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February 4, 2015 4:58 AM

The Wall Street Journal celebrates the 20th anniversary of John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness. Meanwhile, at VICE, John Carpenter wouldn't explain his new album, so they got a bunch of artists to each provide their own interpretation.
posted by Sticherbeast (27 comments total)

I think that the last John Carpenter movie that I saw in a theater was Big Trouble in Little China; Prince of Darkness sounded dumb-and-not-in-the-fun-way, and the only movie that Carpenter released after that that I've seen is Escape from LA, and that only because of Snake Plissken. My vote for most underappreciated Carpenter film (that I've seen, anyway) is Christine; it's much better than the book, which was written in Stephen King's Later Drugs period. Carpenter excises King's ruminations about his (human) protagonist's dysfunctional relationship with his parents and gets down to the meat of the book: teenager gets a car that not only restores itself but runs down all the bullies that have been giving him shit at school, and how cool is that? (It's basically Carrie with more chrome and rock-n-roll.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:47 AM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think his Village of the Damned remake is underappreciated mostly because it's unnecessary. It's a good flick even if there was no particular need for it to exist.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:57 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Prince of Darkness sounded dumb-and-not-in-the-fun-way

It's uneven as hell but has some really neat bits, I found it a lot of fun.
posted by Artw at 7:03 AM on February 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Mouth of Madness is probably his only true master peice after his 80s peak, but he's always interesting. And my god, what a peak.
posted by Artw at 7:06 AM on February 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

Mouth of Madness is an incredible movie. Carpenter is definitely my favorite director.

I grew up watching Big Trouble in Little China incessantly (we had a bootleg VHS of it). I watched it again recently but it wasn't my favorite of his, a little too much orientalism. They Live is a masterpiece and so is The Thing.
posted by cloeburner at 7:15 AM on February 4, 2015

In the Mouth of Madness is excellent. The scene on the bus and the ending are some of my favorite scenes in any John Carpenter movie. I don't know if this is still the case, but it used to be hard to find on DVD, it was out of print or something.

I would totally buy a John Carpenter box set if it included Assault on Precinct 13 and In the Mouth of Madness.
posted by Redfield at 7:22 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Besides his Kurt Russell collab classics I really had a lot of fun with Vampires.
posted by PenDevil at 7:25 AM on February 4, 2015

We Have Such Films To Show You by Mefi's Own covers Mouth Of Madness
posted by The Whelk at 7:27 AM on February 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Carpenter made Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, Mouth of Madness, The Thing, Escape From New York, and They Live, and that's more than most directors manage in their entire careers. I think we can forgive an awful lot based on those.

Also Cigarette Burns from Masters of Horror does this whole The King in Yellow thing that is fucking awesome.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:33 AM on February 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

Village of the Damned is cool as a Christopher Reeve vehicle and also for the scene in which Kirstie Alley disembowels herself.
posted by Billiken at 7:36 AM on February 4, 2015

Mouth of Madness is a great film. I borrow heavily from it in some of my own stuff.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:37 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

The movie theme is like somebody took an axe to "Enter Sandman" by Metallica and stitched it back together wrong. Brilliant!!
posted by Renoroc at 8:32 AM on February 4, 2015

This is one of my favorite movies in the world, and still one of the very few films to be Lovecraftian (or, maybe even moreso, Liggottian) instead of just naming a rubber monster Cthulhu or whatever lazy thing. Even the much-clamored-for del Toro version of "Mountains of Madness" looks like it would be another rubber monster fest, albeit with del Toro steering it. I don't even like Carpenter generally, but this film!

Had no idea it was unpopular. Oh, well. Too many beautiful things take too long to find their audience, if they ever do.
posted by byanyothername at 9:03 AM on February 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

For anyone in NYC there's a retrospective at BAM all month on Carpenter films.
posted by zutalors! at 9:48 AM on February 4, 2015

I loved "Vampires" as well.
It's UNPOSSIBLE to not love James Woods as a Vatican backed vampire hunter.
UNPOSSIBLE!
posted by John Kennedy Toole Box at 10:27 AM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

In the Mouth of Madness is an underrated film, IMO. It is so Lovecraftian and King that it hurts in a good way. It pulls no punches about the ending (which I love when films don't go for the pat "and it was all okay" ending, especially in scary movies).

Count me in as someone who likes it a lot.
posted by Kitteh at 10:56 AM on February 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

I find it criminal that you can't get a decent blu-ray transfer of Vampires, but you can get one of Ghosts Of Mars.

