I do think it's a jolly flick, really, even if it doesn't quite hang straight. Having labored in ye editorial horror trenches myself, and having spent countless thousands of hours zombie-ing my life away in front of millions of horror films, I am for once entitled to the say that I usually take anyway, this time with some first-hand experience to back me up.
Perhaps GEORGE MAGAZINE, or CHARTWELL BOOKS or some other such toney publishing house resembles ARCANE, publishers of Sutter Cane, but real genre publishing does not.
First things first. REAL publishing houses are not gleaming, spacious, chrome- plated, tastefully decorated bustling hives of activity filled with attractive, smartly turned-out people. Real Publishing houses are full of pear-shaped people with very pale skin (girls & boys) and too much unkempt body hair (boys & one or two unfortunate girls). They are pear-shaped because, after all, they have done nothing but sit on their hinders with their noses buried in books all of their lives while other more attractive, (i.e. more popular) people were out getting fresh air and playing with their friends. (Julie Carmen, witless though she may be, would have been out playing with her friends, and hence, would never have found time to fill her head with the requisite cultural ka-ka to qualify for an editorial position in genre publishing).
Occasionally, a very skinny editor will be spotted, but they are generally that unhealthy, itchy-scalped starving mumbler-in-the-garrett kind of skinny that makes one ill-at-ease. These are generally found to be authors on the side.
Publishing people dress, er...whimsically, at best. They do not wear fetching cream skirt-and-jacket ensembles with daringly-dipping necklines to the office. (Recall Glenn Close in FATAL ATTRACTION. Yeah, RIGHT!) Publishing does not pay enough to buy new clothes. Most editors wear thrift shop.
They are frequently covered in unidentifiable stains, and the men often wear very loud ties, as a statement of their highly artistic inner natures ("Look at me! I'm WHIMSICAL!!!"). Some girls have a sorry tendency toward mis-judged Ren-Fest gear; most boys look like they've been sleeping in that Star Wars T-shirt for two or three days, and usually sport cow-licks. Virtually all publishing house denizens are troubled with poor vision, and the vain ones may often be seen squinting or colliding with furniture at social gatherings to which they have refused to wear their goggles (even though everybody at the party already knows they wear goggles).
Physically, the publishing house calls to mind one's mother in her most irritating voice, saying "How can you find anything in here, it looks like this place has been hit by a tornado." She's right. Very few desk or counter surfaces are visible in any given office, and many square feet of floor are usually covered as well, with manuscript, manuscript, manuscript (no matter how computerized the world gets, it still comes down to manuscript); the walls are most often papered over with tattered, marked-up schedules or vastly irritating xeroxed "wit" such as A TIDY DESK IS THE SIGN OF AN UNIMAGINATIVE MIND, the average editor's favorite excuse for never being able to find a damn thing.
Publishing can be wonderful; it can also be deeply annoying, and is invariably repetitive. It can be very stressful, and it can literally drive people to distraction. One thing it is not is GLAMOROUS.
I knew one editor, who had very, very bad teeth (he made Austin Powers look like a lost Osmond Brother). He was leaving our house for greener pastures, and I was sent in to "straighten" his office. He hadn't really been KEEPING UP with things, for quite a while...if you know what I mean. I could have gone at this tiny airless space with an earth mover, dislodging 500 times my own body-weight in un-numbered, un-labeled pages of God Knows What every day for a month before finding a clean spot in the carpet; nonetheless, I dug in. After several frustrating hours, came the high point of this dismal chore. I opened his middle desk drawer and there I discovered two black, stumpy, rotted human canine teeth in that little tray where every other decent God-fearing American keeps his Number 2 Ticonderoga. This is the truth. They could hear me yelling all the way down in the accounting office, at our parent company, a block away.
Does this sound GLAMOROUS to anyone?
(By the way, I hereby exempt myself from NONE of the personal criticisms above, except that my teeth aren't too bad. Furthermore, I miss the old gig.)
That said, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS has one or two other quibbles: Charlton Heston's office is way too small. No publisher would stand for it.
Another credulity-stretching point: He's obviously sober. In the middle of the day. So's Julie Carmen. So's Jürgen Prochnow. Kinda hard to believe, what with them being a publisher, an editor, and a writer, respectively.
OK. I MAY exaggerate. Aber nur ein Bisschen.
And WHAT is it with Julie Carmen??? Is she a professional somnambulist or does she just trot that out at parties to amuse her friends? GET WITH THE PROGRAM, Lady! Although I do occasionally enjoy one of her wryly - raised eyebrows, she needs to stop fussing with her obviously non-prescription goggles for effect and GET ON WITH THINGS. And stop mumbling, dammit.
Further: PLEASE John Carpenter, I am a FAN and all, but just ONCE let somebody else pick your film score....PLEASE?
Still further: it is not SCARY to see a CAR pull up to the same CURB four times in a row. Even if there are dangerously in-bred axe-wielding natives lolling about the curb. It is JUST ANNOYING. FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO.
And please, Cthulhu, revoke John Glover's SAG card. The man gives totally-out-of-control-ham actors everywhere a bad name.
All that said: I'm a Lovecraft fan. i.e.: I'm a cheap date. Were those tentacles you were just flashing at me!? I'm yours! And I find it a sweet tribute to Robert Bloch that Sutter should be pecking away at a good old fashioned manual type-writer, too (and I'm sure it's a deliberate tribute). Bob Bloch stuck with his trusty manual to the end. None of that new-fangled gadgetry for the him. (P.S. Jürgen needs some hand-cream, God love him.)
Mr. Neill is a creditable mad-man, and a good sport. The ever reliable Bernie (GARGOYLES) Casey earns his keep and does no harm. Charlton BANG BANG BANG Heston gets a vote of appreciation for being an old pulp fiction fan himself (I read that somewhere -- I'll wager that's why he took the part). And we mustn't forget our faithful old friend David Warner, looking a little long in tooth, but still a World Class Jack-The-Ripper with me. Isn't it fun to see him standing in yet another room decorated in Over The Top Religious Crank Symbolism, a la that great nutty priest's hide-out in THE OMEN? Another sly tribute??
As for you, Jürgen: You da man!!
That wicked gleam in his eye, that mellifluous voice, that sly - kitty shouldn't talk with his mouth full of gourmet mouse pate smile...He seems to be having a grand time, and I think he's great in this. Puckish, yet commanding, he even holds the moment together in front of that way too rubbery door behind which lurk The Old Ones...
Works for me!