60 Nights of Horror # 5: In the Mouth of Madness

The Carpenters (Richard, Karen, John, AND Cody) Belong on Every Horror Soundtrack

“We’ve Only Just Begun,” a 1970 single penned by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols, was ranked at #414 on Rolling Stone’s list of “the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” It is a drippy saccharine number, originally meant to play over images of a young couple getting married and then seeking a bank loan in a commercial for Crocker National Bank in California. Richard Carpenter, who like Paul Williams, was signed to A&M Records at the time, heard the song and asked if there was a full-length version of the song that he and his sister Karen could use for their third single. It skyrocketed to the top of the charts and earned the Carpenters their second gold record. Both Richard and Karen considered it their signature song. I’m including the video here not only because I love it (it’s one of MY signature songs too, for a different reason), but because it provides a visual to all the interesting mouth shapes each Carpenter uses to create the sounds they’re making. I remember studying Richard Carpenter’s lisp very closely as a teenager, as well as the space Karen allows her mouth to hold, and how neither of them particularly enjoys letting their lips touch. (That’s usually an overbite thing, this is purely control. If you ever want to emulate perfect and total control of your embouchure and tone, look no further than Karen Carpenter.) .

This song about hopeful lovers with their whole lives ahead of them has been repurposed in unusual contexts multiple times: besides being sung by Carl Weathers in Happy Gilmore, it was famously used as the voice of the hotel room in 1408, communicating with John Cusack at various points through the radio, with different lines and phrases specifically meant to torment him when he at his most despairing. 1408 knows how to kick someone while they’re down, and it loves to use the Carpenters, which we can attribute to an even earlier instance of a guy trapped in a room grumbling “Not the Carpenters,” Sam Neill as John Trent in the opening sequence of John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness.

More like YES the Carpenters please and thank you may I have some more?

Just like me, they long to be reading Sutter Cane.

We are introduced to claims investigator John Trent and his mental institution hideout, almost immediately establishing himself as not insane. And neither is anyone else. Nor is anyone pacified by the dulcet tones of the Muzak version of this beautiful song blasting thru the sanitarium speaker system.

David Warner shows up, wanting to know if Trent is one of “them,” implying what? We don’t know. But the first thing Trent supposes is that Warner wants to know about his “they.” Paranoid schizophrenics tend to have a “they,” he elaborates, before launching into the reasons why he is in a strait jacket, after explaining that the black crayon crosses he’s drawn all over the padded walls are just crazy enough to ensure that he won’t be released anytime soon.

We go back in time to a cruel takedown of a fraudster on behalf of a client, who then takes Trent out to lunch to suck his dick in a bistro across the street from a theatre playing Six Degrees of Separation. The client wants to hire him full time, to which Trent replies that he prefers to work for himself, that nobody pulls his strings. (I can empathize with that, I think, me with my full time job that frequently turns into overtime.) The client then asks to hire him again for another job, this time looking for a fraud angle on behalf of the publishing company that prints the works of Sutter Cane, an incredibly popular horror author who has allegedly gone missing.

It’s at this point that a dude with an ax, who has been watching Trent for a couple minutes, decides to strike. He smashes the window and gets gunned down before he can chop Trent’s head in half. But not before he can ask John: “Do you read Sutter Cane?’

I keep pronouncing it in my head as kah-nay, like Mondo Cane, Sutter Kah-nay? Sotto voce, plz. I’ve seen this movie many times, I know it’s kayn like candy cane.

When does fiction become religion?

Everyone is so surprised when John Trent says he doesn’t read Sutter Cane. He asks if he’s a Stephen King type (oh so we’ve heard of him, he exists in this universe, and he’s a BUM, a hear me? Stephen King is a fuckin BUM! Now GTFO of Arcane Publishing, and leave the coffee, that’s OURS. NO YOU CAN’T SMOKE HERE.)

When they were casting this movie, specifically the role of Linda Styles (mother of Harry Styles, original author of Elements of Style, no relation to Julia Stiles but YES relation to Ryan Stiles, distantly, go figure), they said “we need a Jennifer Beals type.” Could we get Jennifer Beals? Probably. But no, we needed a bitch. Who slightly resembles Jennifer Beals. We need her to assure John Trent, who has literally narrowly escaped death and watched a psychopath get pumped full of lead, that this is not a prank.

NO JOHN, A MAN IS DEAD. THIS IS NOT A PRANK AND THE WORLD DOESN’T REVOLVE AROUND YOU. The world clearly revolves around this writer you’ve vaguely heard of whose work has been translated into 18 languages and has sold more copies than the bible, which apparently means he’s bigger than religion in this universe (boo readership doesn’t equate religion, one can read something and suspend their disbelief enough to enjoy it, and they can enjoy it without believing it so hard it becomes woven into their life system but aight aight aight it’s a movie)… John, a man is dead and we think Sutter Cane is scamming us. Please find him so we may make him answer for his crimes by forcing him to go on a press tour.

