Movies: The Thing, Prince of Darkness, In The Mouth Of Madness
Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1982, 1987, 1994
Artwork by:  agouti-rex
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SPOILERS TO FOLLOW
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The End of the World in Three Parts

A frozen base in the middle of Antarctica. An abandoned church in the middle of Los Angeles. A small town in New England that doesn’t actually exist. Three settings for the end of the world, as brought on by different forces, encountered by different individuals, and all linked only by the nature of their medium and their creator. Such is the case with the Armageddon Trilogy, a collection of three films created by director John Carpenter: 1982’s The Thing, 1987’s Prince of Darkness, and 1994’s In The Mouth of Madness.

It is, admittedly, not the most traditional use of the word trilogy. Unlike most trilogies, there is no central storyline or group of characters whose adventures are followed from story to story. Indeed, each film takes place within its own cinematic universe, where its events have no bearing on any movie that come before or after it. However, thematically speaking, there are undeniably ties that bind the three together and, when viewed in this light, noteworthy similarities begin to make themselves known in a number of ways.

The chief similarity lies in the subject matter. Like the title suggests, each movie has some grand incident happening on a scale that only a few select individuals can witness, but that will ultimately lead to the destruction of the planet. Total end of the world stuff. Generally that’s the fodder for most Blockbusters these days, but Carpenter’s set stuck to a much smaller scale. Take The Thing, where it’s a shapeshifting alien force up against a dozen men in an isolated winter base, a thousand miles from nowhere. That’s a small body count compared to the entire planet, but they know that if that entity escapes into the larger world, then that’s it for the rest of organic life (the movie even takes a moment to spell that out via ancient computer technology). With Prince of Darkness, it’s an unspeakable evil sealed in a large vessel beneath a decrepit urban church and ready to get out and bring about the End of Days (again foreshadowed in the movie with a recurring dream all the characters experience, ostensibly sent from the future where it is, in fact, happening). Finally, there’s In The Mouth of Madness, which goes so far as to actually let the threatened apocalypse come to pass… unless it’s all in the head of the main character, who had already been driven mad by the events of the movie thus far.

Isolation is a key theme in all these outings. Each movie finds a way to trap the main cast in a tight spot, forcing them to deal with the situation as best they can. It’s most overt down in The Thing, being that they’re physically trapped in a single location. Prince of Darkness mixes it slightly, having an outside force (a hypnotized army of the homeless) trapping the group inside the church, cutting them off from the rest of humanity that is so tantalizingly close. As days pass by, cars drive along the main boulevard outside, oblivious to the chaos within. In The Mouth of Madness further mixes things up, with the protagonists in the world until they find themselves on the path to the fictional Hobb’s End, whereupon they leave our reality and enter a new one cooked up by a missing writer (who is further influenced by dark forces beyond the veil). Three settings, no help. Further than that, actually, is the idea that if help were to come, that would only make things worse, because that new outside party could just be assimilated by an alien, taken over by a Satanic entity, or could simply be another fictional character brought to life to mess with the protagonist.

The confinement spreads to the atmosphere, which Carpenter brilliantly orchestrates for each movie. He keeps mainly to tight spaces for the first two movies, easily presenting a feeling that everyone is being trapped in a space that’s just a bit too small for everyone. The overstocked hallways of Outpost 31 don’t offer a lot of room to maneuver, and burn remarkably easy when things start to get hot. The old church only has so many hallways, especially downstairs, so when folks start getting locked in and hunted down, it doesn’t take long before they’re confined to a single room they’ve managed to barricade. Even when Carpenter brings out the wide open outdoor spaces of In The Mouth of Madness, things feel tight. The main street of the town feels like it couldn’t possibly expand in any other direction (it later turns out that it doesn’t, and instead brings forth a closed loop moment towards the end of the movie). The towering, gothic cathedral may be in the middle of an empty field, but its presence sucks up the land around it, drawing you towards it whether you want to go or not. And all that’s without mentioning Carpenter’s great scores, which further add to the atmosphere. The thumping, uneasy rhythm and somber horns of The Thing (one of the few scores in his filmography not made by Carpenter himself, though you wouldn’t know it by listening to it), the penetrating synth of Prince of Darkness, and the complete mishmash of styles and genres that In The Mouth of Madness all come together for a remarkable musical odyssey that crafts the perfect sort of tone to best depict the horrors on display.

Beyond isolation, there’s also a strong look at the divide between science and belief, by way of investigating what’s real and accepting something through faith. This isn’t a battle that shows up so much in a film-by-film basis, but rather, one that becomes apparent when you look at the three movies as a while. In fact, when viewed collectively, they actually present a rather fine arc that gradually swings from the power of science to the power of faith. Not in any one way that supports one over the other, but rather in a way that shows the destructive power of both. These are ultimately horror movies, after all. Evil things come from all places, after all.

Beginning this arc is The Thing, which leans primarily on the science end of the spectrum. The creature lands next to a research station, and it’s a group of scientists who investigate. They dissect remains, they analyze data, and they put forth various theories as to what it is, what it can do, and what would happen if it got out. The madness and fear that spreads from this comes from a purely logical origin, and it shows in all the actions of the men, such as the infamous blood test sequence or the harrowing scene where Blair destroys the radio room. An entity that could unleash a plague of biblical proportions is mucking about, so there’s no way it can leave (of course, it’s been commented that Blair could well already be assimilated in this scene, given that this action gives the creature time to really think the situation through. But that’s another thought). What little bits of religion that do break through are fleeting at best, because while the creature from the stars certainly fits the notion of being some greater being in a physical sense, there’s very little spirituality at place with this particular threat. It’s simply biological organism… or rather, a complex biological organism. The most overt moment comes from a somewhat cryptic line from MacReady to Blair, as the former prepares to lock the latter up in an outdoor supply shed after a psychotic episode:

Trust's a tough thing to come by these days. Tell you what – why don't you just trust in the Lord?

