Halloween Countdown Day 2: In the Mouth of Madness

It’s Halloween, and Geoff is getting into the spirit by snuggling up on the couch and watching a scary movie every day until the trick-or-treaters arrive.

If you haven’t seen these movies, you should. You really, REALLY should. 

Miss any of the countdown?

Day 1: My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Day 2: In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

 

The Mouth of Madness, is also the name of Ann Coulter's autobiography.

John Carpenter gets a lot of crap these days as a director that has passed his prime. Long gone are the days when he brought us films like Halloween and The Thing.

But recent poor choices aside, it wasn't long ago that JC was churning out solid material, and In the Mouth of Madness certainly ranks up there as one of his best films in recent decades.

The Plot in 140 characters: Sam Neil needs to hunt down a missing author. That's about it. Oh, there's also a giant tentacle-woman who chops up her husband with an ax.

And a dude who punches off his own face.

The Actual Plot: In the Mouth of Madness plays like a nightmare.  It doesn't really have a discernible plot so much as a constant foreboding that something horrible is happening. And that's a good thing.

What little plot there is seems to go as follows: Sam Neil is an insurance investigator sent to find a missing horror author whose new book is set to come out soon. The author, Sutter Cane, is extremely popular. So popular, in fact, that his books have become a religion unto themselves and the mere mention of a new novel has sent the population into a frenzy.

Neil goes off to find Cane, who is hiding out in a small New England town to finish up the book, but the town isn't on any map and the book's apocalyptic tone may be more real than Sam Neil initially believes... 

Why I love it: Back in the mid-90s, the horror film was pretty much considered dead. The once mighty slasher film had devolved into pointless sequels like Jason Goes to Hell and Leprechaun In Space. The genre was crumbling under its own weight. To survive it became self-deprecating and satirical, and horror became little more than a joke of itself.

What I'm trying to say is that horror in the 1990's was pretty much...

But there were a small band of filmmakers that were still breaking ground. People like John Carpenter and his In the Mouth of Madness.

There is nothing satirical about Madness. It's an apocalyptic ode to H.P. Lovecraft with more than a sprinkling of Stephen King. It is an intelligent and serious film about our perceptions of reality, and it is so much fun.

The film starts with a plot but like the best nightmares,  the conventional narrative soon falls away, and the film is soon replaced with primal ideas and disturbing imagery.

There is little gore in the film and little of the terms questions are ever explained, allowing us to fill in the ideas for ourselves.

What we do know is that something horrible is happening, and there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it.

Much like waking up on a Greyhound halfway to Saskatchewan.

Sam Neil spends the majority of the film trying to figure out how to get out of the nightmare, but try as he might there is no escaping from the dream until it runs its course.

The film revolves around a new novel by a great horror author (who is in no way Stephen King) named Sutter Cane, and as the film progresses I find myself wanting to read the novel that he is working on. What we see in the film is so good, and I want more.

The film plays with our ideas of reality. The characters aren't sure what is real or not, and neither do we. As the film progresses it becomes less and less clear what reality is, and how important that question is at all.

The film has pretty much everything: An ancient evil, haunted paintings, monster children, cannibals and ax-wielding literary agents.

Also, amazing wallpaper.

The plot may be sparse, but the film works without it. You find yourself sucked into the world of the dream and like any nightmare you don’t question its logic.

That’s not to say that the film is perfect. It has its flubs along the way (I like the idea of using practical effects for the monsters, but some of the execution is questionable), but in the end the ideas are good enough that it overshadows any faults the film might have.

Fun fact: Sam Neil is always the first to pass out at parties.

The film isn’t my favorite Carpenter film (The Thing and the first two Halloween films still claim the top prize) but the film tries new things and makes for an excellent Halloween night experience. 

Tomorrow: We are changing things up a little bit. We'll take a look a couple of horror TV series, the ridiculously popular The Walking Dead and its (much better) British equivalent Dead Set.

Warning in advance: These shows are so good, you'll think you died and went to zombie-heaven.