In the Mouth of Madness
| In the Mouth of Madness | |
|---|---|
 theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | John Carpenter |
| Written by | Michael De Luca |
| Produced by | Sandy King |
| Starring | Sam Neill Julie Carmen Jürgen Prochnow David Warner |
| Cinematography | Gary B. Kibbe |
| Edited by | Edward A. Warschilka |
| Music by | John Carpenter Jim Lang |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
Release dates | February 3, 1995 |
Running time | 95 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $14,000,000 |
| Box office | $8,946,600 (USA) |
In the Mouth of Madness (also known as John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness) is a 1995 horror film (originally intended for a 1994 release) directed by John Carpenter and written by Michael de Luca, who was at the time in charge of New Line Cinema.
The film is the third installment in what Carpenter calls his "Apocalypse Trilogy", preceded by The Thing and Prince of Darkness.
Plot
The story follows private investigator John Trent (Sam Neill), whose speciality is insurance fraud. He is called in by a publisher (Charlton Heston) to investigate the alleged disappearance of the phenomenally popular horror novelist, Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow). Having vanished with his most recent novel unfinished, Cane's publisher asks Trent to retrieve the work at stake. Trent thinks the whole thing is a publicity stunt but agrees to take the case.
Trent, accompanied by Cane's editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), eventually tracks the writer to the remote New England town of Hobbs End, previously thought only to exist in Cane's stories. There it soon becomes clear that the wall between fantasy and reality has blurred.
Lovecraft
The film also pays tribute to the work of seminal horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, with many references to his stories and themes. Its title is a play on one of Lovecraft's most famous tales, At the Mountains of Madness, and insanity plays as great a role in the film as it does in Lovecraft's fiction. The film's opening scene depicts Trent's confinement to an asylum with the bulk of the story told in flashback, a common technique of Lovecraft's. Quick reference is made to the Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as to Lovecraftian settings and characters (such as Mrs. Pickman). As read on-screen, Sutter Cane's writings even incorporate direct passages from his work.[1]
Reception
The film received mixed critical reaction, with 14 positive reviews out of 29 tallied by Rotten Tomatoes for a score of 48%, indicating overall a less than favorable assessment by film critics. [2]
References
- ^ There are a couple of 'Lovercraftian' passages in the film, but only the following quote from Sutter Cane is pulled directly from his work. Compare Lovecraft's original: "I did not shriek, but all the fiendish ghouls that ride the nightwind shrieked for me as in that same second there crashed down upon my mind a single and fleeting avalanche of soul-annihilating memory." (HP Lovecraft 'The Outsider'). And Sutter Cane's: "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..." Also similar are the references to 'carrion black pits' that appear in several Lovecraft stories
- ^ In the Mouth of Madness (1995)