The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema, March 29-April 4
In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
Directed by John Carpenter
What hellborn fuckery is this? An underrated uptick in Carpenter’s troubled late period, certainly. Though his more ludicrous visions still laid ahead (Ice Cube shooting space ghosts; Kurt Russell shooting hoops), In the Mouth of Madness earns the privilege of reveling in insanity. In his first feature after the Chevy Chase vehicle Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Carpenter doubles down on some of the tastiest visuals of his career, aided by Gary Kibbe’s gorgeous wide angles, Edward Warschilka’s frenetic cuts, and Greg Nicotero’s creature effects. He also finds an invaluable special effect in Sam Neill, who’s played with howling madness before in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, and taps back into it with exceptional hamminess. Our host throughout this Lovecraftian terror—which, while unraveling, circles back and strangles itself again and again—Neill plays cynical investigator John Trent, who’s tasked with locating pop horror phenom Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), an instigator of mass-market blockbusters and subsequent mass hysteria. As Trent plunges deeper, he finds himself under Cane’s rule, his destiny/doom manipulated by the mad creator’s keystroke. Rounding out Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy, Madness is a darkly funny probe of fiction’s influence on perceived reality. Max Kyburz (April 4, 9:30pm at the Alamo Drafthouse)