In the Mouth of Madness

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In the Mouth of Madness
Image:In the Mouth of Madness film.jpg
Directed by	John Carpenter
Produced by	Sandy King
Written by	Michael De Luca
Starring	Sam Neill Julie Carmen Jürgen Prochnow
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	February 3, 1995 (USA)
Running time	95 min.
Language	English
Budget	~ US$14,000,000
IMDb profile

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". It is preceded by The Thing and Prince of Darkness.

Plot

The story follows private investigator John Trent, played by Sam Neill, whose speciality is insurance fraud. He is called in by his client to investigate the disappearance of a phenomenally popular horror novelist named Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow). Cane has supposedly vanished as his most recent novel is nearing its deadline and his publisher (played by Charlton Heston) wants to retrieve his company's property. Trent thinks the whole thing is a publicity stunt for the new novel.

Trent, along with Cane's editor Linda Styles (played by Julie Carmen), eventually tracks the writer down to the remote New England town of Hobbs End which previously was thought to only exist in Cane's stories. There it soon becomes clear that the wall between fantasy and reality is blurring.

This becomes central to the movie's satirical themes, which focus on the relationship between writer and audience in a way that comments ironically upon oft-stated fears that violent entertainment can have a psychological effect on its audience, causing them to lose touch with reality and develop violent behavior. Fans of Cane's are shown rioting in bookstores when they are unable to find his latest novel and by the end of the movie we learn that society itself has collapsed due to random acts of violence and mass hysteria.

The film also serves as a tribute to the work of seminal horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, with many references to his stories and themes. The title is a play on one of Lovecraft's most famous tales, "At the Mountains of Madness" and insanity plays a large role in the film as it does in Lovecraft's fiction. (The film's opening scene shows Trent being hauled into an asylum with the bulk of the story told in flashback, another common characteristic in Lovecraft's stories.) Also, there is a quick reference to the Old Ones of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and some locations and people (such as Mrs. Pickman) in the script are quotes as well. There is even use of direct quotes from his work in places when John Trent reads from Sutter Cane's works. It would be a mistake to call In the Mouth of Madness a "Lovecraft film" in the strictest sense; it is a Lovecraft pastiche.

A large theme of the film is the question of free will. The main character John Trent boasts in the opening scenes of his own status as a free-lance insurance investigator: "I am my own man, no one pulls my strings but me, I'm happy." This later proves to be an ironic statement in light of his questionable existence as only a character written by Sutter Cane.

After a long dry spell in which it looked as if his career was over, Carpenter enjoyed his first spate in years of mostly positive reviews for Madness. Its box office performance was only mediocre, grossing around $10 million total.

References to prominent horror writers

• The name of the missing writer, "Sutter Cane", phonetically resembles that of Stephen King.
• While some have asserted that "Hobbs End" is a reference to King's Castle Rock, the idea of Castle Rock was not without its own predecessor. King's fictional town was influenced by H. P. Lovecraft's recurring trio of fictional, New England towns; Arkham, Dunwich and Innsmouth. King himself has admitted to being a great fan of Lovecraft, calling him the "20th century's dark and baroque prince". The bridge leading into Hobbs End fits the description of the one leading to Dunwich in Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror".
• One of Sutter Cane's books is entitled "The Hobbs End Horror". The name "Hobb's End" is a reference to writer Nigel Kneale, whom Carpenter hired to write the original screenplay for Halloween III. Kneale's third Quatermass story Quatermass and the Pit is set in a fictional London Borough called "Hobb's End." In The Mouth of Madness also bears some thematic resemblance to Kneale's Quatermass tales, which also deal with hidden inhuman forces threatening an Apocalyptic end to mankind's dominion.
• "Crouch End" is a horror story by Stephen King. It contains distinct references to the horror fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. It originally appeared in "New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos" (1980), with a slightly altered version appearing in Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993).
• The plot of an author bringing a protagonist to a town controlled through the author's writings mirrors Jonathan Carroll's "The Land of Laughs".

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