Summary SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT John Carpenter’s Lovecraftian horror film In the Mouth of Madness surprises VFX artists for one major reason. The 1994 movie follows John Trent , an insurance investigator who recounts strange activity in Hobb’s End, New Hampshire, and its connection to novelist Sutter Cane. Along with Neill, the cast includes Jürgen Prochnow, Julie Carmen, David Warner, John Glover, and Charlton Heston.
Corridor Crew praised the movie’s use of practical effects, but mentioned that some of the monsters were barely visible. After pausing the sequence and viewing them in full, Jordan Allen noted, “An entire soggy mummy built from scratch and just discarded.” Niko then explained the amount of work involved, and expressed frustration over how the creatures were employed.
Niko: This is actually a mechanism that takes fifteen people to operate. So, there’s one giant rig and there’s two guys in suits in the foreground in front of it, and just like, a whole bunch of like radio-controlled motors and people operating this whole thing. All for two frames… I do feel like they could have shown us at least a little bit more of this though. This is what it feels like to be a VFX artist and have like, your characters cut from the movie.
Fortunately for audiences, or those familiar with H.P. Lovecraft, In the Mouth of Madness features plenty of bizarre occurrences to make up for its lack of monsters, including the young man who inexplicably aged prior to Linda Styles and Trent arriving in Hobb’s End. Not only was there a creature seemingly attached to Cane, but the hotel’s elderly receptionist had tentacles protruding from her chest, though neither fully transformed.