Revisiting IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS in 4K

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (4K UHD)

1994 / 95 min

Arrow Video

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat🙀

Home video has been pretty damn good to John Carpenter over the years. He’s done movies that run the gamut from great to good to abysmal, yet Halloween notwithstanding, none of them were blockbusters. But you’d be hard-pressed to name another director responsible for more movies that went on the become cult classics due to getting a second life on VHS and DVD. 

For years, Shout Factory led the charge in curating Carpenter classics (and a few that are not-so-classic), releasing and re-releasing collector’s Editions of most of his movies with good restorations, loads of bonus features and great packaging. This includes 1994’s In the Mouth of Madness, one of the most Lovecraftian films that isn’t actually based on one of his stories.

One of Carpenter’s better late-career films, it’s also emblematic of a lot of his ‘90s output…two-thirds of a great movie that doesn’t quite stick the landing, at least narratively, with a final act that’s a bit more disjointed than it needs to be. But tonally and visually, In the Mouth of Madness might be the director’s most immersive film since The Thing and has enough of a cult following deserving of the 4K treatment. 

The scariest part of the movie? The price of that popcorn bucket.

This time, however, Arrow Video is doing the honors. Having previously seen both Warner Bros’ and Shout Factory’s Blu-ray editions, I can say this 4K transfer is an overall improvement, with a generally excellent video restoration, as well as two audio options, the best one being the well-balanced 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. This release also comes with a nice selection of new and archival bonus features, the latter carried over from Shout’s Blu-ray edition. Carpenter's considerable cult of fans should have no complaints.

EXTRA KIBBLES

NOTE: Free Kittens Movie Guide was provided with a promo disc for review purposes. Physical supplemental material included with the final product (booklets, artwork, inserts, etc) were not available for review.

NEW INTERVIEWS - Individual interviews with producer Sandy King Carpenter, actor Jurgen Prochnow, actor Julie Carmen.

ARCHIVAL INTERVIEW - With FX artist Greg Nicotero, (carried over from the Shout Factory blu-ray release).

WE ARE WHAT HE WRITES and REALITY IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE - These are a couple of new appreciations for John Carpenter and the film.

3 AUDIO COMMENTARIES - 1) By director John Carpenter & cinematographer Gary B. Kibbe; 2) By director John Carpenter & producer Sandy King Carpenter. 3) By Colors of the Dark podcasters Rebekah McKendry & Erlic Kane (not Sutter).

FEATURETTES - Horror’s Hallowed Grounds focuses on the shooting locations; The Making of In the Mouth of Madness; Home Movies from Hobbs End.

TRAILERS & TV SPOTS

THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND and the Happy Accident

THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND (Blu-ray)

2020 / 99 min

From Synapse Films

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat🙀

Wanna hear something stupid? For the longest time, whenever surfing Netflix for something to kill a few hours, I repeatedly skipped right over The Block Island Sound, never pausing to read the synopsis because the title suggested some kind of hipster music doc about indie artists I’d never throw on my turntable. In my defense, there’s so much crap on Netflix that if I stopped to check out every movie summary, I’d spend more time looking for something on Netflix than actually watching something on Netflix. 

But one night, I accidentally left the thumbnail for The Block Island Sound highlighted. While I’m personally annoyed by Netflix’s practice of playing a scene from the film whether you want it to or not, I was suddenly intrigued. Oh…this is a horror film. And as it turned out, a pretty good one.

The first thing that struck me was the overall aesthetic, which effectively captures the inherent bleakness of small north-coastal towns. The ones that aren’t tourist traps are typically dreary and cold, seemingly drained of color, with perpetually gray skies. Like such horror films as Dead & Buried and the criminally underseen The Beach House, the setting of this one immediately establishes an ominous tone…

…as does the opening scene, where an old man named Tom (Neville Archambault) wakes up on the deck of his adrift fishing boat surrounded by dead fish. Later, he frequently falls into a trance-like state before waking up on his boat again. His son, Harry (Chris Sheffield), fears Tom is sleepwalking, at least until the morning they find his wayward boat empty. Short-tempered and suspicious, he assumes Dad met with foul play, especially after he’s found dead. Conversely, Harry’s semi-estranged sister Audrey (Michaela McManus), who’s there to investigate the mysterious deaths of thousands of fish, is certain the man’s chronic drinking killed him.

Sometimes having a bigger boat doesn't matter.

Harry has a similar drinking problem, so when he begins experiencing similar trances - seeing his undead father - and waking up alone on the same boat, everyone thinks grief and booze are driving him crazy. For awhile, the narrative does a great job keeping that suspicion in the back of the viewer’s mind. But as the story progresses, with intriguing ambiguity, it appears that an unseen entity is lurking off-shore, coercing Harry into committing terrible acts (I won’t say what), only to wake up later with no memory of them.  Meanwhile, Audrey is torn between exasperation over Harry’s behavior and increasing fear he’s gonna harm someone.

For a low budget film, writer/directors Kevin & Matthew McManus manage to assemble a pretty engaging Lovecraftian tale. With limited resources, the overall lack of onscreen monsters and mayhem is offset by a consistently dark tone, menacing sound effects and, most importantly, believable characters. However, the film loses some of its punch during the final act, when the nature of this entity is revealed and visual effects are required. Not that they’re necessarily bad, but aesthetically, these scenes seem to belong to another movie. Ultimately, it’s most effective when the horror is more psychological than supernatural.

Catching The Block Island Sound turned out to be a happy accident. It’s an eerie, quietly unsettling little horror film, which is certainly more fun than another music doc about obscure musicians. It’s still on Netflix (and has been for years), but you never know when it’ll get yanked. And since the movie is probably worth seeing more than once, it’s nice to have it on Blu-ray with a good video/audio transfer and some interesting bonus features, which help one appreciate what the McManus brothers are able to accomplish with so little.

EXTRA KIBBLES

FEATURETTES - A Practical Apocalypse; Finding the Cast; Filming on the Water; Special Effects on a Shoestring.

AUDIO COMMENTARY - By writer/directors Kevin & Matthew McManus

BEHIND THE SCENES FOOTAGE

MCMANUS FAMILY HOME MOVIES

TRAILER