Subject: REVIEW: IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS

From: [email-masked] (Jon A. Webb)
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 21:35:47 GMT

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS
		       A film review by Jon A. Webb
			Copyright 1995 Jon A. Webb

John Carpenter's "In the Mouth of Madness"
Directed by John Carpenter
Written by Michael De Luca
With Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jurgen Porchnow, Charlton Heston

     IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS is one of those story-within-a-story
movies, like THE LAST ACTION HERO and the last Freddie film.  Given the
only occasional success of these films, one wonders why they keep
getting made; perhaps writers like the fun of writing, effectively,
about themselves.

     The problem with this kind of movie is that it is very hard to
motivate belief in the characters, because they are portrayed as being
nothing more than a fiction.  In the absence of belief there is no
reason to care about what happens to them and hence no reason to care
about the film.  The result, in spite of whatever technical skill the
director shows for horror films, is that the film falls flat.

     Another problem with the film is John Carpenter's failure to make
any of his characters outside the central one three-dimensional.  Sam
Neill is the complete character here, and he is right up until the end,
when he finally succumbs to the arbitrary manipulations of the script.

     Julie Carmen is okay through about half the film, when she starts
acting odd.  I suppose this is supposed to be the result of the book
taking her over, or something like that, but it comes across as dull
and strange.  Charlton Heston and Jurgen Porchnow have small,
inconsequential parts.

     I did like quite a bit of the film, though.  John Carpenter is a
real expert at making you jump; he excels at the technical aspects of
horror film direction.  And there's some oddness early on, when the Sam
Neill character comes on to the Julie Carmen character and she turns
him down.  It's just a little creepy and unmotivated and you get the
feeling something odd is going on, but you don't know what.  I don't
think that Carpenter intended the scene to play this way but it is
effective in advancing the theme of the film nevertheless.

     The main technical problem underlying all of this is that making a
film where you would actually care about the characters and plot would
require too much background.  You would have to be familiar with
"Sutter Cain"'s novels, know about the plots the characters in the film
think they're caught in, etc.  This is far too much background for a
feature-length film.

     I have, however, a solution.  It would be for the filmmakers to
drop the shallow and perhaps legally actionable (assuming King wasn't
involved in this movie; somebody King did the production, so maybe I'm
wrong) pretense that they're talking about someone other than Stephen
King when they refer to the best-selling author of all these horror
books and successful movies.  Instead, they should've made a film where
Stephen King really is the author and the town Sam Neill and Julie
Carmen end up in is Castle Rock (not "Hobbe's End", which is a
reference to "Crouch End," a Stephen King short story); let the dog the
children are chasing be Cujo, and the children themselves those of the
corn.  Then those of us who follow Stephen King's prolific career would
have familiar characters to care about and the fun of finding
references to his novels and other films; the rest of the audience
would at least have a few points of reference.  It could have been a
great, fun film instead of this technically good but in the end
disappointing piece.