In the Mouth of Madness

While searching Netflix for a horror movie that might have slipped under my radar, I stumbled across In the Mouth of Madness.  The film was directed by John Carpenter, who I occasionally enjoy, and was released in 1995, right around the time when he made the silly but enjoyable Escape From LA and the James Woods-ian Vampires.  A director I enjoy in the midst of a film stretch I like?  That sounds like a reasonable bet.

In the Mouth of Madness begins with John Trent (Sam Neill) being taken to an asylum, where an inquisitive doctor (David Warner) asks to hear his tale.  This doctor also comments on how clever Trent is to cover himself and his cell in black crayon crosses; it's almost like he wants to stay in the psych ward.

He doesn't look crazy at all, does he?

The rest of the story is told in an extended flashback.  Trent is an insurance investigator that has a talent for sniffing out fraud.  He is hired by a literary publisher (Charlton Heston) to find his missing golden goose, the ridiculously successful fantasy/horror author Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow).  Cane has disappeared just before turning in what promises to be his most successful (and, perhaps, final) script.  Trent, along with Cane's editor, Linda (Julie Carmen), begins to investigate.  At first, the investigation seems to go nowhere.  Trent can't see any angle to explain Cane's disappearance if the publisher is legitimately worried about its author.  Things start to fall into place as Trent begins to read some of Cane's work; it appears to be a blend of H.P. Lovecraft themes with a little Stephen King mixed in.  While engrossed in the books, Trent begins to experience symptoms that many Cane readers also suffer: hallucinations, lost time, and difficulty identifying reality.

Things only get more surreal when Trent has an epiphany; through a laughably convoluted scenario, Trent comes to the conclusion that Sutter Cane is hiding in a hidden town that is named after the fictional setting for his stories.  Oddly enough, Trent appears to be right; but is the town based on the fiction, or are the books based on the town?

The acting in In the Mouth of Madness is a little odd.  I like Sam Neill just fine, although I occasionally questioned his accent.  The rest of the cast, though...I'm less sure of.  Julie Carmen doesn't seem to match the script very well, playing a pretty boring character, even when things take a turn to the fantastic.  Jürgen Prochnow does his best to play up to the maniacal gatekeeper his character is written as, but it's a surprisingly non-sinister role that could have used more depth.  Also, his hair was distracting.

Evil is sometimes fluffy

David Warner was wasted in a role that amounted to little more than a cameo.  Ditto for John Glover.  If you have a sharp eye, you can spot the film debut of Hayden Christensen, although his part consists of a kid who thinks Neill is acting weird.

The obvious successor to Jake Lloyd

This is the third and final chapter in what John Carpenter refers to as his Apocalypse Trilogy; as far as I can tell, they are unrelated  except for the depressing endings (the other two are The Thing and Prince of Darkness).  The more I see of Carpenter's work, the more I appreciate him.  That's not to say that the man doesn't disappoint from time to time, but he is consistent in his own way.  For instance, In the Mouth of Madness is yet another plot-driven film with a largely unimpressive cast and some solid special effects.  One of the downsides to this film is that Carpenter chooses to only give glimpses of the underlying horror in the movie, instead of glorifying in it, like he does in The Thing.

Take a good look, because this is all you get

My problem with In the Mouth of Madness is with the story.  For starters, I don't particularly enjoy metafiction; I think it is usually used by less talented writers to disguise the depth of bad scripts.  This movie didn't change my opinion.  The fact that it is mentioned early and often that Sutter Cane's fans frequently believe that his fictional world is reality makes it a foregone conclusion that In the Mouth of Madness will eventually get to the question of "What is reality?"  That's a respectable theme, but John Carpenter isn't the director for it, and this isn't the script to explore it with.  There isn't a twist.  You see the basic developments miles away, and that negates the alleged cleverness of the concept.

There are some good little moments here and there --- the makeup is good (when glimpsed) and I thought the insane asylum Carpenters (the band) joke was hilarious --- but there's just so much clumsiness.  For instance, Trent concludes that Sutter Cane is in New Hampshire by noticing a common red line on all of Cane's paperback covers; if you arrange the red lines just right, they make the outline of New Hampshire.  First of all, what makes someone look at a tiny snippet of a line and think, "Hey, that looks Hampshirian!"  Second, how many other shapes could have been made, using the images on those book covers?  Honestly, I don't care to know the answer.  This isn't an awful film, but it sets the bar high and doesn't come close to meeting it.  I'll give it credit for ambition, but the execution simply isn't there.

While researching this film, I stumbled across a blog that featured art for Criterion Collection DVD covers for movies that haven't been selected for the Criterion Collection yet.  Does In the Mouth of Madness deserve the Crtierion treatment?  Definitely not.  Still, this is a pretty cool cover.

