I’ve been a fan of John Carpenter’s for decades. Since I first saw Halloween in the early 80s, I knew that this guy would be a filmmaker who’s career I needed to follow, and follow it I did. Through the 80s and 90s I watched and rewatched John Carpenter films a LOT!  I do have my favourites (Escape from New York, Halloween) and yes there are some that I don’t love as much (Dark Star) but I will always watch anything this master has done. 

After 1988s They Live there was a little bit of a lack of Carpenter films, we did eventually get Memoirs of An Invisible Man in ’92 and the TV movie Body Bags in ’93 but by that time I was craving big screen Carpenter and so when it was announced that in 1994 we would be getting In The Mouth of Madness, I was very excited. Starring one of my favourite actors Sam Neill, this film looked bonkers (and it was) and to this day I still remember sitting in the cinema, the lights go down and that thumping Shirley walker/John Carpenter music kicks in. Yes! A new John Carpenter film was entering my life.  Over the years I’ve seen In The Mouth of Madness a few times. I owned the VHS, I owned an imported Region 1 DVD there wasn’t a UK release to my knowledge for quite a while) but over the years, during house moves etc, many of my physical media discs were lost and In The Mouth of Madness was one of them. So you can imagine how happy I was when Arrow Video announced that the UK was getting a feature packed release of this John Carpenter classic!

Part of an unofficial “Apocalypse Trilogy.” (the other two films being They Live, and Prince of Darkness) In the Mouth of Madness takes us into a world where super famous Horror author Sutter Cane is missing. As crowds turn violent waiting for copies of his latest book, Sutter Cane’s publishers hire insurance investigator John Trent (brilliantly played by Sam Neill)  to find him. With Cane’s editor, Linda Styles (played by the wonderful Julie Carmen), John sets off in search of the elusive author and finds himself trapped in Hobb’s End, a town that should only exist within the author’s books. As fiction and reality blur, John begins to realize that between the lines, beyond the page, somewhere out there in the dark, something evil is waiting to break through.

If that all sounds pretty insane, then its a great description. In The Mouth Of Madness will shake your brain pretty often and even though I’ve seen this film dozens of times, I still notice new things upon each viewing. It begs for rewatches.   If you love the Lovecraft style of storytelling then In The Mouth of Madness is right up your creepy alley. The cast look to have had a blast making it (watch the featurettes for more of those stories) and in this new Arrow release, the film has never looked this good or sounded this great. Get the volume up!, the lights turned off and treat yourself to this John Carpenter 90s classic. 

4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films
• 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Original lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 and stereo 2.0 audio options
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

Its now onto one of my favourite things about physical media releases, the audio commentary. On this edition we get THREE chat tracks, two of them are cast and crew connected whilst one isn’t.  We get  and archival audio commentary with director John Carpenter and producer Sandy King Carpenter, an archival audio commentary with director John Carpenter and director of photography Gary B. Kibbe and finally a brand new audio commentary by filmmakers Rebekah McKendry & Elric Kane, co-hosts of Colors of the Dark podcast

If audio tracks aren’t your thing then don’t worry! there are a a bunch of featurettes for you to check out (and I did) 
• Making Madness, a newly filmed interview with producer Sandy King Carpenter (21 Minutes)
• Do You Read Sutter Cane?, a newly filmed interview with actor Jürgen Prochnow (7 Minutes)
• The Whisperer of the Dark, an archive interview with actress Julie Carmen (10 Minutes)
• Greg Nicotero’s Things in the Basement, an archive interview with special effects artist Greg Nicotero (16 Minutes)
• We Are What He Writes, a new featurette in praise of John Carpenter and In the Mouth of Madness  (33 Minutes)
• Reality Is Not What It Used To Be, a new appreciation by film scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (11 Minutes)
• Horror’s Hallowed Grounds, an archive featurette looking at the locations used in the film (11 Minutes)
• Home Movies From Hobb’s End, behind-the-scenes footage (12 Minutes)
• The Making of In the Mouth of Madness, a vintage featurette from around the time of the films release (5 Minutes) and the Theatrical trailer and TV spots

Just to add those up for you  (to save you doing it) that’s just over 126 minutes of featurettes in this set which is a massive improvement on the Region 1 DVD I used to own many years ago. Whilst many of those featurettes are short, when you add them all up or watch them all in the same evening- you get a wonderful built up picture of the film itself from pretty much every point of view and that’s exactly what I want from my featurettes.

When it comes to the design and presentation of the bluray set, Arrow once again have done a great job and we get a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Francesco Francavilla

A double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Francesco Francavilla
and one of those lovely perfect bound collector’s book featuring new writing on the film by Guy Adams, Josh Hurtado, Richard Kadrey, George Daniel Lea, Willow Catelyn Maclay, and Alexandra West