But yes, In The Mouth is second only to The Thing in his canon, and probably one of the best Lovecraftian-without-Lovecraft movies ever made.
posted by lumpenprole at 11:50 AM on February 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

In the Mouth of Madness is a great flick. I like to pair it with other "Sam Neill gets wiggy" flick, Event Horizon. The Thing is almost a perfect movie and Prince of Darkness is just eerie, chilling and tragic. The ending points to lost love being a trigger for the end times--a heroic sacrifice that was for nothing.
posted by nikitabot at 12:30 PM on February 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

"I like to pair it with other "Sam Neill gets wiggy" flick, Event Horizon."

You could add Possession to that list.
posted by Tenuki at 12:57 PM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I love how John Carpenter creates great settings in all his movies - like the small town in Halloween or The Fog, or even the way he presents LA in They Live (for years I couldn't go to downtown LA without thinking of that movie). In the Mouth of Madness does such a great job of creating that town, with the drive there and everything. His movies always feel kind of set apart from the rest of the world for me, in a nice way.
posted by teponaztli at 12:58 PM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

To this day, my husband and I say we hope we don't see a creepy elderly person riding a bike whenever we are driving down a woodsy unlit country road. Someday, someone is going to out for a late night ride and I'm going to die of a terror induced heart attack.
posted by Ruki at 2:05 PM on February 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

To this day, my husband and I say we hope we don't see a creepy elderly person riding a bike whenever we are driving down a woodsy unlit country road. Someday, someone is going to out for a late night ride and I'm going to die of a terror induced heart attack.

So I've got a buddy I used to LARP with who worked in Bloomington but, for some reason I will never fathom, decided to live in Gosport. He does okay, so it's not like he could only afford to live in Gosport (and he's since moved), but for a long while he decided to live in this godforsaken tiny town in the middle of fuckall nowhere.

One night, we all go to game in Indianapolis, and it comes out that he'd actually been picked up on the way from some folks in Bloomington who'd gone home much earlier, leaving him stuck in Indy without a ride. I was headed south anyway, so I volunteered to take him home. The drive there was fine, a light rain starting to fall, and we chatted and gabbed and made horrified noises at the decrepitude of Martinsville as we drove through it, and I dropped him off in Gosport. Now, I had two options. The first was to drive back to Martinsville, then down 37 to Bloomington. This would take for damned ever, and since my other option was what on the map I had looked like a straight shot south to Elettsville and then a quick jog down the bypass to home, obviously that was the right answer, right?

As I pull out of Gosport, the rain intensifies, and I shortly discover that what looks like a reasonable road on the map is actually one of those "It's two lanes! Honest!" pranks the DOT likes to pull from time to time, and it's completely overgrown with trees on both sides that often lean in over the road. I quickly hit a system of detours for construction that is ostensibly going on but invisible in the 4am dark and rain, and between my lower-than-I-realized gas gauge and the total lack of any light not coming from my dash or headlights, my ability to not be creeped out beyond belief is failing me miserably. Finally, I turn a corner at a stop that claims to lead to Elletsville (though after all the detours I could've been somewhere outside Bangor, Maine and not been surprised), and then after a short time with a clear sky, it's back into the heavy woods. After a couple of twists and turns I come around a corner to find two men in soaked white clothes, carrying lanterns and standing still in the middle of the oncoming lane. At 4am. In the middle of nowhere. In pounding rain.

I pounded the accelerator, fuel economy be damned, and didn't stop watching the rearview mirror until I got back to town.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:25 PM on February 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

Gosh, Carpenter is a lot more civil towards the WSJ reporter than he is the Vice guy. That is one terse interview.
posted by misterbee at 5:54 PM on February 4, 2015

I do not know what is up with the Vice interview. TBH given the degree to which they fail to deliver on the articles premise maybe they were just bad at their job?
posted by Artw at 6:01 PM on February 4, 2015

To this day, my husband and I say we hope we don't see a creepy elderly person riding a bike whenever we are driving down a woodsy unlit country road.

The best part about this scene is that the character is a teenager. An old teenager.
posted by byanyothername at 6:49 PM on February 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'll have to give this another chance; it was the wrong choice for a hungover Sunday afternoon, is all I'm saying.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:08 PM on February 4, 2015

TBH given the degree to which they fail to deliver on the articles premise maybe they were just bad at their job?

I know they're reworking their whole image, but this is still Vice we're talking about here.
posted by teponaztli at 10:11 PM on February 4, 2015