In the Mouth of Madness
Encyclopedia
In the Mouth of Madness (also known as John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness) is a 1995 American horror film
directed by John Carpenter
and written by Michael De Luca, who was at the time of the film's release 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
.
) visits John Trent (Sam Neill
), a patient in a psychiatric hospital, and asks Trent to recount his story:
After exposing an arson-fraud scam
, Trent, an insurance investigator, has lunch with a colleague who preps him on his next assignment, investigating a claim made by New York-based Arcane Publishing. During their conversation, Trent is attacked by a man wielding an axe who asks him, "Do you read Sutter Cane?" The man is shot dead before he can kill Trent.
Trent later meets with Arcane Publishing director Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston
) who tasks him with investigating the disappearance of popular horror
novelist Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow
). Cane vanished days before his latest book was released, and Harglow requests that Trent recover the manuscript for Cane's final novel of his popular series. He assigns Cane's editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen
), to accompany him—Cane's agent will be of no help as he was the man with the axe who tried to kill Trent earlier.
After reading several of Cane's novels for research, Trent experiences vivid nightmares of monsters and deformed people murdering each other with axes. Linda explains the stories are known to cause disorientation, memory loss, and paranoia in "less stable readers." Trent remains skeptical, convinced that the disappearance is merely an elaborate publicity stunt
. Trent notices a series of red lines on Cane's book's covers that, when aligned properly, form the outline of New Hampshire
and mark a location alluded to be Hobb's End
, the fictional setting for many of Cane's works.
As they set out to find the town, Linda experiences bizarre phenomena during the late-night drive: a boy riding a bicycle whose visage changes as she somehow passes him three times, the yellow road lines vanishing followed by the road itself disappearing, the car driving above thunderhead storm clouds, entering a rustic covered bridge in darkness and inexplicably arriving on the other side at Hobb's End in daylight. Trent and Linda search the small town and begin encountering fictional people and landmarks described in Cane's novel, including Mrs. Pickman (Frances Bay
), whose hotel they check into, and the Black Church, described in Cane's books as a fount of evil that pollutes the entire town. Trent and Linda watch as a group of townspeople arrive at the Black Church wielding shotguns and torches, demanding Cane return a missing child. Johnny, the son of one of men of the group, suddenly appears in the doorway to the Church, supplanted by Cane himself. The townspeople are then set upon by dogs and driven off. Trent believes the events to be staged, but Linda does not. She admits to Trent that Arcane Publishing's claim was indeed a fraud and a stunt to promote Cane's book. However, the unusual events and exact replica of Hobb's End were never part of the plan.
Trent prepares to go back to report to Harglow, but is prevented when Linda steals the car keys. She heads to the Black Church to confront Cane, and is exposed to his final novel, In The Mouth Of Madness, driving her insane. Trent is approached at a bar by Johnny's father who warns him to leave before the evil infects him as it has the inhabitants of Hobb's End. Trent later returns to the bar and witnesses the man commit suicide with a shotgun as he proclaims to merely be a character written to do it. Outside the bar, a mob of mutated, monstrous-looking townspeople descend upon him with shotguns and torches. He flees to the hotel and discovers that Mrs. Pickman (who had been tormenting her husband and finally killed him) and Linda have also been altered into mutated versions of their former selves. Trent attempts to drive away from Hobb's End but is repeatedly teleported back to the center of town, subsequently crashing while swerving to avoid hitting Linda. He awakens in a confessional where Cane explains that the popularity of his eldritch stories have created a sufficient amount of belief to free an ancient race of monstrous beings that will reclaim the Earth. Cane further reveals that Trent himself is merely a character and has no choice but to return the manuscript of In The Mouth Of Madness to Arcane Publishing, ushering the end of humanity.
