In The Mouth Of Madness

MOVIE
VIDEO
AUDIO
EXTRAS
OVERALL

One Disc
2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen/1.33:1 Pan & Scan
Dolby Digital 5.1 & 2.0 Surround
English Subtitles
Audio Commentary
Original Theatrical Trailer
Run Time: 95 Minutes
Snap Case

MOVIE
Rated R for violence, profanity and gore

John Carpenter is an enigma to me, managing to craft mediocre movie after mediocre movie with occasional shots in the pan of near brilliance. There was Dark Star then Assault on Precinct 13 then, HALLOWEEN. Then, after Halloween, he made two more of his greatest films in a four-year period with The Thing and The Fog, separated by the quote classic, Escape From New York. Then, after The Thing, what happened? The only decent horror movie this man has made since is In the Mouth of Madness. And that's not only decent, but truly great. How does that happen? (Notice I emphasized HORROR movie. I happen to think Memoirs of an Invisible Man is delightful if for nothing else than truly breathtaking special effects.) Now I know there are some film geeks growling at me now, frothing at the mouth over the fact that I didn't talk about one of their favorite Carpenter films as great, be it They Live (overrated and silly with a one note plot and horrible acting proving yet again that while wrestlers may be skilled actors in the ring, if there's no ring in sight, they're hopelessly lost without a map) or Prince of Darkness (pretty much Carpenter's version of Night of the Living Dead, while nice to see Donald Pleasance working with Carpenter again, c'mon, evil contained in a vial in the basement of a church. The hell?) or, here's the big one, Big Trouble In Little China. I'm not even going to try a parenthetical here. Big Trouble In Little China is that 80s cult movie that is so near and dear that those who loved it way back when refuse to realize that they've grown up and it hasn't. That's all I'll say.
So, it was with skepticism that I went into In The Mouth Of Madness, seeing it on a recommendation from Moskva21 as being truly scary. I hunkered down with a bucket of popcorn in my basement and popped in the video (hey, this was back in 1995. At least I had a laserdisc player. What did you film geeks have?) Luckily, it a dub from a laserdisc so it was in glorious John "fill that damned frame" Carpenter 2.35:1 widescreen. The movie unfolded slowly after a bang up creepy opening, allowing us to get scraps of information here and there, never giving us everything. Just enough to keep us interested, and throwing enough visual prowess on top to keep us on the edge of our seat. It doesn't hurt, of course, to have such talents as Sam Neill, Jurgen Prochnow and Charlton Heston on board.
So, we have John Trent (Sam Neill) in an institution raving, claiming he's not insane. Then, just days later, when Dr. Wrenn (David Warner) shows up to speak to him, he's covered himself and his cell with crosses from black crayon in an effort to prove himself insane so that he can stay in there, away from the horrible things he knows are going on outside. He tells the story that he was an Insurance Claim Investigator hired by Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston) the head of Arcane Publishing to find their big writer who's disappeared. The writer Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow) is a Stephen King clone, writing about a town in New England (this one called Hobb's End) being infested by monsters. Trent sets off with Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), Cane's editor, to find the man and wind up finding Hobb's End itself. It seems that Cane's work has an effect on its readers, pushing them over the brink into madness. Cane's disappearance, taking his long promised new book with him, sends the world into a frenzy, demanding to see it.
I was riveted on first viewing, as I tend to be when debates are waged about the nature of reality and how it has the potential to shift. In The Mouth of Madness makes the case (and makes it well) that if the majority of the population were insane instead of sane, their viewpoint would be the one that matters, the correct one, and we, the sane minority would all be relegated to our own padded cell to wait out eternity at the hands of the lunatics. What a strange and intriguing notion. It also deals with the question of whether horror novels or movies can have a major effect on the consumers, a question very relevant to today and something Stephen King himself has had to face many times. So what does it add up to?
The movie falls just shy of greatness, and I'll get into that shyness in a moment, but first I'll defend the first part. Sam Neill is a tremendous actor and here gives it all he has, bringing life to the role and eliciting sympathy from the audience as we begin to sense there's no way for him to return from where he's gone. This is something that wouldn't have been achieved given, say, Roddy Piper in the lead. (Roddy Piper was the wrestler in question as the lead in They Live) Carpenter has almost never felt as sure of himself in his direction, with the camera moves striking and not masturbatory (as is often the case with Brian DePalma, but that's another story) and the lighting giving a strange film noir in color feel which thus far, in my opinion, has only ever been achieved in one other movie, Philip Kauffman's remake of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. The supporting cast is filled with "I think I know that guy!" actors such as John Glover (Gremlins 2 and a host of others) Wilhelm von Homburg (You'd probably know him as Vigo in Ghostbusters II, and you are like the buzzing of flies to him.) and delightful creepy old lady Frances Bay (who's shown up all over the place, but most interestingly in Lynch's films Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me). It creates a creepy atmosphere in giving us the flipside of small town America as a nightmare world where women and men turn into Lovecraftian monsters with tentacles and elongated faces and dual pupils. And it is just those monsters that stop the film from achieving greatness. It's often been said around Hollywood that you really can't make movies out of novels by turn of the century horror writer HP Lovecraft's books because his monsters are indescribable; something that works in books but often fails when said monster is created for the screen. These monsters work in darkness and shadows and fleeting glimpses, and for the most part In The Mouth of Madness gets that right, especially the tentacle monster in the basement of the hotel. But there are two notable occasions where it's so wrong it makes you cringe. One, where a monster is growing out of the back of a character's head. Awful. And the other, as Trent runs down a tunnel to escape a pack of various monsters seen on the covers of Cane's novels (also, it should be said, creepy on the covers, sketched, rather than fully realized) where they just look like, well, the puppets they truly are. With an AVID editing system, I could snip snip here, snip snip there, give a couple of tra-la-las and fix the film, allowing it to achieve perfection. It gets so close. But luckily, it doesn't fall far.

