HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: In The Mouth of Madness (1994)

No sponsor today, so the Randomizer has stepped in to present me with a film I’ve seen a couple of times.  I know a lot of people love it, some calling it the last great film John Carpenter ever made.  All I know is I’ve never understood why people like it so much.  It’s not that I hate it, or even dislike it more than mildly; the only Carpenter film I do not like a’tall is his ill-advised remake of Village of the Damned.  I just feel, much like Escape From L.A. or Ghosts of Mars or Prince of Darkness, that they either don’t succeed in what Carpenter intended on doing or they’re Carpenter giving us what he thinks we want rather than what he wants to give us.

So this is my third visit to Hobbs End since its release.And...I still don’t get it.

By that I mean I understand what Carpenter was trying to do.  This film is a commentary on how belief can warp reality (something that’s really relevant in this time of ‘Fake News’), and how there is really very little separating what is considered sane from insane.  And the cast, which is pretty impressive, is game, even if Sam Neill’s slipping into his native accent from time to time distracted me.  It’s just that I think Carpenter missed something in building his thesis and maybe gave us what he thought he needed to present to make his case rather than stick with what was working in the beginning.

Look at it this way...Carpenter is primarily a visceral director.  His best work is kinetic and active and full of action.  Even something like the original Halloween, which isn’t the showiest in terms of action, has a certain deliberate energy that slowly slathers the tension on until you can’t stand it.  Hell, he has freely admitted that he is a western director at heart, and his best works takes the western paradigm whole or in part and recontextualizes it into a new genre or story form.

But In The Mouth of Madness...this is unapologetically his love letter to H.P. Lovecraft much as Prince of Darkness is his love letter to Nigel Kneale.  Lovecraft’s prose is all about the fear of not knowing your place in the world and having no control over what happens to you, and there are moments in In The Mouth of Madness that convey that sense--for me, the look on Julie Carmen’s face as she returns from Sutter Cane’s cathedral or the sequence in the first act at the cafe, give me that sense that these characters know they’re thoroughly lacking in self-determination.  Carmen, in fact, is pretty damn good in the beginning of the second act, where she is slowly realizing she’s not the hero of her own story.

But Carpenter’s tendency toward visceral wins out in the end, resulting in a cavalcade of creature effects that don’t work for me.  When some of it is suggested--like when Neill believes he’s seeing Carmen sprout tentacles on the other side of the door, or the reveal that Mrs. Pickman has her...husband(?) handcuffed to her ankle--I’m down with it.  But then we get the lizard/octopus thingie in the greenhouse and Neill being chased down a long corridor by Howard Berger and Greg Nictero’s craziest creations, and he lost me.  It made the implied obvious, and just like with the last two viewing, I started to check out.

There’s also the last fifteen minutes and the payoff to the framing sequence.  The weird momentum of the film slows to a stop once we find our hero on the empty road he started his odyssey on.  As much as I appreciate the presence of John Glover and David Warner, two character actors I can never get enough of, I wonder if we really needed these elements.  The point has already been made by this time, and that last stretch is akin to Carpenter nudging you in the ribs repeatedly so you Get The Message.  And Hell, I don’t see the point of us watching Neill watching the movie based on the book that is actually the movie we’ve been watching.

I know I’m in danger of receiving a flood of replies and tweets and emails telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about and I am an Ignoramus when it comes to horror in general and Carpenter specifically.  I know I am in the (very small) minority here.  I still will recommend this film, but I also accept I may very well be on the wrong side of pop culture history here.  It’s a cross I have already accepted I am bearing.

Tomorrow’s sponsor is one of my best friends, my brother in all respects except blood, the man who shared the mike with me on Better In The Dark, Derrick Ferguson.  Derrick has chosen the sequel to a film I expounded upon earlier in the Horrorfest, 1990‘s The Exorcist III: Legion or, as I’m sure William Peter Blatty referred to it, Legion.  I’ve never seen this one, and I’m actually kind of excited to visit this.

There is only one slot left for this year’s Halloween Horrorfest.  Anyone who joins the Domicile of Dread Patreon at the $3 or more slot not only gets bits of writing and exclusive podcasts (like the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto and maybe a little surprise at the end of this month), but can sponsor one of those slots and choose the film I have to watch and report on!