In the Mouth of Madness (4K UHD Review)

• Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
• Review Date: Oct 31, 2025
• Format: 4K Ultra HD
• 

Director

John Carpenter

Release Date(s)

1994 (October 28, 2025)

Studio(s)

New Line Cinema (Arrow Video)

• Film/Program Grade: B+
• Video Grade: A
• Audio Grade: A-
• Extras Grade: A-

arrowfilms.com

Review

In John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, all roads may not lead to Hobb’s End, but once you’ve found it, all roads lead back to it. Which is appropriate, because while all horror may not be directly influenced by H.P. Lovecraft, all horror still leads back to him eventually. While Carpenter has worked in a variety of different genres, he’ll always be best-known for his horror films, most of which have had at best a fleeting connection to the kinds of cosmic horror that Lovecraft imagined. That changed with In the Mouth of Madness, although it was pretty much a one-off for him in that regard.

Carpenter has referred to In the Mouth of Madness as being part of an “apocalypse trilogy” that includes The Thing and Prince of Darkness, but neither of those two films were particularly Lovecraftian. Oh, tentacled horrors abound in The Thing, but while they’re of extraterrestrial origin, they’re not even remotely supernatural. Prince of Darkness went full supernatural by offering one of the ultimate in Elder Gods, Satan himself, but nothing in it was drawn from the Lovecraft mythos. Yet all roads do lead back to Lovecraft, so it was perhaps inevitable that Carpenter would eventually dip his toes into Lovecraftian waters with In the Mouth of Madness, but it wasn’t a project that he personally initiated.

In the Mouth of Madness was actually the brainchild of New Line executive Michael De Luca, who had written the script years earlier but struggled to get it off the ground. Well, nothing succeeds like being in charge of the company (although to be fair, In the Mouth of Madness was greenlit before he rose to the role of President and COO in late 1993). While his script isn’t based on any Lovecraft stories, it wears its inspirations on its sleeve by peppering Lovecraft references throughout, and he even quoted from Lovecraft in the dialogue. In reality, though, it’s really a blend of Lovecraftian concepts with a narrative inspired by the runaway success that had been experienced by a very different horror author: Stephen King.

Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow) is a wildly successful horror author known for a string of best-selling novels, with his latest work The Hobb’s End Horror having recently hit the shelves. There are two problems, however: the first is that his book appears to be affecting readers in disturbing ways, and the second is that he’s disappeared. Cane’s publisher Jackson Harglow (Charleton Heston) hires sardonic insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) in order to track the author down, sending Cane’s editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) along for the ride. While Hobb’s end may be fictional, Trent soon discovers that the covers from Cane’s books can be reassembled into a map showing the supposed location of the real town, somewhere in New England. So, he and Styles take a road trip to find it, and as they get closer, the lines between reality and fantasy blur, along with the lines between sanity and madness. (Trent should have taken warning from the fact that the back cover of The Hobb’s End Horror promises that Cane’s next novel will be titled In the Mouth of Madness.) In the Mouth of Madness also stars David Warner, John Glover, Bernie Casey, Peter Jason, and Francis Bay.

Carpenter had turned the project down the first time that he was offered the script, but after going through a string of other potential directors, it ended up landing back in his lap. Yet it wasn’t really the Lovecraftian angle that finally made him sign on, but rather the personal and psychological journey undertaken by John Trent. Trent is a self-professed “smartest person in the room,” a man who thinks that he’s seen everything and that he alone can uncover the mundane truths that lie behind any seemingly supernatural occurrence. Yet once he makes it to Hobb’s End and discovers exactly what Sutter Cane is up to, he finds out that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than were dreamt of in his cynical philosophy. The result, unsurprisingly, is that Trent ends up going completely mad. Carpenter took particular pleasure in forcing this natural skeptic to confront experience that were beyond his rational comprehension, and Neill is quite good at playing characters who have the chinks in their armor gradually exposed. It’s Trent’s journey into the heart of mental darkness that’s the real heart and soul of In the Mouth of Madness.

Still, there’s no denying the fact that Trent’s personal journey isn’t what turned In the Mouth of Madness into a cult classic. Instead, it’s those Lovecraftian visions and the general postmodernist nature of the story, which freely breaks the fourth wall not just between fantasy and reality, but between the film and its audience as well. Cane’s story offers books within books, and Carpenter’s adaptation offers films within films. None of it particularly coherent, but it’s not intended to be. In the Mouth of Madness is all about the experience, not the thinly-drawn narrative that underpins it. To that end, Carpenter found perfect collaborators in the KNB EFX Group, which supplied some suitably Lovecraftian monstrosities like Mrs. Pickman and the memorable “wall of monsters” (even if the latter is borrowed more from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser than it is from Lovecraft). ILM also contributed some mind-bending visual effects like the moment that Sutter Cane tears reality open and displays the authorship that lies behind it.