After giving Trent the manuscript, Cane tears his face open like a piece of paper, ripping a hole that leads into darkness and creating a portal to the dimension of Cane's monstrous masters. Trent flees down a long tunnel as monsters chase him and he suddenly finds himself lying on a country road, apparently back in reality. During his return to New York, Trent destroys the manuscript, but it somehow is redelivered to him, prompting Trent to destroy it again and again. Back at Arcane Publishing, Trent relates his experience to Harglow and explains why he has no manuscript to return. Harglow informs him that Linda never existed; Trent was sent alone to find Cane. What is more, Trent himself hand delivered the manuscript to Harglow months ago. In The Mouth Of Madness has been on sale for weeks with a movie adaptation set to release soon. Trent suffers a psychotic break
and is arrested after he murders a reader of the newly released novel with an axe, asking him "Do you like the book?"
Dr. Wrenn, after listening to Trent recount his story, concludes that Trent's story answers nothing and leaves. That night, amidst a thunderstorm, Trent sees disturbing shadows flicker on the wall and hears human and inhuman screams echo throughout the hospital.
Trent wakes the following day to find his cell door torn from its hinges and the residents of the hospital slaughtered. He departs as an abandoned ambulance's radio announces that the world has been overrun with mutant creatures and outbreaks of suicide and mass murder. Trent goes to see the In the Mouth of Madness metafilm
only to discover that he is the 'star' of the film. As he watches his previous actions play out on screen, Trent bursts into hysterical laughter, leaving the exact nature of reality uncertain.
. Presently the church is now surrounded by newly built homes. It is called cathedral town. The location of the Cathedral is closest to the intersection of Woodbine Ave. & Vine Cliff Blvd. At the time of filming the church had yet to be fully completed.
When first entering the town of Hobbs End, the main characters walk along an empty street. It was referenced as Main Street U.S.A. This street is in fact located in Unionville, Ontario, Canada, and is actually named Main Street. The scene where the children are seen running out onto the street is in fact a parking lot that connects directly to an elementary public school called Parkview.
for a score of 48%.
to the work of seminal horror writer H. P. Lovecraft
, with many references to his stories and themes. Its title is a play on two of Lovecraft's tales, The Shadow Over Innsmouth
and At the Mountains of Madness
, and insanity
plays as great a role in the film as it does in Lovecraft's fiction. The 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. All of Sutter Cane's novels have similar titles to H.P. Lovecraft's books (e.g., The Hobb's End Horror in reference to The Dunwich Horror
).
The film can also be seen as a reference to Stephen King
, who, like Lovecraft, also writes horror fiction set in New England hamlets. King is even mentioned towards the beginning of the movie.
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
directed by John Carpenter
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
and written by Michael De Luca, who was at the time of the film's release in charge of New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
. The film is the third installment in what Carpenter calls his Apocalypse Trilogy, preceded by The Thing and Prince of Darkness
Prince of Darkness (film)
Prince of Darkness is a 1987 horror film directed, written, and scored by John Carpenter. The film is the second installment in what Carpenter calls his "Apocalypse Trilogy", which began with The Thing and concludes with In the Mouth of Madness .-Plot:The movie opens with a dying priest clutching...
.
Plot
Dr. Wrenn (David WarnerDavid Warner (actor)
David Warner is an English actor who is known for playing both romantic leads and sinister or villainous characters, both in film and animation...
) visits John Trent (Sam Neill
Sam Neill
Nigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill, DCNZM, OBE is a New Zealand actor. He is well known for his starring role as paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III....
), a patient in a psychiatric hospital, and asks Trent to recount his story:
After exposing an arson-fraud scam
Insurance fraud
Insurance fraud is any act committed with the intent to fraudulently obtain payment from an insurer.Insurance fraud has existed ever since the beginning of insurance as a commercial enterprise. Fraudulent claims account for a significant portion of all claims received by insurers, and cost billions...
, Trent, an insurance investigator, has lunch with a colleague who preps him on his next assignment, investigating a claim made by New York-based Arcane Publishing. During their conversation, Trent is attacked by a man wielding an axe who asks him, "Do you read Sutter Cane?" The man is shot dead before he can kill Trent.