At a time when paranoia runs to the bone (and beyond), and there’s no faith left to be found in your fellow man, even a hardline cynic like MacReady offers up the idea that there’s some truth to be left in God. Of course, he could also very well be humoring Blair, though there appears to be enough pathos in the line delivery to suggest some true sincerity. And while it doesn’t come up again so openly at any other spot in the movie, it certainly bears more weight when the next movie is taken into account.

Because that next movie is Prince of Darkness, the clear midpoint of the battle. A group of hard science students holed up in a Church, trying to accurately measure and interpret the data put out by a demonic entity. Quite a mix there. The movie plays with the idea of religion and faith here, putting forth the idea that Jesus was actually an alien being form beyond the stars, sent down to help put down an evil entity that we (that is, humanity) had come to believe was the Devil. What can science do to stop that? Not much at all, as it turns out. Analyzing something only goes so far when it’s spitting deadly hypnotic goo down your throat. The most that technology can hope to do doesn’t even come from a moment in the movie, but rather from a message from the future that’s beamed into the character’s dreams. Still, the logical side of man doesn’t go down without a fight, and it’s curious how it presents that with two authority characters. The lead professor is a hard thinker who remains calm under pressure, while the lead priest is a very meek and stammering individual, one who’s almost beyond his depth at every moment despite really being the most knowledgeable one around. Notably, the movie presents them as colleagues who respect one another. The general style of what the movie is doing, how it’s melding the two disciples of faith and learning together, come out in an early classroom speech by that professor:

Let's talk about our beliefs, and what we can learn about them. We believe nature is solid, and time a constant. Matter has substance and time a direction. There is truth in flesh and the solid ground. The wind may be invisible, but it's real. Smoke, fire, water, light - they're different! Not as to stone or steel, but they're tangible. And we assume time is narrow because it is as a clock - one second is one second for everyone! Cause precedes effect - fruit rots, water flows downstream. We're born, we age, we die. The reverse NEVER happens... None of this is true! Say goodbye to classical reality, because our logic collapses on the subatomic level... into ghosts and shadows.

When stepping into a research field that is so crazy and out-there as quantum mechanics, the line between what’s science and what’s pure faith-based belief tends to blur. When the evil rises, a mix of that seems to be what fights back. In the end, that oldest of human actions, the basic human sacrifice, is what does the deed. One character nobly (and somewhat impulsively) damns herself for the sake of forcing evil back into its cell, and the key of the lock is turned by way of a broken mirror (thanks to that same meek priest). The power of superstition indeed.

Incidentally, Stevie Wonder’s Superstition plays over a key scene in The Thing. What connection is that to Prince of Darkness? Quite honestly, none whatsoever, but boy does it make a nice little extra bit of connective string when one’s mapping out themes.

Wrapping things up, In The Mouth of Madness carries home by being explicitly about the power of belief, and how simply accepting reality as reality isn’t enough. Playing off as the most Lovecraftian movie ever made that isn’t actually based on any of Lovecraft’s stories, this movie lays firm the idea that every Discworld resident already knows very well: belief is a genuine force, and the more of it exists, the more power it has, and the more power that it has, the more real it gets. Here, a horror novelist is powered by otherworldly creatures, and they’re ready to be believed right into existence and end the world with them. Said novelist even makes a point that actual religion never stood a chance, because people don’t really believe in that enough. Fear is one of the greatest driving forces of them all, a raw emotion that can cut right to the core of our very being and bring out the strongest of our mental processes. Meanwhile, our main character, a born cynic and hardline skeptic, comes from that same initial world of reason as the protagonists of the previous two movies. But even he eventually succumbs to what’s happening, his own reality chipped away by the insane happenings that keep transpiring around him.

In the end, Carpenter is saying, belief trumps all. That’s what governs us. As another character in the movie says:

A reality is just what we tell each other it is.

A simple idea, and one we never really think to question, since reality seems to make sense so much of the time. We must all be thinking the right thoughts, and not all be ready to riot at the bookstore to get a peek at the next great writings from a world we were never meant to see.

As a final note, it’s also interesting how the movies appear to get more and more bleak over time, in the sense of each ending getting us closer and closer to the end of the world, or maybe having us already there. The Thing closes with a small ending of two men slowly freezing in the snow. The creature might be dead, it might be one of them, it might even be both of them… but we don’t know. Both the characters left over and us as the audience can only hope for the best. Prince of Darkness ends on a similarly ambiguous note, with the main character having yet another foreshowing dream right in the closing minute, suggesting that everything they did was for naught and the end is still coming. But at the same time, it’s far enough away that maybe, just maybe, we can prepare for it. Of course, then In The Mouth of Madness steps in, which ends with the world being invaded by terrible creatures, society crumbling, and the protagonist laughing himself silly over everything that’s happened (while it conveniently plays in front of him in an abandoned movie theater). What a way to go. Or maybe it’s all in his mind? He is crazy, after all. It’s not like we can take his word for things.

John Carpenter is, without of a doubt, one of the finest genre directors ever. Which seems like a backhanded compliment, but that’s something that takes a lot more skill and devotion than most seem to realize. This collection of masterpieces (far from his only ones) draws together all the best that he can do, and gives us a series of movies that show some fascinating ways the end can come for us hairless apes. This unconnected trilogy, so very rare in cinema, is a shining example of what a real sense of craft and creativity can bring, and for that, we are thankful.

Though we best be careful we don’t believe in them too strongly. That could bring dire consequences indeed.