only have to be right once"?). Call me paranoid, but I don't stand that close too the edge of the platform when the train approaches.
I can't believe that this movie was written by Michael De Luca, a guy whose only other screenwriting credit was the cheesiest of the Freddy Krueger movies. It's not a movie whose script comes to mind when one thinks of its merit, although there is an obvious appreciation of the works of Lovecraft worth noting; we don't see this kind of inspiration from his work in actual adaptations. We call it a Carpenter movie, not a De Luca movie. But De Luca's script, for all its abandonment of storytelling logic, gets in a lot of memorable dialogue, like Trent's chilling statement on our imminent relinquishing of our status as the earth's dominant species. There's a nasty, cynical sense of humor at work here, particularly regarding the publishing industry. "Pull it, don't distribute it!" says Trent. "I know this book will drive people crazy!" "Let's hope so," replies Hargow. "The movie comes out next month." Particularly amusing is Styles' reason for attempting to seduce Trent. The humor here isn't light-hearted or meant as comic relief (except for a silly moment involving a bicycle horn), but it still works, helping make the movie as fun as it is anything else.
If you've actually gotten this far in my review, you might be wondering how any of this could possibly relate to your own experience of watching this movie. It probably can't. And I don't honestly expect this movie to hit anybody as hard as it hit me. But what he have is, at the least, an unpredictable, super-wild mind-fuck of a movie that is way more likely to put a smile on your face than not. That's only the beginning of my near-limitless love for this movie; every time I see it I get messed around by it in a new way.
In The Mouth Of Madness disappeared from the box-office fairly quickly, despite an ad campaign that found claims from all over the place that this was the best movie in Carpenter's career. Strange, I don't remember actually reading any positive reviews at the time. It might have fared better had it been released a couple of years later, I don't know. Nevertheless, it has since found a lot of fans, and even its detractors usually admit to finding it pretty interesting.
All I can say is what Styles says to Trent when she suggests he read Cane's books. "See if you can get it." You probably won't get what I got. But you'll probably get something you'll like.