hell's bestselling novel - In The Mouth of Madness (1994)

Do you read Sutter Cane?

I know I usually put the trailer at the bottom of the issue but I would like to start this week’s The Horror The Horror by making a point (and a warning: flashing images)

This?

This is how you do a fucking trailer.

Spoilers follow, as per usual.

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Directed by: John Carpenter

Starring: Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jürgen Prochnow, Charlton Heston, David Warner, et al.

Running time: 95 minutes

Original release date: 10 December 1994 (Italy), 3 February 1995 (United States)

the plot, in brief

During lunch with a colleague, insurance investigator John Trent (Neill) narrowly survives being attacked by a man stumbling out of a book store, wild-eyed and swinging an axe. Later, Trent is hired by the publishers of bestselling author Sutter Cane (Prochnow), whose latest novel seems to be the cause of a number of bizarre incidents of violence, the axe man among them. Cane has gone missing, and Trent is tasked with tracking him down and delivering the manuscript for his next novel, In the Mouth of Madness to his publishers.

Trent, sceptic, figures out that fragments of Cane’s book form a map to the setting of his most recent book, Hobb’s End. With Cane’s editor, Linda Styles (Carmen) in tow, Trent sets out to find the location, and in the process walks into a world of apocalyptic nightmares…

chapter one: “so, I bet you’re wondering how I got here. well…”

I am nothing if not a simp for horror about cursed media. It is, after all, how I discovered John Carpenter, even before I knew who he was and how he fit into horror’s history - his episode of Masters of Horror season one, the excellent Cigarette Burns, left a lasting impression on me as a teen.

So, it felt kind of fated that I would somewhere down the line discover In the Mouth of Madness, and find it extremely right up my street as a movie about meta-storytelling within the story.

In the Mouth of Madness begins with a patient being dragged kicking and screaming (but politely so, it’s Sam Neill playing him, after all) into a psychiatric hospital/architectural liminal space. His name is John Trent, and when he is later visited by clinician Dr. Wrenn (David Warner), he has used his one request of a single black crayon to draw symbols up and down the entire room and also his face. Wrenn sits down with Trent, intending to gently get to the bottom of what brought him there. Trent alludes to how “things are turning to shit out there, aren’t they” before he starts his recollection of the events that got him there.

Some time before this, we see Trent at work in his day job. He’s an insurance investigator in New York City, and we have the pleasure of watching Sam Neill calmly and methodically ripping his client’s insurance scam apart (it’s INVIGORATING my god). Later, Trent and his colleague are having lunch at a restaurant, sat next to the window. This is important, because as Trent and his colleague are discussing work, they fail to notice that shit is very much hitting the fan at the bookstore across the road, with people screaming and running from a man with an axe. This man, wide-eyed and grey-faced, is Michael Myers-walking across the road, and just as Trent’s colleague mentioned a publishing company he is working with (Arcane, put a pin in that, this will shortly be very relevant indeed), the axe man smashes through the window.

Staring down Trent, the man’s eyes look both wild and vacant at the same time. Like he’s stared into the abyss and it shook his hand. The man asks Trent a question: “do you read Sutter Cane?”

Trent safely escapes (the axe man isn’t so lucky), and later, he is hired by Arcane to investigate a claim regarding the appearance of their star author (bigger than Stephen King apparently)… Sutter Cane. An acclaimed horror author whose work has inspired a rabid following, the publishers are concerned as he appears to have gone missing. Trent is tasked with finding out where he is, as he is due to deliver his next book, In the Mouth of Madness.

Trent, cynically, starts investigating, believing this is a publicity stunt. He figures out that pieces of Cane’s book covers form a map to Hobb’s End, the fictional setting of a number of Cane’s books. Arcane’s director, Jackson Harglow (CHARLTON HESTON????) assigns Cane’s editor Linda Styles to assist Trent, and the two set off by car, in search of Hobb’s End.

Already, things start getting surreal for Trent, as he starts acquainting himself with Sutter Cane’s work. Images bleed into his dreams, dreams within dreams are happening, and there are whispers on the streets of more incidents like the one Trent was witness to. Little does he know it’s just the start.

chapter two: the drive to Hobb’s End

It’s night. Linda takes over driving while Trent sleeps. This proves to be pivotal, as Linda starts experiencing surreal phenomena, like a cyclist who appears as both a young man and an old man, and the road disappearing. She starts seeing visions as the car drives onto what looks like a covered wooden bridge, and is stunned when the car drives out on the other end in broad daylight.

In Hobb’s End.

Trent is none the wiser to the strange goings on Linda experienced, and the two explore the seemingly deserted town. Linda is unnerved to see landmarks from Cane’s books, and the two end up checking into a hotel run by one of Cane’s characters, Mrs. Pickman, a kindly (in a way that has a twinge of being on edge - we later find out that her husband is literally chained to her foot because OF COURSE) elderly lady. In their room, Trent voices his suspicion that the experience they’re having is staged, but while Linda admits that Cane’s disappearance is a hoax, she tells him the current events are not.