VIDEO QUALITY
Perhaps never has there been a better way to watch a film noir movie than on the DVD format due to its exquisite reproduction of the color black, which on videotape often shows up as that odd oatmeal mush of dark purples and blues that only look black, but upon closer inspection with a keen eye are revealed to be anything but. In The Mouth Of Madness doesn't disappoint here, the blacks are beautifully reproduced here, rich and deep, and as most of the movie takes place in darkness, or close to it, this is essential for a video image to reproduce them well. Also rendered well is the film's limited color scheme, mostly reds and browns, but this adds to the unique film noir feel. Occasionally, unfortunately, we get compression artifacts, haloing and pixelization, likely due to the option to either watch in pan & scan or widescreen on the same side of the disc. If you're reading this review, you'd never think to watch a John Carpenter film in pan & scan, would you? WOULD YOU? So I'll just mention then that you have that option, or you could watch the film in its intended theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 Anamorphic widescreen. Don't choose...poorly.

AUDIO QUALITY
If there's one thing that John Carpenter has done well in his numerous less than great movies (Hey, at this point I'm being gregarious) that's audio mixing. This could be attributed to his great involvement with audio in post-production, namely his original scores. He mixes the hell out of this film, throwing audio across the channels from the front to the rear and back, allowing it to envelop you and, at the same time, allowing himself to be discrete about it at times. But the entire range of sound is well used and well produced leading to a fully enriching audio experience.

EXTRAS
Oh, John. Why? I've listened to Carpenter commentary before. On Halloween's (selfish Criterion, why can't we have that commentary track) laserdisc, Carpenter was a chatterbox, filling us in on so many aspects of the production of that little film that we could go home happy geeks with smiles on our faces. On this disc, he's unfortunately pared with his cinematographer, and the two would rather talk about different types of lighting, their origins and uses for the entire running time of the film. And I'm unfortunately serious. At times, on this track, they begin to talk about the film itself, the themes, the acting, but that's almost always interrupted when John sees a streak of light and says something like: "So, we used what kind of light bulb here? And that was first used when? Hmm. That's interesting." And I don't doubt he's being sincere, but I went to film school to learn about lights, I took a class, and if John Carpenter is so interested in learning about this stuff he might want to sit in on one, I'm sure a college would give him honorary enrollment. The audio commentary to your enigmatic film is not the time to do that! We also get a single theatrical trailer, also in 2.35:1 widescreen, but only that single trailer, while on the laserdisc, if memory serves, there was a bazillion.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
It's still scary. Which can't be said of many films given repeat viewings. In The Mouth of Madness continues to scare me on a level that matches The Shining, Jacob's Ladder and The Exorcist. It's about perception, the way we see the world, something that, if it changes, would destroy us. If we began to see monsters chasing us, would it matter if they were real or not because to our minds, they're definitely real? And if they caught up, and killed us, would it matter if they really did, because our brains would think we're dead. Enough philosophical ramblings. I have the utmost respect for films that scare me because they are so rare of late. That's why I treasure this movie. And hope that, after his past two films (I mean REALLY, what the hell was with Vampires anyway, John?) he can bring us something amazing again.