David continues to stretch the definition of “based on the works of HP Lovecraft” to the snapping point…
Neill’s role in In the Mouth of Madness harks back to his first big break, which was as Damien Thorn in The Final Conflict. The film was the weakest of the three original Omen films, but Neill showed he could be charming, charismatic and devilish too. Here, as Trent, he is snide, sarcastic and cynical — not the nice ‘everyman’ we are used to. His job as an insurance investigator has made him this way after years of uncovering fraudsters and phonies. His view of humanity is somewhat jaded. Yet, somehow, he sees him self as being above this corruption. He also sees himself as a man grounded in reality — at least when the film starts. But then he slowly, after delving into Sutter Cane’s book, begins to have hallucinations. As the story arc continues these hallucinations become a bigger part of Trent’s life until they are in fact reality, and the vestiges of the real world are fantasy.
At the end, the film spins into a deliberate self-referential vortex, where the film In the Mouth of Madness tells the story of a book called In the Mouth of Madness, which is then made into a film called In the Mouth of Madness.
Necronomicon is an anthology film — as mentioned in my review of Alien Zone, a format that never really clicks with me. But considering the names behind this anthology — besides Yuzna himself producing the movie and directing two segments (the final story as well as the wrap-around story that features Jeffrey Combs as HP Lovecraft), two other directors were called in for the project, both of them relatively unknown at the time of the film’s production. But they would both make names for themselves years later, and since I didn’t see Necronomicon until years later (its distribution in the United States has been, at best, spotty), I already knew and had high expectations for the names Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Silent Hill) and Shusuke Kaneko (the Gamera films from the 1990s, of which I think the second is one of the greatest giant monster movies ever made). The fact that I liked both directors so much, coupled with Yuzna’s track record with Lovecraft (even when he makes a bad movie, Yuzna doesn’t make an un-entertaining movie) was enough to get me over my initial dislike of the anthology film.
No, not an official entry in Month Of The Living Dead; just a scheduling coincidence!
That many were skeptical of the degree to which these stories –- one of which was The Shuttered Room –- could actually be considered Lovecraft’s work is understandable. Not only had Lovecraft been dead for over twenty years at the time of their writing, but those examples of his notes included in the same volume clearly demonstrate that many of his story ideas consisted of little more than single sentences that had a lot more to do with suggestions of tone than any kind of specific plot details. As a result, these particular efforts on Derleth’s part came to be seen by many as nothing more than a distasteful bit of coattail-riding.