There are some magnificently eerie touches to Hobb’s End and the hotel room, including a painting where one of the figures turns to stare at Linda. The vast emptiness of the town feels suffocating, and when the two walk up to the looming Black Church (which IRL is the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Markham, Ontario), it feels like they’re walking into the eye of evil.

It doesn’t help that Linda keeps seeing a pack of ominous children, chasing a dog. Which brings us to our next chapter, and a good life lesson at that.

chapter three: it is never a good sign to see a pack of ominous children

According to Cane’s books, the Black Church is built on a site of ancient evil, predating humanity, filled with unimaginable pain and suffering. Linda warns Trent to start walking away, as a number of cars pull up to the church. A gang of enraged towns people (seemingly spawned FROM THE VOID) get out, and the air shifts into something darker, as the doors to the church fly open to reveal a small child named Johnny.

Johnny’s dad (I think???) begs him to return to him, but the doors slam shut, twice, before flying back open to reveal the face of the man whose words have brought Trent and Linda here: Sutter Cane. And I do believe we need to take a moment to discuss the homme du jour here because oh my god.

chapter four: “hello, my name is Sutter Cane, and I am quite quite mad.”

Look at that face. That is the face of a man who is Up to Shenanigans. German actor Jürgen Prochnow plays Cane very straightforward, which makes him all the more chilling. He is entirely believable as a man who has discovered the awful truth about his fiction writing: that he has been guided by an unseen force (“they”) writing his creations into reality, blurring the boundaries with fantasy. He never goes over the top, but watching him dance on that precipice is fascinating because he keeps it all in his face and his voice. What a performance. What a dude.

At the hotel, Linda tells Trent that the events they’re living through are the events in Cane’s new novel. She goes back to the church to confront Cane, who is finishing off the manuscript in his Office from the Depths of Hell. The walls pulsate with blood and life, looking like they’re breathing. Cane forces Linda to look at the finished manuscript, horrific visions filling her head and disorienting her. She makes her way back to the hotel, where she collapses on the bed repeatedly telling Trent that she’s losing herself.

Trent tries to escape, but is confronted by a mob of mutated townsfolk. Fleeing into a bar, one of the residents commits suicide before his eyes, telling Trent that he has been written to do so. Outside, Trent gets in the car and drives off, but is repeatedly teleported back to the town’s center and the mob of townsfolk. He crashes his car in frustration, which breaks the loop, and makes him wake up in the church, where Linda and Cane are waiting.

chapter five: this is reality

Cane explains that the sheer number of people that believed in his work has made his narratives real, hence dissolving the boundaries between reality and fantasy and allowing for the return of the “old ones” (it’s safe to assume that this is the reason Cane’s makeshift office looks like a living, breathing thing - also, yes, the movie takes many a beat from Lovecraft). Cane then reveals to Trent that he has written not just Hobb’s End into existence, but also Trent himself, who he wrote to deliver the completed manuscript back to Arcane. Trent bristles against this revelation, declaring that he’s real and this is reality, but Cane instructs him to follow a tunnel back to reality before tearing himself apart like the pages of a book.

It’s easily my favourite visual I’ve seen in a film in some time; Trent looks through the torn pages, into a portal through which the old ones are venturing forward into his reality. He goes to escape, gesturing for Linda to come with him but she refuses, explaining that she’s already read the ending of the book and insinuating that this is the way her bit of the story is meant to end.

Pursued by the old ones, Trent eventually makes it out of Hobb’s End, materializing on the side of a country road in broad daylight.

Trent destroys the manuscript and returns to Arcane, but is horrified when Harglow first denies any knowledge of Linda’s existence before revealing that Trent already delivered the manuscript months ago, and that the book has since been published to rabid attention. The final kicker? A film adaptation is set to come out shortly.

Sometime after, Trent - who has, as the kids say, Straight Up Not Been Having a Good Time Right Now - walks past a bookstore where In the Mouth of Madness is on sale and attracting a number of fans with the same kind of mutated wide eyes he has seen before. One of the fans walks out and speaks to Trent, and Trent murders him with an axe, which is how he ends up in the psychiatric hospital.

chapter six: lived any good books lately?

Trent concludes his story by telling Dr. Wrenn that humanity will soon be reduced to a myth that “they” (the old ones) will tell their children. That same night, after inhuman screams tear through the hospital, Trent’s cell door is torn open. He wanders out, overhearing a radio broadcast talking about an epidemic of extreme violence and mutations, spreading across the world. Entire cities are succumbing.

Trent wanders into a cinema where the adaptation of In the Mouth of Madness (with John Trent, as per the marquee - if you pause the film when the poster is in full view, you can see that this adaptation is directed by John Carpenter and distributed by New Line, which is a small but very effective touch) is playing. He grabs a bucket of popcorn and sits down in the screen, where he watches… well, basically the film we just watched. As he watches his on screen self declare that “this is reality”, he breaks down, laughing hysterically, consumed by the realization of his unreality. Is he truly a character in a Sutter Cane novel? Is he dreaming? Is he hallucinating? Was he ever real to begin with?

The trick In the Mouth of Madness pulls off most effectively is that all of those questions can be answered with both yes and no. And that’s what makes it truly terrifying.