Trent later meets with Arcane Publishing director Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
) who tasks him with investigating the disappearance of popular horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
novelist Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow
Jürgen Prochnow
Jürgen Prochnow is a German actor. His most well-known roles internationally have been as the sympathetic submarine captain in Das Boot , Duke Leto Atreides I in Dune , the minor, but important role of Neo-Stalinist dictator General Ivan Radek in Air Force One and the villain Maxwell Dent in...
). Cane vanished days before his latest book was released, and Harglow requests that Trent recover the manuscript for Cane's final novel of his popular series. He assigns Cane's editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen
Julie Carmen
Julie Carmen is an American actress, dancer and a licensed psychotherapist.She came to prominence onscreen in the 1980s, winning the Venice Film Festival Best Supporting Actress Award for her role in John Cassavetes' film, Gloria. Her acting training was with Sanford Meisner at Neighborhood...
), to accompany him—Cane's agent will be of no help as he was the man with the axe who tried to kill Trent earlier.
After reading several of Cane's novels for research, Trent experiences vivid nightmares of monsters and deformed people murdering each other with axes. Linda explains the stories are known to cause disorientation, memory loss, and paranoia in "less stable readers." Trent remains skeptical, convinced that the disappearance is merely an elaborate publicity stunt
Publicity stunt
A publicity stunt is a planned event designed to attract the public's attention to the event's organizers or their cause. Publicity stunts can be professionally organized or set up by amateurs...
. Trent notices a series of red lines on Cane's book's covers that, when aligned properly, form the outline of New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
and mark a location alluded to be Hobb's End
Hobbs End
Hobbs End, sometimes Hobbs Lane, is the name of a fictional location used in several works of speculative fiction. Its name is possibly intended to convey a sense of unease, evil, or "wrongness", since "Hob" is an old nickname for the devil....
, the fictional setting for many of Cane's works.
As they set out to find the town, Linda experiences bizarre phenomena during the late-night drive: a boy riding a bicycle whose visage changes as she somehow passes him three times, the yellow road lines vanishing followed by the road itself disappearing, the car driving above thunderhead storm clouds, entering a rustic covered bridge in darkness and inexplicably arriving on the other side at Hobb's End in daylight. Trent and Linda search the small town and begin encountering fictional people and landmarks described in Cane's novel, including Mrs. Pickman (Frances Bay
Frances Bay
Frances Bay was a U.S.-based Canadian character actress, best known for playing quirky, elderly women on film and television...
), whose hotel they check into, and the Black Church, described in Cane's books as a fount of evil that pollutes the entire town. Trent and Linda watch as a group of townspeople arrive at the Black Church wielding shotguns and torches, demanding Cane return a missing child. Johnny, the son of one of men of the group, suddenly appears in the doorway to the Church, supplanted by Cane himself. The townspeople are then set upon by dogs and driven off. Trent believes the events to be staged, but Linda does not. She admits to Trent that Arcane Publishing's claim was indeed a fraud and a stunt to promote Cane's book. However, the unusual events and exact replica of Hobb's End were never part of the plan.
Trent prepares to go back to report to Harglow, but is prevented when Linda steals the car keys. She heads to the Black Church to confront Cane, and is exposed to his final novel, In The Mouth Of Madness, driving her insane. Trent is approached at a bar by Johnny's father who warns him to leave before the evil infects him as it has the inhabitants of Hobb's End. Trent later returns to the bar and witnesses the man commit suicide with a shotgun as he proclaims to merely be a character written to do it. Outside the bar, a mob of mutated, monstrous-looking townspeople descend upon him with shotguns and torches. He flees to the hotel and discovers that Mrs. Pickman (who had been tormenting her husband and finally killed him) and Linda have also been altered into mutated versions of their former selves. Trent attempts to drive away from Hobb's End but is repeatedly teleported back to the center of town, subsequently crashing while swerving to avoid hitting Linda. He awakens in a confessional where Cane explains that the popularity of his eldritch stories have created a sufficient amount of belief to free an ancient race of monstrous beings that will reclaim the Earth. Cane further reveals that Trent himself is merely a character and has no choice but to return the manuscript of In The Mouth Of Madness to Arcane Publishing, ushering the end of humanity.