The research montage is fun, because I consistently get the vibe that Trent thinks he’s too good for this, and yet he’s giving it the same respect and attention that he would any other scam. And he is undeterred by zealots because uhhhh this is Manhattan?

I love that he doesn’t begin to see the patterns until he accidentally rubs black ink underneath his eyes. He resembles a footballer, and that black stuff they rub under their eyes so the sun doesn’t bounce off their skin, it reduces glare. He unintentionally reduces the light bouncing into his eyes, and suddenly he can begin to see the darkness. Just a little thing I appreciated.

“I like busting frauds, I like busting phonies. Bustin’ makes me feel good.”

The entire road trip sequence is Trent being a dick while Styles swallows it because she is a working woman surrounded by dicks. Still, she manages to squeeze out this aside: “A reality is just what we tell each other it is.”

A couple of legitimately unsettling dream sequences later, we have made it to Hobb’s End where we think Sutter Cane is hiding out. This desolate version of Main Street USA, populated with nothing but antique stores and the occasional pack of feral children is boognish and I hate it. It makes me feel the way Otho felt the first time he set foot in the Maitland/Dietz house.

We realize things are exactly as they seem when Styles notices how perfectly Hobbs End has been represented in the books: the loose floorboard is where she says it would be. The hotelier, Mrs. Pickman, is exactly as described. The view of the church is where he said it would be. The painting in the lobby changes when Sutter Cane’s name is mentioned. But this town isn’t famous, and we’ve never heard of Sutter Cane.

Except when we have, because he brainwashed our kids.

Why the fuck you letting your kids read Sutter Cane, then, Vigo the Carpathian? Look at em, they’re eating dogs! You’re an absentee father, is what you are.

Oh thank Germany, Duke Leto Atreides is here with his adorable murder dogs.

So Styles reveals that it originally WAS a hoax, they had Sutter Cane pretend to go missing as a publicity stunt, but I guess then they didn’t think Hobbs End existed, and then they found it, and now she’s becoming a believer, but then her story changes. She is super horny now, for no reason besides it distracting Trent. You’re gonna give him main character syndrome, which he already has.

“It’s about people turning into things.”

“It’s fiction.”

but When does fiction become religion?

Nobody lets Trent smoke…. but Mrs. Pickman is living the dream kicking the naked old man handcuffed to her ankle behind the hotel desk. Let’s go back to the church, see if what we think is real is real or if it’s all something Sutter Cane made up. Or was he inspired?

In his words, he THOUGHT he was making it all up, but then he realized They were telling him what to write. We’ve found Sutter Cane’s “They,” how nice. So all of this has been a plot to drive the most people mad as possible so when the Old Ones come back, they can uhhhh I don’t know. Have worshippers? Kuato is here, glad to see him getting work, along with the horny old people turning into tentacled torture beasts.

Styles trapped in the town square with all the kids holding hands around her singing “You are a dead girl, you are a dead girl” is such a vibe. Jenna Maroney would KILL for this much attention. She’d be as horny as Styles, coming onto Trent (despite what a fucking DICK he is seriously I cannot stand this man) talkin’ bout “I have to, he wrote me this way” before swallowing a WHOLE ASS keychain. Man have you ever tried to swallow ONE handcuff key? This bitch swallowed a WHOLE keychain. With car keys and house keys on it. There were like eight keys on it! He wrote you to be a fuckin throat goat, is what he did AHAAAAAA >_<

Linda Styles: “Cane wrote me this way, he wants me to be a gluck gluck 9000, it’s good for the book.”

Angry mob: “The last guy who left this town… never made it out.”

Bearded man: “Some folks say he grew a beard, and stiiiiiill liiiiiives heeeeere.”

The disoriented driving dream logic escaping the town sequences are the scariest parts of this movie, to drive out and keep hitting the same landmarks is terrifying to me. That’s my nightmares, seriously. The only way out is to crash the car and wake up concussed in a confessional where they’re not gonna let you smoke. It’s canon, because we say it is.

Sutter Cane calls Trent out for not accepting reality as it has been presented to him. “Always looking for the con, always trying to rationalize, you’re just as bad as the spurned husband in Possession, sometimes you aren’t meant to know the big picture. This town wasn’t here before I wrote it, and neither were you. I think, therefore you are.”

so is john trent a dick or is he just written that way?

Yes. And now everything is blue, do you see it now? Because blue is Sutter Cane’s favorite color, do you see? We just wrote that whole other character out, your struggle is already over and you didn’t even notice, because reality is what we tell each other it is. Didn’t you watch the movie? When does fiction become religion? Ask L. Ron Hubbard. He won’t let you smoke here either.