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"In the Mouth of Madness": My 16th Favorite Horror Movie

As always, I welcome my fellow Bidites to another installment of my countdown of my 25 favorite horror films. With my last installment, the Scream franchise earned the distinction of being the first to appear here more than once, as Scream 2 joined

Scream 3 on my list. For my next choice, we leave the movie-savvy killings at Windsor College behind and journey to a quaint, out-of-the-way hamlet known as Hobb's End, where a more novel-savvy kind of evil is afoot.

I proudly present my 16th favorite horror movie of all time:In the Mouth of Madness For some reason, this 1994 release from legendary director John Carpenter has flown under the radar of many, although it's every bit as scary as anything else he's ever done. This complex tale of an all-encompasng evil spawned from the mad creativity of a mega-selling horror author who is in communion with evil, Lovecraftian demons is also agile and engrosng. It ealy gets profound themes about (I kid you not) the nature of reality across without ever having to take much of a breather for expotion. In case you haven't already guessed just from the last two sentences, things get flat out mind-bending in this movie. Luckily, no matter how out there the plot becomes (and its reach extends pretty much throughout the cosmos) we have Sam Neill's always engaging performance as insurance investigator John Trent to center us. Trent starts out as a real smooth customer who can sniff a con out with record speed. He is the ultimate in level-headedness, only momentarily rattled even when a lunatic with an axe randomly attacks him in broad daylight.

Later on, Trent discovers that the man with the axe was but one of many people apparently psychologically affected to extreme degrees by the work of horror novelist Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow). He comes to this realization only after beginning work on his next case, which is to figure out what has become of that self same author. Sutter Cane has apparently been misng for weeks. Cane's publishing company, Arcane, appears more than cooperative. Company predent Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston) drops everything to make time to meet with Trent, and both he and his somewhat condescending senior editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) assure him that all they want is the retrieval of Cane's newest manuscript, which they own the rights to. The whole thing smells like some sort of publicity stunt to Trent, but he can't figure out exactly how Arcane is doing it, and he certainly has no proof. Thinking it might give him some inght into the case, Trent picks up some of Sutter Cane's older novels, even as Cane's longtime fans begin tearing bookstores apart in protest when his newer releases sell out.

Reading Cane's novels causes Trent to experience one of the most intense prolonged nightmare sequences I've ever seen on film, featuring a portly, demonic cop whose visage haunted my own dreams for awhile after I saw this movie for the first time. More importantly, though, the novels also lead Trent to a breakthrough. He notices that the covers of Cane's previous works, when put together in just the right way, form a map to Hobb's End, and he surmises that Cane can probably be found there. The only problem with his theory is that Hobb's End is supposed to be fictional, merely a town that Sutter Cane created as the setting for his books. Trent insts that the town must be there, and Harglow agrees to send him on a trip to try to find it, provided that he allows Styles to accompany him. And find it they do. But getting to Hobb's End is tricky. Remember when I said it was "out-of-the-way"? I meant that you apparently have to slip into something of a catatonic dream state to find it. To say much more about what happens in the plot after that would risk giving away too many of this underrated gem's surprises, and anyway, it's hard for words to encapsulate the full range of horrors Trent and Styles confront in Hobb's End. I will say, however, that the painting in the lobby of their hotel that constantly changes and grows ever more grotesque is the least horrifying thing that awaits them. I will also also say that even if Trent manages to escape Hobb's End, it's clear that both he and his world will be forever changed. Though screenwriter Michael De Luca's script features a smattering of ham-fisted dialogue, Neill's skill as an actor is such that he can make pretty much any line palatable. Carpenter's prowess as a director helps too, setting a constant ominous tone with such success that melodramatic proclamations no longer necessarily seem like overreactions. To De Luca's credit, other passages of dialogue are spot on, and add to the dramatic effect of the film, helping viewers understand the full depth of the horror that the characters are experiencing. One element of the plot (which I won't go into anymore than necessary) involves the transformation of people into something...else. And some parts of that transformation are spiritual and mental, and therefore can't be detected by the human eye. The script comes through for us here, where it matters most, as a character in the midst of such a change sums up what is occurring with one inspired snippet of dialogue which makes it seem like she is reaching out for help, rather than stepping out of the plot to narrate for the audience. I can readily forgive De Luca for a few cheesy lines elsewhere in the script in light of his instinct for conveying a complicated plot in an uncomplicated manner.

Another point where In the Mouth of Madness excels is special effects. Effects company Industrial Light and Magic found themselves tasked with creating tentacled beasts that look like Chthuhlu's long lost blings, people who can tear themselves apart like paper and disappear, slimy hell-spawned monsters that slaver and skitter, deformed faces that sprout from the backs of people's heads, and most memorably of all, a chilling scene of imposble body contortions that nearly rivals Regan's infamous possessed crabwalk down the stairs in The Exorcist. No one in 1994 could have pulled any of it off any better than ILM did, and for the most part, their work holds up impresvely even today. In the Mouth of Madness

is a brisk mindfuck with energy to spare. It may not try to answer any of the profound questions it raises about the differences between fiction and reality, but what would the point of that be anyway? It would just come across as pretentious and philosophers and writers would continue to wrestle with such questions, regardless of the movie's success or failure. No, this movie raises its questions just to screw with you, and leave you feeling disoriented and disturbed. It gleefully sucks you down a rabbit hole, drags you on a magical mystery tour of horrors as grotesque as they are inescapable, and then spits you back out into the outde world, unclear as to exactly what happened, but feeling pretty certain that some nister force is still pulling the strings of everything around you. And in so doing, it raises a final, unanswered question: Is it scarier to wonder how much we are all manipulated by outde forces, or to know the exact extent to which we're controlled, but be unable to do a damn thing about it?Discuss amongst yourselves, and stay tuned for my next installment!
ImmortalSidneyP Thursday 4/19/2012 at 04:34 AM | 92596
The last great Carpenter film
krsdacritter Friday 4/20/2012 at 03:48 PM | 92625