Do you read Sutter Cane?
We've talked about John Carpenter before, be it with some of his cult classics or his continuing legacy. And with Halloween upon us, I wanted to showcase what many consider to be his last true canonical entry (why, we'll get to later). Going back twenty-five years to 1994, it's the literary-themed instigator of insanity, In The Mouth of Madness.
Coming after Carpenter's comedy Memoirs of an Invisible Man...which nobody in the world gives a damn about, best as I can tell...this one is a return to form in the lines of his apocalypse-themed horrors like the magnificent The Thing, or his underrated Prince of Darkness, a favorite of mine. Mouth of Madness definitely picks up from the latter, with a slightly surreal atmosphere and abstract themes--and where it comes out is with the lead, Sam Neil. After dealing with raptors, it feels Dr. Grant wanted to step up the monster quota a bit...
The film starts out just the right way, with a rockin' theme tune that feels like Metallica warming up (Carpenter's musical legacy is another thing I can and have gushed about), and then we immediately get introduced to Neil's John Trent, confined to the scrawl-sullied cells of an asylum. The rest of the film is told in flashback...sort of...as we get introduced to Trent as an insurance investigator. A lot of the film is very on the nose in its HP Lovecraft inspirations, taking from that writer's pessimistic and humankind-sundering works of foul dimension-violating abominations descending upon us. And indeed, we get a Lovecraft pastiche that Trent has to track down with Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow) who also is infused with the mainstream popularity of Stephen King.
Soon Trent and his lady companion Linda (Julie Carmen) soon arrive in a supposedly fictitious town where Cane's books take place, and here the film cranks up the surrealism, as things that can't exist violate the 'real world'--and what the 'real world' truly is becomes something that you find questioning. There are some delightfully creepy moments as Trent has to make sense of the increasingly unsettling and deformed inhabitants of the town--and though this film isn't as heavy on the grotesque effects of say The Thing or Big Trouble in Little China, there are glimpses of both shamefully fleeting monster puppets, as well as a genuinely disturbing prosthetic or too.
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| Well at least it's not as bad as waiting in line at Schipol Airport. |
By the last act, things have gone completely off the rails in the best way possible--Trent can no longer make sense of reality, and it all culminates in an iconic scene that sees Neil lose it in the best way possible. You might not have a clue what just happened, but it's entertaining as hell, and with every ever-demented scene that passes, you're given more and more to question.
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| I have much the same response to the Sonic the Hedgehog movie trailer. |
In the Mouth of Madness is definitely one I say check out--hell, see it in a double alongside another Neil cult horror, Event Horizon. Now, I mentioned this is generally considered Carpenter's last classic--and while it is a solid one to go out on, his filmography is kinda downhill from here. His Village of the Damned remake, while nothing horrible, feels very made for TV; Escape from the LA is largely a goofy retread of its Manhattan-set predecessor, ending aside; and it all ended with 2001's Ghosts of Mars, which is mostly unintentional hilarity. No director keeps up the same level forever, after all, and Carpenter may have been getting burnt out from being tossed around by various studios.
Still, his defining masterworks remain with us forever, and he still deals the goods as a composer, releasing new albums, crafting scintillating synth as we saw with the Halloween reboot, and as I can personally attest, putting on some fine concerts. So, with that in mind, give this one a watch, grab your popcorn, tattoo your face, and take the plunge.../
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