In the Mouth of Madness (1994) – Once Again, Ending the World in Paperback

Greetings and a Happy Halloween to you all!

Once again, it's time to close up shop on another horror franchise of October. And in this case, we're not so much closing the shop as we're burning the whole thing to the ground.

By 1994, John Carpenter had been to the Apocalypse Trilogy twice. The Thing left the fate of the world ambiguously saved – the creature may be frozen, it may not. Prince of Darkness edged closer to the brink, offering a tease of an averted crisis before suggesting that the end was merely altered rather than prevented. Proving third time pays for all, Carpenter finally sealed humanity's doom with the Lovecraftian In the Mouth of Madness.

Like I said last time, this is a movie that has a pretty good standing among horror fans now. At the risk of making this a bit personal, I'm actually really happy for that. When I was first introduced to this movie by a friend, it was barely a blip on a lot of the horror community radars. Its most prominent placing was in lists of H.P. Lovecraft/Lovecraft inspired movies, and even then, it was often filling in the rest of the list behind heavies like Re-Animator and From Beyond.

I'm still not even sure exactly when or how its image rehabilitation began, but somewhere over the past ten years, the horror community has begun to take more of a shine to this dark piece of meta-horror, and, like the condemnation and later redemption of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, I'm pleased to see how the court of public opinion has reversed its ruling.

Okay, personal thoughts about this movie's comeback story aside, let's get into what it's bringing to the table.

...somehow, trying to find a single amusing caption for this
almost feels like dressing it up more than the image needs.

This is the first time in a while I've watched this movie as a part of the larger thematic cycle it takes part in instead of just on its own merits. I bring this up in part because, after discussing the tight, tense structure of The Thing and the looser, conceptually headier feel of Prince of Darkness, In the Mouth of Madness feels like it lands in something of a sweet spot between the two. The movie's ideas about belief and the fluid nature of reality are definitely from the side of Carpenter that gave us good and evil as quantum energy in PoD, but it also weds it to the tighter, more structured narrative of his early work with The Thing. While it never quite surpasses either of its predecessors in those particular fields, its ability to meld the two sensibilities serves it well in its own regard.

Those themes in particular are the part of the movie that sticks with me more over the years. When I first saw this in what was either the late 90s or early aughts, the movie's somewhat outlandish view of reality – the idea that of it as a sort of tenuous force held together by belief, that could be effectively shattered by the right sort of mass delusion was something I had never expected to see in a horror film. It was a big part of why it made such an impression on me, even before getting to the movie's bleak finale that takes the movie...well, it says right on the box. Looking at it now in the cold light of the past few years, there's something that feels especially chilling about the idea the movie is proposing – that enough people choosing to believe in ostensible fictions could potentially upend every notion of a sane, reasonable world as people know it.

I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole too far now, but I will say up front, I have toyed off and on with going into a full write-up of how sadly prescient this movie would prove to be the altogether toxic relationship with conspiracy culture that has become a prominent force over the past few years. I told myself up front I wasn't going to make that the central thrust of this piece, but I still had to give it a nod. As a full deep dive, I'm not taking this one off the table, either.

Anyway, back to the movie.

Fun fact for those watching at home - on the right is Carpenter 

regular Peter Jason, AKA Dr. Leahy from previously
covered Prince of Darkness. This would make him one of the only 

cast members to be in more than one  part of the Trilogy.

Looked at on paper, the ideas Carpenter is playing with here are a daunting list. Besides the idea of malleable reality, he also ties in elements of meta-fiction, wedding that with Lovecraft's ideas as a way to explore the idea of being utterly powerless and at the mercy of ancient, malevolent forces beyond human reckoning. As the ideas of Lovecraft go, it's one of the trickier to properly pull off in a a live action film– which makes it interesting that of the aspects he plays with from the mythos, this is the one Carpenter manages to nail the most effectively.

As far as the execution of the rest of the movie goes, it has held up well for itself.

As part of his 90s return to the horror genre, Sam Neill (welcome back for another October) is well suited to playing the movie's lead, a cynic cursed with a front row seat to watching the rest of the world go mad, casually flip about the worst in people, but ultimately unprepared to actually face the true worst when it is unleashed. As his counterpoint, the enigmatic author Sutter Cane, veteran character actor Jurgen Prochnow is unsettling in how calm he is in the face of humanity's utter desolation – unlike Neill, he has accepted his role as the herald of the end, and the decision to play it as a sort of detached amusement causes the character to resonate more than if he'd been played as an over the top madman. Rounding the out leads as the thematic bridge between the two, Julie Carmen's arc is one I've come to enjoy more on repeat viewing – at first, presented purely as a supporter of Cane and his work, she seems completely on board when it's all fiction. It's only as the movie unfolds and the prospect of what is being written becomes more real that she begins to genuinely fear what might be happening, and by the time she is fully aware of her role in it, it's too late to escape.

