SHANNON’S DRIVE-IN: IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS

Shannon does a rewatch of the John Carpenter classic In the Mouth of Madness, one of the best movies featuring the late, great Sam Neill.

A private investigator takes a trip to search for a missing horror writer by the name of Sutter Cane.

Director: John Carpenter

Writer: Michael De Luca

Stars: Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jurgen Prochnow, Charlton Heston

When asked about the passing of Sam Neill and his body of work, I find five words spilling out of my mouth: In the Mouth of Madness.

After his recent passing, I’ve been involved in conversations about his body of work, and the cool part is, everyone I’ve discussed him with loves him. Of course, everyone will run to Jurassic Park, which makes sense because that’s his biggest movie. No shade thrown, I understand why.

But let’s discuss In the Mouth of Madness.

Released in 1994 as the third part of what John Carpenter calls his “Apocalypse Trilogy,” In the Mouth of Madness is an unsung hero of both John Carpenter’s and Sam Neill’s careers. It’s not obscure, per se, but definitely not mentioned as much as other works.

It’s also tops for me on both the John Carpenter and Sam Neill level.

I’m a horror writer who just returned from four days in New Hampshire at Camp NECON (a yearly summer camp for horror writers). This movie involves a horror writer and road trip to New Hampshire, so it only makes sense for me to review it.

Insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) is hired on to search for missing horror writer Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow). Because Cane’s next novel In the Mouth of Madness is set to be released AND Trent survives an attack by Cane’s agent, Trent suspects the whole thing is a publicity stunt.

Next Trent takes Cane’s book covers and pieces them together to make the state of New Hampshire, which means it’s road trip time. Trent and Cane’s editor Linda Styles (Julie Styles) set out for an adventure to find the fictional town of Hobb’s End. Once in the creepy part of New England, the surreal happenings start and they involve creepy children, menacing dogs, and unnerving inn keepers. It’s all the fantastic things that make pulp horror what it is, creeping out of the pages of a paperback and spewing out into reality.

What follows is surrealist horror and the breakdown of sanity. The boundary between reality and fiction is dissolved, letting in cosmic horrors and turning Cane’s stories into real-life entities. The audience is forced to consider what’s really happening; is reality unraveling quickly, or is Trent just an unreliable narrator going insane? Is reading Cane’s book the cause of his insanity or is the world really ending?

Typically John Carpenter’s movies are straight-forward, but this proves to be one of those “next level” movies by a beloved director. The monster in this case is not a white-masked man with a knife personifying evil or a space alien causing paranoia in Antarctica. It’s either an author with unchecked power or one’s own insanity.

Neill brings a rationality to Trent’s personality. He’s the audience’s avatar to witness the sights in Hobb’s End. We don’t just watch him go through the craziness around him, we experience it through him, seeing everything through his eyes until his own reality breaks and he’s left cackling like a Lovecraftian madman at the end of the world.

Screenwriter Michael De Luca is no stranger to surrealism; he wrote the short film version of The Lawnmower Man as well as the screenplay for Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. Say what you want about the much maligned entry in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, it’s similar in its themes of a small town gone horribly wrong. It provides the seeds of what would become Hobb’s End later on in his career.

Of course, Carpenter films have great soundtracks and this one definitely does not disappoint. The score by Carpenter and Jim Lang is at times ambient, leading to a false sense of security. Then there are sounds which evoke the feeling of uncanniness. Plus the opening track, with its solid rock sound and heavy guitar work, is an absolute banger.

I can’t say enough how much I love this movie. Maybe it’s the writer in me that feels drawn to it. Maybe it’s the journey to Hobb’s End and its slow dripping of psychosis in the images it presents. Or maybe it’s the fact I relate to questioning reality at times in a world gone mad. So give this a watch and answer this question: do you read Sutter Cane?

Shannon Grant is a writer, performer, adventurer, and horned cryptid living in the wilds of upstate New York. Her work can be found in many small press anthologies such as A Guide to Useless Sidekicks, Catskill Chaos, and The Lizzie Borden House Anthology. She is currently at work on a vampire novella. When not writing, she can be found haunting drive-in movie theaters, karaoke bars, and looking for ghosts in the woods.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing, nor do the views or opinions of Crystal Lake necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or its staff. Thank you for understanding.