Black Death

2011 is the year of the action/horror/historical plague-themed movie, it seems.  First we were "blessed" with Nicolas Cage's Season of the Witch and now I have found Black Death.  Season of the Witch was pretty awful, but it managed to garner a wide theatrical release; Black Death hit a festival last Fall before going straight to DVD, which makes it sound even less appetizing than the surprisingly witch-less Season.  Still, I have sworn to go all month reviewing nothing but horror, and I haven't seen all that many movies from 2011, so here I am with another plague movie on my hands.

The year is 1348, the place is England, and the population is dwindling, thanks to the black plague.  One of the youngest monks at a monastery, Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), has sinned against God by falling in love with a woman, despite his vows.  The plague is overwhelming the monastery, so Osmund urges his lady, Averill (Kimberly Nixon), to leave (she had taken refuge there) and return to the forest where they both originated from.  So...they're Ewoks?  Perhaps.  She wants Osmund to go with, but he will not break his allegiance to the church.  She promises to wait for him at dawn each morning for a week at a certain landmark, but promises a final end to their relationship if he doesn't show.  What is a horny young monk to do?

Dirty minds!

As luck would have it, Ulric (Sean Bean), a knight of the church, arrives at the monastery, asking the lead monk (David Warner) for a guide.  It seems that there is a small village that has been left untouched by the plague.  Worse, there is a rumor floating around that this un-plagued village has forsaken Christianity.  With so many assuming that the disease is God's revenge upon sinners, the church worries that the Godless village might inspire others to renounce their faith to avoid the plague.  As luck would have it, the village in question is very difficult to find, unless you happened to grow up in the forest area.  Osmund sees this as a sign that he should quit the church and join Averill, so he agrees to guide Ulric's squad.  The job doesn't turn out to be exactly what Osmund had in mind, though; Ulric isn't looking to investigate the village, so much as he wants to identify and kill the blasphemous town leader, who is rumored to be a necromancer.  In other words, this story has knights, plague death, a star-crossed romance, and witchcraft and/or wizardry.  Not bad for straight-to-DVD.

...and it has Boy Band harmonies!  Not really.

The acting isn't fantastic in Black Death, but it is certainly within the realm of acceptability.  Sean Bean plays a no-nonsense knight well enough; a late revelation about his character makes him seem like a huge dick, but it's still within his character's reasonable range.  The rest of his band of killers are nothing special, but Andy Nyman and Johnny Harris were a little better than the rest.  I was surprised to find that I was not annoyed with Eddie Redmayne's performance; while his character starts down the path toward being pretty snivelly and obnoxious, it seems that the script and Redmayne were just psyching the audience out.  I ended up liking his wimpy character.  Kimberly Nixon played his lady love, and she was fine in that small part.  The leaders of the village, Tim McInnerny and Carice van Houten, managed to seem fairly reasonable in the face of knights that were out to kill them.  I thought that van Houten played her part very well, and I was pleased with her character's fate.

Her fate?  To resemble a vampire

Christopher Smith's direction is pretty decent.  The acting manages to not be over the top, the scenes make sense, and there are a couple of twists that both made sense and were mildly surprising.  Smith never succeeds in making the audience invest in these characters too much, but I still found myself pleasantly surprised by the film's climax and falling action.  There is enough gore in the battle scenes to please most horror fans; severed limbs and crushed heads should and do happen in these medieval battles.  Sadly, the only battle is early on in the film, which made me think this would be a bloodier and more action-packed film than it turned out to be.  That's not a bad thing, but it made the pacing of the film seem a little odd. 

On the whole, though, Black Death progressed in a similar fashion to The Wicker Man.  It was a little slow, but a pretty effective little flick.  The pacing also kept the tone from getting too tense, which prevents it from being a truly successful horror movie.  Still, Black Death managed to feel like a decently accurate portrayal of the Middle Ages, with some solid twists.

Once again, I watched a film with witches/warlocks in it, and all it made me want to do was listen to some abrasive Liars music.  Here's a track from their witchy-themed album, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned.

Tom Jones

With ten Oscar nominations and four wins, how is it possible that I had never heard of Tom Jones before stumbling across it on Netflix?  Granted, 1963 was a while ago, but I can think of a few classic movies from that year --- The Birds, Dr. No, Hud --- that weren't even nominated for the Best Picture award that Tom Jones wound up winning.  Sadly, no one thought to cast a young Tom Jones as the title character in Tom Jones.  You might argue that Tom Jones didn't have commercial success until a year later, but I'm just going to chalk this one up to a casting director with no vision.

Who wouldn't want to see him accept an Oscar dressed like this?