The movie is inspired by Lovecraft, and Cane's popularity is clearly 

modeled on Stephen King. Having said that, I'm still wondering 

if Jurgen Prochnow's appearance in this movie is deliberate 

Neil Gaiman cosplay or just a very happy accident.

Visually, the movie's effects work – including early work by Greg Nicotero – has largely held up well. I have to admit, I'm a bit of two minds about the otherworldly beings that are unleashed in the film's final act. Taken on their own, they're fairly well made monsters, and some designs do stand out nicely. The problem is, unfortunately, one that is a common refrain with Lovecraft-based cinema: for beings that are supposed to be completely beyond the realm of human comprehension as an ancient evil, they fall short. Nice to look at, but underwhelming compared to the horror they represent.

On the reverse of that, however, the make-up effects the movie applies in its later acts as humans are slowly taken over and corrupted by cosmic evil holds up very well. In this case, much of it is a case of 'less is more' working well, distorting the otherwise normal human form just enough to be disturbing but still recognizable. Like with The Thing, there were parts of this I went into intentionally trying to be more critical – with focus on one particular effect involving a contorted human form. To my pleasant relief, even on Blu-Ray, the effect still looks fairly well done.

"Nah, don't worry. It's cool. Just a little banged up.
I'll go home and sleep it off. It's fine."

In closing this trilogy, there's a part of me that's genuinely impressed Carpenter got to make this, particularly when he did. Just on its own nowadays it doesn't seem that shocking, but looked at at the time - when his reputation with the studio heads had seen better days - to take on an idea as ambitious as this one, playing with concepts of perception, belief, and existential horror with a generous dash of inspiration from an author whose work hadn't quite become fully mainstream at the time, and to play it out in a film that ends with the entire world succumbing to darkness as what may be humanity's last survivor weeps in despair is one Hell of a trick to pull off in a major studio movie.

It also doesn't make it too surprising to realize that the movie was met with generally middling reviews at the time, with people having issues in particular with the story. That the story is now considered one of the big reasons it has the following it does really helps cement this as a spiritual sibling with The Thing, both as examples where time would ultimately acquit Carpenter.

With that strangely upbeat note set to the extinction of humanity, it is time once again to close up operations for this October. There will be more work ahead soon, life has been hectic, but I'm finally starting to get things sorted out again, and doing these theme dives reminds me why I've missed this.

Until then, see you guys around and once again, have a Happy Halloween!

Prince of Darkness (1987) - Evil Not Void If Seal Is Broken

Hello and welcome back. You may have noticed the previously mandatory blood tests are no longer in effect. That's because The Week of Things ™ has come to an end, and in this final week, we resume our journey through the Apocalypse Trilogy proper.

The good news, now that we're done in the world of Outpost 31 (and some offshoots), things are going to start getting a bit warmer. The bad news, isolation is still on the menu, this time in the form of the abandoned church that houses Carpenter's Prince of Darkness.

Of the three movies in the trilogy, this could arguably be considered something of the black sheep nowadays. Not as a statement of its quality as much as the fact that, compared to The Thing's modern classic status and the recent resurgence over the past decade for In the Mouth of Madness, Prince of Darkness is more at the level of a cult favorite – still generally well regarded by Carpenter fans, but not quite as well known as the other two in general.

Which isn't entirely hard to understand – of the three, all of which are pretty bold on the concept front, this is the movie that is arguably the most ambitious with what it's trying to do, presenting a story taking place in a curious nexus of science fiction and the occult.

Case in point - this movie's version of Satan.

Those crossroads make an interesting playground for Carpenter to work in – starting from the already promising horror hook of a secretive religious order known as the Brotherhood of Sleep tasked with keeping Satan imprisoned under lock and key. From that jumping off point, the movie expands to include the idea of evil as a great cosmic force, messages that travel across time as dreams, and a small team of university students trapped in a building poised to become ground zero for the ultimate evil being unleashed upon the world.

Speaking of that ground zero, one aspect of this movie I find myself appreciating this time around that I never fully considered before – the earlier mentioned isolation. Despite the church much of this movie takes place in being in the middle of an urban area, Carpenter still finds a way to create a situation of isolation from the world at large – without nature at play, the ill-fated team find themselves much more literally trapped, as the building falls under siege by an army of derelicts acting under the influence of the evil within. After the first act, those who venture out are few, and those who make it back in alive, even fewer. Paired with the growing influence of Satan inside, the growing sense of claustrophobia within the movie becomes an effective strength.

I don't care what the internet says - Todd Phillips's Pee-Wee's Big Adventure was a mistake.