After giving Trent the manuscript, Cane tears his face open like a piece of paper, ripping a hole that leads into darkness and creating a portal to the dimension of Cane's monstrous masters. Trent flees down a long tunnel as monsters chase him and he suddenly finds himself lying on a country road, apparently back in reality. During his return to New York, Trent destroys the manuscript, but it somehow is redelivered to him, prompting Trent to destroy it again and again. Back at Arcane Publishing, Trent relates his experience to Harglow and explains why he has no manuscript to return. Harglow informs him that Linda never existed; Trent was sent alone to find Cane. What is more, Trent himself hand delivered the manuscript to Harglow months ago. In The Mouth Of Madness has been on sale for weeks with a movie adaptation set to release soon. Trent suffers a psychotic break
Psychotic break
A psychotic break is a term used to describe an occasion of a person experiencing an episode of acute primary psychosis, either for the first time or after a significant period of relative asymptomaticity. Several types of psychoactive drugs have been shown to correlate with psychotic breaks...
and is arrested after he murders a reader of the newly released novel with an axe, asking him "Do you like the book?"
Dr. Wrenn, after listening to Trent recount his story, concludes that Trent's story answers nothing and leaves. That night, amidst a thunderstorm, Trent sees disturbing shadows flicker on the wall and hears human and inhuman screams echo throughout the hospital.
Trent wakes the following day to find his cell door torn from its hinges and the residents of the hospital slaughtered. He departs as an abandoned ambulance's radio announces that the world has been overrun with mutant creatures and outbreaks of suicide and mass murder. Trent goes to see the In the Mouth of Madness metafilm
Metafilm
Similar to metafiction in technique, metafilm is a style of film-making which presents the film as a story about film production.Examples of films of this type include:* 8½ * Adaptation....
only to discover that he is the 'star' of the film. As he watches his previous actions play out on screen, Trent bursts into hysterical laughter, leaving the exact nature of reality uncertain.
Cast
- Sam NeillSam NeillNigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill, DCNZM, OBE is a New Zealand actor. He is well known for his starring role as paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III....
... John Trent - Julie CarmenJulie CarmenJulie Carmen is an American actress, dancer and a licensed psychotherapist.She came to prominence onscreen in the 1980s, winning the Venice Film Festival Best Supporting Actress Award for her role in John Cassavetes' film, Gloria. Her acting training was with Sanford Meisner at Neighborhood...
... Linda Styles - Jürgen ProchnowJürgen ProchnowJürgen Prochnow is a German actor. His most well-known roles internationally have been as the sympathetic submarine captain in Das Boot , Duke Leto Atreides I in Dune , the minor, but important role of Neo-Stalinist dictator General Ivan Radek in Air Force One and the villain Maxwell Dent in...
... Sutter Cane - David WarnerDavid Warner (actor)David Warner is an English actor who is known for playing both romantic leads and sinister or villainous characters, both in film and animation...
... Dr. Wrenn - John GloverJohn Glover (actor)John Soursby Glover Jr. is an American actor, perhaps best known for a range of villainous roles in films and television, including Lionel Luthor on the Superman-inspired television series Smallville.-Personal life:...
... Saperstein - Bernie CaseyBernie CaseyBernard Terry "Bernie" Casey is a professional actor who initially had a career as an interscholastic, intercollegiate and professional football player. Casey was also a record-breaking track and field athlete for Bowling Green State University...
