Theatrical Poster
Do you read Sutter Cane? Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow) is a world famous horror writer, even bigger than Stephen King. After getting increasingly reclusive he has gone missing. Sam Neill is an insurance investigator, charged with finding Sutter Cane so his company can avoid the huge payout to Cane's publishers (a great cameo from Charlton Heston).
In The Mouth Of Madness is a brilliant horror movie, that succeeds in scaring and unsettling the audience immensely. As Neill pursues the enigmatic Cane wierd things start happening; Cane's agent attacks him with an axe, he has strange dreams after reading some of Cane's previous works including a very scary scene in an alleway.
With Julie Carmen they set out to find Cane and then things get seriously wierd. It seems Cane believes that he is an emissary from evil, god-like powers outside of this world. His fiction is not really fiction, it is actually images of how these Gods would inhabit our world. His next novel, titled In The Mouth Of Madness (Excerpt available to read here) is intended to allow these Gods to break free from their dimension, to inhabit ours.
The film deals with an array of concepts; If enough people believe in something does that make it true, will it manifest itself? If the majority of people are insane does that then make them the sane majority? What is the true nature of reality? How do we know we are experiencing reality?
In the midst of all this confusion Carpenter never forgets to scare us, delivering horrors of Lovecraftian proportions. The strange lady with her husband tied behind the desk, the demonic children, the rabid Cane fans. The terror is swiftly piled on. We see the process from Neills point of view, sharing in his confusion and fear of the unknown as he does or doesn't slowly descend into madness.
In The Mouth Of Madness is a superb film. The HPL influences are there, but are not the sole essence. It has been criticised for being a weak HPL film but it was not intended to be one. The special effects, courtesy of Industrial Light & magic are also superb. Neill and Prochnow, as the two main characters, are excellent. Neill convincingly draws us into his confused world, giving us our only link through the mad, end of the world events. Prochnow simmers evil and madness, an anti-christ figure. Brilliant.
An Excerpt From Sutter Cane's Novel 'In The Mouth Of Madness'
'Trent stood at the edge of the rip, staring into the unlimitable gulf of the unknown, the stygian world yawning blackly beyond. Trents eyes refused to close, he did not shriek, but the hideous unholy abominations shrieked for him, as in the same second he saw them spill and tumble upwards out of an enormous carrion black pit, choked with the gleaming white bones of countless unhallowed centuries. Trent turned back from the rip as the army of unspeakable figures, toiled by the glow of the bottomless pit, came pouring at him - towards our world.'