As those trapped within are concerned, the movie's cast are an interesting spread. They don't hit the same highs as the earlier The Thing, but there is still some good interplay between them. As a nice bonus, there are also several John Carpenter regulars among the players. Of these Donald Pleasance makes a welcome familiar face as an unnamed priest in a theological tailspin after discovering the secrets of the Brotherhood have completely upended everything he's believed of good and evil. Besides Pleasance, other returning faces include Victor Wong and Dennis Dun, both fresh off Big Trouble in Little China and getting a chance to each try a different sort of role, the former trading mysticism for science, the latter making for a fairly entertaining comic relief character.

Of the new faces to this cast, two in particular stand out in supporting roles. The first of these bring rock star Alice Cooper in a nonspeaking role among the army of derelicts. Doubtless, the fact it's Cooper is likely part of why he is one of two derelicts to be given significant screentime, but even with that acknowledged, he brings a malevolent presence that helps the part stand out. The other being Jessie Lawrence Ferguson, whose transformation from one of the more levelheaded, good-natured members of the team to a leering, giggling agent of evil is an especially effective dash of creepiness in the movie's final acts.

 

Seriously - the other possessed don't get as much chance to stand
out, but Ferguson not only stands out, he is genuinely unsettling
when he turns.

Said creepiness, admittedly, comes in stops and starts compared to the earlier efforts of The Thing. There's a sense of dread, to be certain, but it doesn't have the same level of paranoia to benefit from, instead playing to the altogether alien nature of the evil force at the center of this movie. To its credit, despite that overall uneven feel, the movie has some strong individual sequences and images that help to stand out – the recurring nightmare warning is a main example, teasing hints of the danger to come in the form of a scratchy video recording that helps make the sequence, and its eventual evolution, even more memorable.

Lined up alongside its predecessor and successor, I have to admit, I don't have quite the same affection for this movie that I have for the other two parts of the series. I want to clarify – this doesn't mean that I think this is a bad movie, because I don't. Taken on its own, I still find this an overall enjoyable offering from Carpenter's overall filmography, and even if it doesn't quite hit the same highs as the other two, it still has a number of strong visuals and sequences on its own that are worth the the experience. What it does with traditional Satan horror is something that feels like a sci-fi take on something from Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy, and that's something I never would have thought I'd want to see until I saw this try it.

And honestly, this sequence alone helps secure it a spot in my good graces where Carpenter is concerned.

With this, we're now one entry away.

Carpenter has brought humanity to the brink twice now, each time taking it a little closer, and now it all comes down on Halloween night. Join me for concluding this run, and the trilogy, with Carpenter's tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, In the Mouth of Madness.

Till then.

The Thing (1982) - Reason #1 I Can't Completely Spit on All Remakes

Yeah, this year's theme doesn't really have a title. I considered 'The Octoberlypse' but it just...I don't know.

Anyway, as promised, it's time to dive right in on the opening round of Carpenter's trilogy – his 1982 remake/re-envisioning of The Thing From Another World.

I have to say up front – this is probably the hardest entry to write for this particular series, simply because so much has already been said for the movie that it's hard to find something new to add.

And with that disclaimer out of the way, Hell with it, I'll just come out and say it – it's not an especially hot take, but I count myself among the ranks of those who consider The Thing to be John Carpenter's best movie, an opinion that rewatching it for this run further cements.

I get why the film wasn't well received when it first came out (and it's easy to take for granted from 2019, but seriously – E.T. cast one Hell of a large shadow in 1982) so I won't drag the audiences and critics of the past for their take at the time, much as I disagree with it. It's saying something that, on this watch, I actively tried to find points in this film to have an issue with, and not only came away with nothing, but found some new good elements I had never caught before.

As much as the hug is appreciated here,
it was just too little too late for reaching the family crowds.

And for the number of times I've seen this movie, that is saying something.

So in singing this movie's praises, I'll have to start with one of the most obvious places, particularly as it's something we'll come back to in the next entries – the visual effects.

As of this writing, this movie is now a little shy of three years of turning 40. That's a window of time that can be downright ruthless in the field of visual effects. With that said, Rob Bottin's creature work in this movie has stood the test of time beautifully. In terms of the execution, the movie's effects hold up well under scrutiny, with some designs still looking good enough to be standalone art. As of this writing, I've seen the movie in a theater on several occasions, and rather than having flaws enhanced on the large screen, Bottin's monsters yield up a new level of detail that is both more impressive and more disturbing.

It speaks to Bottin's skill that this isn't
even an active monster in the movie, but it's still an enduring visual.

Beyond the technical skill, the idea driving the creation is a larger part of why the movie's endured. First for the obvious and unsettling idea that it can, in theory, be anyone at any time with almost no means of detection, and then for the additional level of horror that comes when its cover is blown and it no longer needs to hide. Many is the monster in horror that has lost its sting as a result of overexposure leading to diminished returns (as much as I love the first two movies in the series, Alien comes to mind here.) By comparison, Carpenter and Bottin give us a creature whose form changes vastly in each iteration. You're never given a chance within the film to get used to its appearance because it never takes the same shape twice and even when revealed is still an unpredictable threat.