Tom Jones is an adaptation of The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, written by Henry Fielding and published in 1749.  That might not sound like an enticing source for a movie, but Fielding was known for his humor and sarcasm; this period piece is actually a comedy.  The story goes something like this: When Squire Allworthy (George Devine) returns home after many months in London, he finds an infant in his bed.  Naturally curious, Allworthy investigates and concludes that one of his servants, Jenny Jones (Joyce Redman), and his barber (Jack MacGowran) made themselves a loud and leaky reminder of their lust.  Being the mid-18th century, lust was seen as a bad thing, and Allworthy kicked both presumed parents out of his care.  He chooses to raise the bastard as a gentleman and names the little fellow Tom Jones.  Why Tom?  Why not?  It's not unusual.  ***self-inflicted face-slap***

Fast-forward twenty-odd years, and Tom Jones (Albert Finney) has become a kind and fun-loving young man, with a warm spot for any comely lady who is willing to...er...keep him warm?  Despite his many romantic entanglements, Tom is only seriously interested in Sophie Western (Susannah York).  Too bad she's a lady and he's a bastard.  Speaking of bastards, Squire Allworthy's nephew, Blifil (David Warner), hates the affection Tom seems to get from everyone, especially from the squire.  He plots with a few lackeys to get Tom disinherited by Allworthy and forever banished from his land.

200 years later, one of these men will be a Russian spy in Dr. Strangelove

Tom handles his abrupt change in fortune in stride, and proceeds to walk the earth as a poor man, albeit one with enough charm and wits to keep busy and stay healthy.  Meanwhile, Sophie's father and aunt decide that she should marry Blifil, whether she wants to or not.  Will these star-crossed lovers ever find one another?  Well, it's a comedy, so the answer will probably be yes.

The acting in Tom Jones is generally pretty solid.  Albert Finney is surprisingly charming as a young man.  Since my knowledge of Finney comes from the past twenty years, it blew my mind that he ever spoke normally or had a facial texture that didn't resemble a prune.  I don't know if I agree with Sophie's maid that he's "the handsomest man" she ever saw, but there are certainly less likely heartthrobs.  Susannah York was pretty good, too, although a large portion of her role was to balance outrage with lovey-dovey eyes.  Still, I thought she did well with the lead role.  I really enjoyed Hugh Griffith as her father; he was a lot of fun as a boorish, crass, and insensitive squire.

Best line (to a grieving son at a funeral):"Eh, cheer up."

David Warner is fine as the slimy and hypocritical Blithil, as is his fellow-in-sliminess, Peter Bull.  There are a few notable supporting performances by the women in this movie.  Diane Cilento was okay as a lusty peasant slut, Edith Evans was occasionally horrifying as Sophie's hoity-toity aunt, Joan Greenwood was solid as a horny but selfish noblewoman, and Joyce Redman had one of the least sensual dinner scenes ever.  Future Indiana Jones villain Julian Glover also plays a small part as a horrific person.

"My fortune cookie says I will die by Biblical curse...?"

Despite the presence of many, many recognizable actors and five Academy Award acting nominations, this film really isn't about the actors.  It's about the direction.  Tony Richardson took a fairly standard period piece and manipulated its style and tone to make something unique.  The opening scenes are presented as a silent movie, complete with piano music and dialogue cards.  There is a chase scene that is an obvious homage to Benny Hill.  There are freeze frames and bizarre scene wipes.  Richardson shows what is important in the story, not through dialogue, but by silence and ambient noise; Tom and Sophie fall in love during a dialogue-free extended montage (it had to be at least eight minutes long) and the hypocrisy of the "nobles" is shown through extreme close-ups of their savagery while they are hunting.  There are even a few scenes where Tom breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience; the best bit is when he is looking for his stolen money, accuses a maid/hotel owner, and then asks the audience if they saw her take anything from his pants.

Despite the interesting direction (and cinematography), I just wasn't terribly impressed by Tom Jones.  While it certainly is a watchable movie, I expected more from one of the few comedic Best Picture Oscar winners.  My biggest problem was the lack of funnies in the script.  Granted, this film was made in 1963, so the misadventures of a horny guy might have been edgy and shamefully funny at the time, but --- wait, no.  This film was released in the same year Dr. No was, and James Bond is at least as much of a man whore as Tom Jones.  No, I'm afraid that Tom Jones is one of those movies whose humor wasn't that sharp to begin with and has only dulled over time.

There are also a few scenes that simply irritated me.  I was grossed out by the extended eye-fucking Tom and Mrs. Waters engaged in over a forty-course meal.  I don't know why, but watching people flirt with greasy food smeared on their faces makes me nauseous.  The other scene I had a problem with was when Sophie's aunt advises a potential suitor to rape Sophie --- in those words!  Maybe this was just a bone Tony Richardson wanted to throw to the oh-so-important sexual predator audience, but I felt that it was in poor taste; the character who obliges in the rape attempt isn't even important, so he could have been cut from the film entirely and whittled this film down to under two hours long.