... Robinson - Peter JasonPeter JasonPeter Jason is an American actor who performs in many plays, movies, and TV commercials, including Desperate Housewives and Deadwood. In his free time he makes his own furniture out of wood. He has appeared in 12 Walter Hill films, 7 John Carpenter films, has acted in over 100 commercials and...
... Mr. Paul - Charlton HestonCharlton HestonCharlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
... Jackson Harglow - Frances BayFrances BayFrances Bay was a U.S.-based Canadian character actress, best known for playing quirky, elderly women on film and television...
... Mrs. Pickman - Kieran SellsKieran SellsKieran Sells is a production assistant on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live. Sells, who was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, began his show business career by appearing as a child extra in many movies, including John Carpenter's 1995 cult classic, In the Mouth of Madness. He attended Temple University in...
...Kid
Production
The exterior of the Black Church seen in Hobb’s End is actually the Cathedral of the Transfiguration. It is a Slovak Byzantine Rite Roman Catholic former cathedral located in Markham, OntarioMarkham, Ontario
Markham is a town in the Regional Municipality of York, located within the Greater Toronto Area of Southern Ontario, Canada. The population was 261,573 at the 2006 Canadian census...
. Presently the church is now surrounded by newly built homes. It is called cathedral town. The location of the Cathedral is closest to the intersection of Woodbine Ave. & Vine Cliff Blvd. At the time of filming the church had yet to be fully completed.
When first entering the town of Hobbs End, the main characters walk along an empty street. It was referenced as Main Street U.S.A. This street is in fact located in Unionville, Ontario, Canada, and is actually named Main Street. The scene where the children are seen running out onto the street is in fact a parking lot that connects directly to an elementary public school called Parkview.
Box office
The film was released on February 3, 1995. It grossed $3,441,807 the first weekend and garnered $8,946,600 total in revenue during its run. it was a financial disappointment, however it did earn enough for the film's budget.Reception
The film received mixed critical reaction, with 14 positive reviews out of 29 tallied by Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
for a score of 48%.
Influences
The film pays tributeTribute
A tribute is wealth, often in kind, that one party gives to another as a sign of respect or, as was often the case in historical contexts, of submission or allegiance. Various ancient states, which could be called suzerains, exacted tribute from areas they had conquered or threatened to conquer...
to the work of seminal horror writer H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
, with many references to his stories and themes. Its title is a play on two of Lovecraft's tales, The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a novella by H. P. Lovecraft. Written in November-December 1931, the story was first published in April 1936; this was the only fiction of Lovecraft's published during his lifetime that did not appear in a periodical....
and At the Mountains of Madness
At the Mountains of Madness
At the Mountains of Madness is a novella by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in February/March 1931 and rejected that year by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright on the grounds of its length. It was originally serialized in the February, March and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories...
, and insanity
Insanity
Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including becoming a danger to themselves and others, though not all such acts are considered insanity...
plays as great a role in the film as it does in Lovecraft's fiction. The opening scene depicts Trent's confinement to an asylum
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
with the bulk of the story told in flashback, a common technique of Lovecraft's. Quick reference is made to the Old Ones
Elder Thing
The Elder Things are fictional extraterrestrials in the Cthulhu Mythos. The beings first appeared, although not named in H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Dreams in the Witch-House"...
of the Cthulhu Mythos
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...
, as well as to Lovecraftian settings and characters (such as Mrs. Pickman
Pickman's Model
"Pickman's Model" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, written in September 1926 and first published in the October 1927 issue of Weird Tales...
). As read on-screen, Sutter Cane's writings even incorporate direct passages from his work. All of Sutter Cane's novels have similar titles to H.P. Lovecraft's books (e.g., The Hobb's End Horror in reference to The Dunwich Horror
The Dunwich Horror
"The Dunwich Horror" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written in 1928, it was first published in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales . It takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massachusetts...
).
The film can also be seen as a reference to Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
, who, like Lovecraft, also writes horror fiction set in New England hamlets. King is even mentioned towards the beginning of the movie.