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In the Mouth of MadnessRating:
Release Date: 08 February, 2000 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $8.47 You SAVE: $6.51! Cast: Complete Cast (10 total) |
In the Mouth of Madness Reviews
IMoM-Cthuthlu meets King
Lovecraftian reference abound in this fine little nod to horror marketing. Weak ending but otherwise enjoyable excursion into Mythos madness.
One of Carpenter's more underappreciated films
John Carpenter has had quite a bad string of films that fail to live up to the standards he has set with his past works and those fans of his films who have seen him as a master of the genre. In 1995 he came up with a very good film that paid homage to two master writers of the horror-fantasy genre. Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness was a very good film that thrilled both his fans and those of the horror genre.
Sam O'Neill stars as insurance investigator John Trent who's hired by publishing editor Jackson Harglow (played by Charlton Heston in a brief role) to find one of their star novelist: the extremely popular horror novelist, Sutter Crane (played with weird creepiness by Jurgen Prochnow). It seems Crane has disappeared and cut off all contact with his handlers just as his latest horror novel's released. Throughout the beginning of the film there's a sense that Crane's latest book has more than an entertaining effect on those who've bought and read it. Homicidal individuals Trent encounters throughout the film and all linked to Crane's book and what he thought was a fictional New England town used in all of Crane's books. The town of Hobb's End was a definite homage to Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft who also created the fictional towns of Castle Rock and Arkham to locate many of their stories.
O'Neill does a great job of conveying Trent's bewildered, confused and ultimate descent into the mouth of madness Crane's writings seem to have opened in reality itself. From the weirdly peculiar to obscenely homicidal going ons by the townspeople of Hobb's End, Trent's logical nature is put to the test by the Lovecraftian situations and events he witnesses as his search for Sutter Crane leads from him from one horror to the next. The characters created by Lovecraft in his Cthulhu Mythos were never mentioned in Michael De Luca's script but the essense of these otherworldly beings of pure malice and evil permeates throughout the film. There's never been a successful attempt to film a Lovecraft story into a feature-lenght production, but In the Mouth of Madness comes close to achieving it. Even the wooden and under-inspired performance by Julie Carmen as Linda Styles, as Crane's literary agent and Trent's partner in his search, couldn't bring this film down. Carpenter does a great job of taking De Luca's script and creating a story where reality and madness slowly and inexorably begin to mesh to the point neither Trent or the audience knows what is real anymore. The end of the film was great in that Carpenter eschews the usual happy ending of most horror movies and instead finishes the madness he started and sees it through its end just like Trent.
In the Mouth of Madness showed that John Carpenter was still a master of his craft when given the right script to work with. He mixes to great effect homages to works of both Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft. His film also does a great job of instilling not just fear and horror of the unknown, but also that of losing one's mind and not knowing whats real and what's not. Despite not doing great business in the box-office, In the Mouth of Madness was a very good film that people in 1995 weren't just prepared to appreciate.
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