All of which naturally results in John Trent losing his increasingly tenuous grip on reality. The Lovecraftian visions may not have been what attracted Carpenter to the script, but Lovecraft’s stories frequently revolve around people who have been driven mad by being exposed to the unimaginable horrors that lurk in the margins of our own reality, so it really was a Lovecraftian element that got him involved after all. All roads lead back to Lovecraft one way or the other, and Carpenter just took his own path to reach that point. Come for the visions of cosmic horror that In the Mouth of Madness offers, but stay for the personal horrors that any one of us could experience when our rationality becomes threatened by things that we can’t explain. “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad,” the Cheshire Cat told Alice. Or, as Norman Bates told Marion Crane just before introducing her to his mother, “We all go a little mad sometimes.”

Cinematographer Gary F. Kibbe shot In the Mouth of Madness on 35mm film using Panavision Panaflex cameras with anamorphic Panavision and Cooke lenses, framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release. This version uses a 4K scan of the original camera negative that was done by Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging, with digital cleanup and grading performed at Duplitech (both Dolby Vision and HDR10 grades are included). The titles and visual effects sequences were all composited optically (even the ones that utilize digital effects), so they’re scanned from dupe elements and display the expected degradation in image quality, but outside of that? I’ve got nothing, because this is as close to perfection as In the Mouth of Madness will ever get. Shout! Factory’s 2018 Blu-ray was also based on 4K scans, presumably the same ones, but the increases in clarity here are significant (check out the weave on Sam Neill’s suit!) The grain structure (which is very fine) is also reproduced better than it was on 1080p Blu-ray, and the fact that it’s a robust encode on a BD-100 certainly doesn’t hurt.

The contrast range is strong, with deep, deep blacks where appropriate (like during the “poor man’s process” shots of Neill and Carmen driving at night). Yet the whites are gleaming, especially on the walls of the main hallway of the mental institution, which are offset by the slightly duller whites of John Glover’s lab coat. That’s an example of how there are as many improvements here due to expanded color details as there are in terms of actual resolution, relatively pure whites and pure blacks included. The flesh tones all look natural, with none of the reddish hues in some previous versions. While Kibbe wasn’t a cinematographer noted for having a “signature” style, there is a consistent look to many of his films for John Carpenter, and this falls squarely within the range of expectations. There’s nothing whatsoever to criticize here.

Audio is offered in English 5.1 and 2.0, with optional English SDH subtitles. In The Mouth of Madness was released theatrically in 5.1 DTS, with optical Dolby SR as a backup for theatres not yet equipped for digital. This is a pretty typical early/mid Nineties DTS mix, which is to say, it’s loud, aggressive, and booming. The patented John Carpenter audio “stingers” that accompany jump scares have enough dynamic impact to sell the intended effect, and the mix also makes abundant use of directionalized sound effects across every vector of the 5.1 soundstage. There are some downsides to the boominess, especially during the John Carpenter/Jim Lange/Dave Davies opening title track, where that boominess does detract from the clarity of the music mix (especially when compared to the cut off the soundtrack album), but that’s a minor quibble. Most people will be thrilled at how this 5.1 track supports the wild visuals on display.

Arrow’s Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD release of In the Mouth of Madness is UHD only—there’s no Blu-ray included in the package. The insert is reversible, with new artwork by Francesco Francavilla on one side and the familiar theatrical poster art on the other. There’s a two-sided foldout poster featuring the same two designs, as well as six different art cards and a 60-page booklet with essays by Richard Kadrey, Alexandra West, Josh Hurtado, Guy Adams, Willow Catelyn Maclay, and George Daniel Lea. The following extras are included:

• Commentaries:
  • John Carpenter & Sandy King Carpenter
  • John Carpenter & Gary B. Kibbe
  • Rebekah McKendry & Elric Kane
• Interviews:
  • Sandy King Carpenter (HD – 21:37)
  • Jürgen Prochnow (HD – 6:46)
  • Julie Carmen (HD – 9:47)
  • Greg Nicotero (HD – 16:35)
• We Are What He Writes (HD – 33:25)
• Reality Is Not What It Used to Be (HD – 11:27)
• Horror’s Hallowed Grounds (HD – 11:31)
• Home Movies from Hobb’s End (HD & Upscaled SD – 12:08)
• Vintage Making Of (Upscaled SD – 5:03)
• Theatrical Trailer (Upscaled SD – 1:47)
• TV Spots (Upscaled SD – 9:35, 12 in all)
• Image Gallery (HD, 90 in all)

Arrow has collected the two previously available commentaries for In the Mouth of Madness and added a new one featuring Rebekah McKendry and Elric Kane from the Colors of the Dark podcast. They explore the nature of the story, not just from the Lovecraftian angle but also from the “killer book” perspective that’s been widely used even outside of Lovecraft’s influence. They discuss the use of repetitive patterns in the film and echoes outside of it—they point out that while it’s well-known that John Carpenter has referred to it as being part of his “apocalypse trilogy,” it also can be seen as a part of Sam Neill’s “madness trilogy” with Possession and Event Horizon. McKendry and Kane also cover practical details about the making of In the Mouth of Madness, from its convoluted development history to technical information about the cinematography, makeup, and visual effects. Like many podcaster commentaries, this is as much an appreciation as it is a scene-specific track, but it’s still a lot of fun.