Without any lasting humor (maybe it just wasn't slapstick or sarcastic enough for me?), the clever direction appears to be random at times.  Without a sense of purpose, these solid acting performances lose their impact.  All in all, this was an interesting step forward in style for mainstream filmmaking, but that doesn't make it fun to watch in the present.

Don't poke her eye out!

The Omen (1976)

Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) was in an Italian hospital, distraught, when a priest (Martin Benson) approached him with a fantastic idea.  Why should Robert bother his wife with an inconsequential detail like the death of their newborn son only hours after childbirth, when he could lie to her instead?  The priest points to another newborn infant, a child whose mother died during childbirth on that very same day --- the orphaned child would be the same age as Thorn's lost child, and it even kind of looked like Robert's wife, Katherine (Lee Remick).  C'mon...!  It's just a little white lie, and it's not like he's lying to a real person, it's just his wife, a woman!  Plus, if a priest says it's okay, it must be up there with cleanliness, right?

Hoo boy.  The Omen is that rare breed of horror movie that managed to get a talented group together and focus on scary stuff instead of cheap thrills.  That said, the whole "unplanned adoption" angle is a pretty goofy start to a movie that ends up being genuinely chilling.  As the years went by, Robert and Katherine raised their little boy, Damien, with no unseemly incidents.  On his fourth birthday, though, his nanny committed suicide in front of the entire birthday party.  A replacement nanny, Mrs. Blaylock (Billie Whitelaw), mysteriously showed up, without any notice or any connection to the family at all.  While very committed to Damien, the lady was a bit creepy.  Around this time, Robert is approached by another priest, Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton) who claims that young Damien is the Antichrist.  Not surprisingly, Robert doesn't take the priest's words too seriously.  However, as peculiar deaths start to surround the Thorns, that idea becomes more credible and the suggestion of eliminating the evil --- killing Damien --- becomes a serious consideration.

I don't know why --- maybe it's the focus on the Book of Revelations --- but I always assumed that The Omen would be one of those horror movies that tries to strike fear into Catholics first, and the rest of the world second.  Maybe that's true; I'm not Catholic, so I can't speak for them.  I can, however, say that this movie was awesome.  Why?  Well, a big part of it is the fact that an actual movie star acted in the film.  I really enjoy Gregory Peck and his no-nonsense manliness.  He doesn't appear to be mean, but I imagine that, if you lost an arm in battle, he would scowl and ask if you wanted him to kiss it and make it better.  I don't have anything more than a feeling to back this up, but I imagine that, after seeing a Clint Eastwood western, Gregory Peck would leave confused, asking "What was he smiling at?"  Basically, Peck was a classic Hollywood leading man, and he was still good at it in the 70s.  When casting the part of a man who might kill his own child --- sure, he'd regret it, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do --- I doubt there was anyone else on the casting list.

Gregory Peck is about to hock a loogie on you.

The rest of the cast is good, too.  Lee Remick manages to play her conflicted role quite well and Billie Whitelaw is one scary lady.  The smaller roles are also well done.  Martin Benson is good as the evil-ish priest and Patrick Troughton balanced desperation with instability very well.  David Warner managed to overcome a ridiculous haircut to play a key role as the photographer, too.

This was director Richard Donner's first big movie, and he does a fine job with the directing.  It's always a crapshoot when older movies have child stars, like this film does.  Do you end up with a Haley Joel Osment, or a Jonathan Lipnicki?  Donner manages to direct Damien very well; actually, he films around Damien very well.  It's subtle, but I'm pretty sure that Damien was not actually reacting to a lot of what was going on around him.  It's like Donner would say, "Let's see a smile," and then use Damien smiling sweetly right after a shot of somebody dying.  The total effect is that Damien is a sinister monster, but doesn't rely on the child doing much acting.  Very clever, Mr. Donner.  I also liked Donner's use of the theme.  I'm not usually one to applaud the music in a movie, but these Satanic choruses were freaky.  To make this movie even better, there are some awesome death scenes in the movie, including one of the best beheadings in cinematic history.

Do the math.  Good acting + good directing + good violence = good horror movie.  It's pretty simple.  I always enjoy when a genre film like this takes the time and effort to bring together a good cast, because that makes everything easier.  Honestly, this movie could have been wretched.  All you need is a slight change in tone and you have a film that advocates child abuse/murder.  Luckily, this movie played upon the frightening notion of a truly evil child, but allowed the characters to doubt the existence of that evil.  That uncertainty adds a complexity not usually found in horror films, where the evil is almost always total and explicit.  This is just a well-made movie with great contributions from the actors, director, and everyone in post-production, making it a thinking man's horror movie.  I guess you could say that this Omen is good.  I hate puns.