Pitted against this mercurial alien, the cast assembled for the ill-fated team at Outpost 31 have just as much as the effects crew on their plate in terms of carrying the movie – a task they all live up to admirably under the circumstances. For a story steeped in the idea of paranoia, the ability of the cast to sell first their general level of teamwork before as well as their growing distrust in one another is vital to making the movie work. If anyone had come up short, the movie would suffer for it. Instead, everyone plays well off of each other – the general good-natured moments as well as the antagonism that flows anywhere from sarcastic barbs to open hostility. The ensemble nature makes it hard to really say there's any one person who stands out over the others, as each is ultimately strengthened by how they play off of the others, both in terms of being likable as well as making the viewers question who might be all they appear to be at any given time.

Okay, I had actually written quite a few drafts praising the work of Russel, David, and Brimley.
That said, I do want to give a quick shout out to David Clennon as the base's comic relief - it's a character where a little could go a long way, and rather than lay it on thick, it's played with a light touch that still delivers some laughs as well as one damn good jolt.

That element of uncertainty is even reflected in how the film is written and shot, where both Bill Lancaster and John Carpenter in their respective roles use it to its fullest. One aspect I find myself becoming more impressed with here is with regards to what questions the movie chooses to answer or not. The nature of the titular creature is an area where balance is necessary in what's revealed – too much information and the movie becomes mired in exposition that saps the tension, not enough and it feels like it's taking advantage of the creature's fluid nature to cut corners for its own convenience. As it's laid out, the movie gives a fairly solid set of 'rules' for its monster that it also plays by consistently. The trade being that the movie then uses a lack of information to raise questions of who may have been infected and when – such as an in early scene when the Thing, in the form of a dog, walks in on a member of the team who we only see as a vague silhouette – we can speculate to their identity based on who is revealed later, but we never find out who exactly that was. The end result is a film that leaves many mysteries to ponder, but also still has its core story come together so that it never feels like any of those questions are put in there to cheat the audience.

I said it at the start and I'll repeat it here – arguably, The Thing may be John Carpenter's best movie. This isn't to throw any of his other work under the bus, because overall much of his filmography is pretty strong, but even with that overall high bar to clear, it stands out. The tense story and direction, the cast that all mesh well, the claustrophobic set design, and the eerie score by the legendary Ennio Morricone (in a rare occurrence of someone else scoring a Carpenter movie) all work together beautifully, ironically enough in the service of a story where, to quote MacReady himself “nobody trusts anybody.”

"...and we're all very tired." --
AKA, the scene that came to describe the last few years for a LOT of people.

This marks the end for this movie, but not for the creature it spawned. Before we move on to the second installment of the trilogy in Prince of Darkness, we're going to be taking a dive into not one, but two separate attempts to build an expand the world of Outpost 31. Before we get to the 2011 prequel movie, we're digging back into a lesser known piece of lore from the age of comic book movie tie ins.

Keep an eye out for that real soon.

Till next time.

Oh, Gee, Look At the Time

Well would you look at that – it's October again. It's been a wild year on this end. A lot going on for both good and ill. I'm slowly trying to get back on the horse with this in general, but it may also be a bit because there's still some other busy work in the months ahead.

But that's for the future. For now, it's October, which means Halloween, and therefore the one time I have most consistently been focused on new material for this blog.

"...First Goddamn week of Halloween season."

In recent years, I haven't had the time I used to to dedicate to the full 31-movie slate I did for years there. In turn, over the past couple of years, the focus has been more tight on a particular franchise or series.

This year is no exception. To celebrate the rule of threes with this particular approach, three trilogies were chosen to dive into. Votes were cast, and the winner is John Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy.

Yes, yes, TECHNICALLY this one isn't a franchise as much as a conceptual trilogy. With the shared theme of world-ending threats to link the three movies, we'll be going from the remote Outpost 31 of 1982's The Thing to the besieged monastery of 1987's Prince of Darkness, and finally the sinister town of Hobb's End in 1994's In the Mouth of Madness, each movie taking humanity that little bit closer to the brink.

For those who want to be hung up on the fact this is conceptual rather than having a shared continuity, there will be something for you too here. Last year's delve into the Omen novels have given me a taste for the idea of expanding the perimeters on 'franchise'. In this case, that will mean following up on The Thing with two of the follow-ups that had been mean for it. Yes, one of these will be the 2011 prequel – hey, it's part of the same continuity – but the other...that's one a little less well known these days.

Come on...what's the worst that can happen?

So there's that to look forward to.

The official coverage will begin later this week with the writeup for The Thing and its bonus content  to follow the week after.

Till then.

THE END IS NIGH.