The first archival commentary is with John Carpenter and his wife Sandy King Carpenter. It was originally recorded for the 2018 Blu-ray release from Shout! Factory, and by that point, it was already pretty clear that their memories were starting to get shaky (something that they do acknowledge). They spend some time just watching the movie and occasionally narrating it to fill in the gaps, but they recall details like the challenges of shooting in Toronto and dealing with New Line. John says that Bob Shaye thought the montage in the asylum scene near the beginning of the film was a cliché, and Sandy retorts that Bob Shaye is a cliché (her feelings about him will become a running theme throughout the extras). Aside from the snark, it’s not a particularly interesting commentary overall, although John does make the interesting point that he wasn’t just influenced by Lovecraft on the film, but also by Luis Buñuel.

Finally, the oldest commentary here was originally recorded for the 1997 LaserDisc from New Line, featuring John Carpenter and Gary F. Kibbe. Carpenter was much younger at that point and his memories were fresher, so this is a much more engaging track than the one with Sandy. He’s still prone to narrating things (he always has been), but he peppers Kibbe with questions regarding the cinematography, so there’s actually some interesting information here, even if it’s as dry as any other of his tracks where he’s not paired with Kurt Russell.

Arrow has added two new interviews for this release. The first is with Sandy King Carpenter (and yes, the subject of her dislike of Bob Shaye does pop up). She describes her background and explains why she made the transition from animation to live action, as well as how her personal and professional relationship with John has affected their work together. She feels that it’s her job as a producer to facilitate the director’s vision, and to deal with any challenges that arise along the way.

The new interview with Jürgen Prochnow is briefer, but he tells the story of how John Carpenter called him up to ask him to be in the film, and he didn’t believe that it was really Carpenter. With that sorted out, he was thrilled at the opportunity once he had the chance to read the script. Prochnow says that it’s always better playing villains, because they give you more to do.

The next three interviews were all originally recorded for the 2018 Shout! Factory Blu-ray. Julie Carmen talks about how she got the role and what Carpenter used to influence her performance (spoiler alert: it was a Howard Hawks film). She also addresses how she feels that those who criticized her for her performance didn’t grasp what she and Carpenter were doing. Greg Nicotero, on the other hand, provides a breakdown of the various makeup set pieces in the film like the “wall of monsters,” Mrs. Pickman, the Sutter Cane reveal, the aged bicyclist, and the split-iris contact lenses.

Arrow has also added two new visual essays. We Are What He Writes is a three-part appreciation of In the Mouth of Madness, including Madness for Mass Consumption with Camille Zaurin; Not the Carpenters Too! with Tom Rutter; and God Shouldn’t Be a Hack Horror Writer with George Lea. (Frustratingly, while there are title cards identifying each section, the contributors themselves are never named in the body of the essay or even on the menu selection, only in the closing credits). Reality is Not What It Used to Be is with Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, who notes that despite the obvious postmodern influences in In the Mouth of Madness, there’s a long history of works of art that supposedly have influenced reality.

The rest of the extras are all archival. Horror’s Hallowed Grounds is a 2018 episode of Sean Clark’s web series focusing on In the Mouth of Madness. Clark has a long history of exploring Carpenter’s work, and he does a fine job here (even though as can sometimes happen, he meets a little resistance along the way). Home Movies from Hobb’s End is camcorder footage that appears to have been shot by Greg Nicotero both on the set and in the KNB workshop. It demonstrates some of the makeup gags from the film, including some that didn’t make it into the final cut, but the highlight for most fans is going to be the “wall of monsters” footage. Finally, there’s also a Vintage Making Of that looks like it was part of the original electronic press kit. It does offer some behind-the-scenes footage, as well as interviews with Sam Neill, Charleton Heston, Julie Carmen, Jürgen Prochnow, and yes, even John Carpenter himself sits down to answer a couple of questions without getting too grumpy about it.

That’s all of the previous Shout! Factory and New Line extras, plus a nice collection of new ones, but there do appear to be a few stragglers from overseas releases that are missing here, like some vintage B-roll footage that was available on a German and an Italian DVD. Metropolitan in France also had a DVD featuring their own interviews with Carpenter, Nicotero, and Carmen (note that the latter two are not the same as the ones included here). But that’s about it, and none of them have ever been offered on a domestic version anyway, so they’re no major loss here. In all other respects, this is about as definitive a release of In the Mouth of Madness as we’re ever going to get, and the video quality alone makes it a substantial upgrade over any and all previous versions. To mix horror metaphors, Sutter Cane has such sights to show you, and his cosmic visions will never look better than they do here. Just try not to let them drive you mad.

-Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).