Exactly what it sounds like, the Pick of the Week column is written up by the Cinapse team on rotation, focusing on films that are past the marketing cycle of either their theatrical release or their home video release. So maybe the pick of the week will be only a couple of years old. Or maybe it’ll be a silent film, cult classic, or forgotten gem. Cinapse is all about thoughtfully advocating film, new and old, and celebrating what we love no matter how marketable that may be. So join us as we share about what we’re discovering, and hopefully you’ll find some new films for your watch list, or some new validation that others out there love what you love too! Engage with us in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook! And now, our Cinapse Movie Of The Week…
Come back to us, John Carpenter. Sure, you’ve had your ups and downs, but who can dwell on your downs, when you have ups like Halloween, They Live, and The Thing. Hell, even most of your downs are totally watchable (we won’t bring up Ghosts of Mars or Escape From L.A.… those can stay down). And hey, your middle-of-the-road productions are always passionately lauded by at least a couple nerds.
Allow me to present myself as nerd ambassador for 1995’s In The Mouth of Madness.
First, I should give the uninitiated some context for this horror treat. Anyone who adores Mr. Carpenter, flaws and all, should find the time to delve into another brilliant (if also slightly inconsistent) master of horror who inspired the influential filmmaker. H.P. Lovecraft was a recluse who, before dying young and in poverty, created an entire universe of sci-fi terror in a series of short stories like “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Outsider”. If only he knew his writing, mostly ignored while he was active in the early 20th century, would be studied, loved, and adapted into other forms of media by his obsessive fans only a few decades later. His influence is everywhere. The Necronomicon is, after all, a fictional book of his creation, and John Carpenter (during one of his minor periods) took it upon himself to pay the ultimate homage in a film about the power of a cult-like fear.
Sam Neill (yeah… you’re already hooked, right?) plays John Trent. For reasons unknown, he is being held in an asylum. A psychiatrist comes to interview him, and Trent begins recounting his unbelievable story. This framing device, involving potential insanity, and a narrator recalling events from the past, is the primary tool for Lovecraft’s fiction, and the reference-a-thon doesn’t end for the next 90 minutes. The bulk of the plot, however, actually focuses on Neill’s character, an insurance investigator, seeking the whereabouts of vanished horror author, Sutter Cane (creepily embodied by Jurgen Prochnow). Trent, and Cane’s editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) discover the author has left puzzle pieces to a map of New Hampshire which allows them to enter what was believed to be a fictional town, and discover Cane’s writing has become so ubiquitous, it is bringing an apocalypse full of tremendously frightening monster-gods akin to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
Sounds like something you just couldn’t get into without knowing the source material? Sounds like you couldn’t have thought of a dumber idea if you didn’t even try? Don’t worry, you could have.
“Poop dinosaurs learn the true meaning of Easter while filing their tax returns.”
There. See? That’s a way dumber idea.
Also, the in-jokes about Lovecraft, and the little nods to his work aren’t the only pleasures in watching this movie. The real meat n’ taters are all found in what most filmgoers probably thought was its greatest flaw almost 20 years ago: it’s crazy. Not more than five minutes in does the coming apocalypse shows its true colors. Its colors are ugly, dark, twisted, and a little confusing (The very same colors my parents used to paint my nursery). Once we reach the halfway mark, what might have looked like a plot suddenly waves “bye bye”, and the film is simply Trent’s doomed crusade for survival. In that mess, with John Trent walking from one heinous nightmare to another, the film takes on a sort of dream logic, and that makes it the perfect kind of riot for October viewing.
Like its creators’ careers, the movie isn’t perfect. The tone is hard to place; Carpenter’s score isn’t exactly one of his most timeless creations; the final moments are almost unbearably stupid and mentioning “cheap special effects” so often in the dialogue while relying so heavily on animatronics and prosthetics maybe wasn’t the best idea, either. In the end, what makes it worth watching (besides its inclusion in Carpenter’s unofficial “Apocalypse Trilogy”) is how it plays with the idea that fear and/or religion can cause you to question reality. How could these terrible or wondrous things be happening? If they aren’t, then you must be insane. But if you are sane, then what you knew to be real does not exist, which would undoubtedly drive you crazy. This vicious circle, the same one so often danced by H.P. Lovecraft, is certainly done around the mouth of madness.
