Director: John Carpenter.
Writer: Michael de Luca.
Production Designer: Jeff Steven
Ginn.
Editor: Edward A. Warschilka.
Director of Photography: Gary
B. Kibbe.
Special Make-up Effects: Kurtzman,
Nicotero & Berger Efx Group, Inc.
Special Effects: Industrial
Light & Magic.
Music: John Carpenter &
Jim Lang.
Cast: Sam Neill (John Trent),
Julie Carmen (Linda Styles), Jürgen Prochnow (Sutter Cane),
David Warner (Dr. Wrenn), John Glover (Saperstein), Bernie Casey
(Robinson), Peter Jason (Mr. Paul), Charlton Heston (Jackson
Harglow), Frances Bay (Mrs. Pickman).
REVIEW:
This is without question one of the best homage's to Lovecraft’s
universe which to this day has been made for the screen. Down
the years, Carpenter’s movies have been of rather uneven
quality, but In the Mouth of Madness is among his best
– alongside, perhaps even surpassing, The Fog (1980)
and the remake of The Thing (1982). This is even more
impressive, considering the difficulties one automatically encounters
when dealing with adapting Lovecraft’s philosophical ideas
to the film media. Against all odds, however, Carpenter manages
very well to interpret many of Lovecraft’s tenets and mold
them into his own vision of that dark, bleak universe.
As if that alone wasn't enough,
the director also throws in tons of references to both Lovecraft
and the so-called “Cthulhu Mythos” and the
genre which it has generated. All with a knowing wink and a
smile which actually suits the film, having the fan smile in
glee, and without getting in the way of the actual story.
With its underlying tone of
“standard horror movie effects,” the film is an intriguing
mix of such ‘cheap thrills’ with Lovecraftian ideas
and elements. A mix which is executed superbly, in my estimation.
From the beginning of the film, with insurance investigator
John Trent sent to investigate the outrageously popular horror
writer Sutter Cane’s mysterious disappearance, to the ending’s
apocalyptic, story-ending’s loop (!) of Trent sitting in
a theater watching everything he has experienced on the big
screen, laughing insanely, Carpenter takes us on a horrifying
ride through various layers of storytelling.
Even without on the outset being
too intellectual, it seems clear to me that Carpenter wants
to tell a story which can entertain and scare on more than the
“classic,” b-film horror movie level; he wants to
tell a story on many levels, thrilling the audience of a more
“intellectually inclined” mind as well. In this he
succeeds exceedingly well, I think.
For Lovecraft buffs this is
a treat in references to him and his work – Mythos or ‘just’
Lovecrafian: As can be expected already in the film’s title,
references to Lovecraft stories and persons pop up all the time.
Variations on novel titles written by Lovecraft, a hotel with
Pickman’s name, the leading character some sort of scientific
investigator who discovers that “reality isn't what it
used to be,” as a citizen of a fictive town in New England
says just seconds before he shoots his brain out – because
the author “wrote him this way.”
One of the most fascinating
aspects of this movie, for me, is the almost postmodern structure;
a structure playing with the fact that Lovecraft’s fictive
settings and the Mythos’ unholy books have, after a fashion,
taken on a life all their own. And so, as this story progresses,
we learn that the novels Sutter Cane wrote have altered reality
and are real – the “Old Ones” helped him…
And soon, now, they are ready to take over the world again.
Here we see the entrance of the Cthulhu Mythos aspect not really
Lovecraftian, but more Derlethian – yet in this movie it
works like a charm, just enough to add color, and without disturbing
the overall picture. (Quite unlike Derleth’s own stories.)
Throughout the film, themes
of reality vs. fiction, religion vs. rationality, belief vs.
knowledge, and free will vs. determinism are exploited, and
just like in a Lovecraft tale the “horrible” aspects
of these are the ones that turn out to be – or become –
true. So of course insanity is inevitable. It can come as no
surprise that many who watch this movie are rather baffled when
the movie is over – for with so many interconnected layers
and serious themes, it’s not an easy movie. But the more
rewarding for it, I think.
It’s been debated, I notice,
that Sutter Kane is (1) Stephen King – the initials and
specific references to him making this an obvious point of view
– or (2) Lovecraft himself. To support the latter is the
fact that Kane sort of embodies what Lovecraft did with his
stories, stories that later took on a reality of their own.
I won’t judge which is correct, but tend to think both
are, to some extend, true; Kane being a weird, fictive fusion
of both horror writers.
In any case this is a movie
worth watching – again and again and again… to the
horrible end.
© Henrik Harksen 2004
Website: www.lovecraft.dk
Special thanks to Henrik Harksen
for allowing me to use this review.
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