Volume 1 - I, Madman and the Dangerous Horror Story

Welcome to The Mike's Double Feature Picture Show, where I promise to be more interesting than the title of the site. I'm The Mike, and I've got this theory that movies are better in pairs. I'm not saying one movie isn't a good idea - I'm firmly in the All Movies Matter mindset - but when you realize a movie connects to another, whether it be through some cast/crew overlap or just a tonal similarity, you've got the makings of a great evening.  It's like people, but without the threat of divorce. I'm pretty sure science did a study on it.

No, I don't have a link to it.

HOW THIS WORKS
Step 1) I pick a movie.
Step 2) I tell you about the movie.
Step 3) I tell you what we're looking for in a double feature movie.
Step 4) Another movie!
Step 5) Victory!

For our first adventure, let's start with a mostly forgotten horror movie from the late 1980s that might make you think twice before you take a trip to your favorite used bookstore - especially if you're afraid of clay monsters.

I, Madman

1989, Directed by Tibor Takacs

I, Madman is one of my favorite late '80s horror films that nobody seems to talk about anymore. It's a high concept plot wrapped up in a low budget package, and it's got so many great things going for it.

Jenny Wright (Near Dark) star as Virginia Clayton, an aspiring actress/used book store employee who becomes caught up in a pulp horror novel that comes across her desk. That book is Much of Madness, More of Sin, by Malcolm Brand, and I've got to admit it sounds like something I would want to read. Early in the film Virginia's boyfriend (Clayton Rohner, April Fool's Day) reads the blurb from the back of the dust jacket out loud, and....well, I'll just let you see it with your own eyes....

"Tortured and ridiculed by the scientific establishment for his investigations into the creation of superior life forms, noted zoologist Dr. Alan Kessler continues his experiments in the cloaked secrecy of his basement laboratory. Finally, after years of failure and frustration, he manages to successfully mate his own seed with an egg excised from the ovaries of a jackal and plants it in the womb of an unwitting human surrogate."

You'd read that book, right? Me too. It's got a dash of The Island of Dr. Moreau, a hint of Rosemary's Baby and - as we soon learn from Virginia's explanation of the book's plot - a handful of Frankenstein. Apparently that jackal man comes to life and doesn't like the doctor too much. If that sounds like something you want to read about - or see in a movie - then I, Madman is definitely for you.

Of course, it doesn't really matter if we like Much of Madness, More of Sin - it matters whether or not Virginia likes it. And she likes it a lot. Why is her boyfriend in her apartment reading that dust jacket anyway? Because she got so scared that she made what the kids these days would label....a booty call. And we can tell from the following scene that the book awoke some of Virginia's more animal impulses. Looks like you landed in the right place at the right time, boyfriend who also conveniently happens to be a police detective.

Virginia likes the book so much that she seeks out the only other book published by the author, which you might have guessed by now has the title I, Madman. And that's when things really get interesting for Virginia, because this book also gets her attention - but not in the same way as Brand's previous work. She's still addicted to the book and frightened in that wonderful great horror story kind of way, yet this time she also gets a bit more paranoid and a bit morbid. After another late night encounter with Detective Boyfriend he asks if she's OK and she responds by asking a couple of questions inspired by the book.....

"How much do you love me, Richard?"

"On a scale of 1-10? 20."

"Enough to cut off your ear?"

(You got game, Richard, aka Detective Boyfriend. Smooth.)

If it sounds like Virginia's starting to spend too much time in a nasty book, that's because a nasty book seems to be spending its time torturing Virginia. Turns out Dr. Kessler is back for the sequel, and he's also showing up in Virginia's life and reenacting the twists and turns (and murders) of the book on people around her. At first it seems like it's just in her head, but soon Virginia starts to see the things happen around her and - after a visit to the seedy publisher behind these novels - begins to realize that Malcolm Brand might have created something that isn't fiction.

I won't spoil any more of the plot than that, just know that you should strap yourselves in for a bit of blood, a dose of Rear Window-esque police drama, and the kind of finale you would expect from director Tibor Takacs, who made this shortly after completing the kids vs. a portal to Hell classic, The Gate.

So what are we working with here? What are the factors that make I, Madman as much fun as it is and what are the things that we're looking for in a double feature?

• I, Madman's concept is the first thing that draws me to it. Horror movies about horror stories seem to be worth a viewing more often than not, and Takacs and screenwriter David Chaskin (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2) capitalize on that. It makes a lot of sense that this is written by someone who previously did a Nightmare film, because I, Madman's best moments live in that area where we're not quite sure if what Virginia is experiencing is set in reality or a kind of dream. 
• Even better, the horror story at the center of I, Madman seems to be such an outlier in society that there's a fantastic mystique around it. This isn't a banned book, it just seems to be something that no one except Virginia has heard of. Again there's a blurring of the line between reality and fiction here, which sets up the classic "nobody believes it's real even though things are seriously real, just look at those bodies over there" element that you need in this kind of movie.
• One of the problems with matching this up with a double feature is that it's obviously an '80s movie and it's not quite on the same wavelength as a lot of its contemporaries. There are parallels to be drawn with the Nightmare on Elm Street series and some other woman-who's-connected-to-a-killer flicks (like Bad Dreams or Popcorn, the latter of which also has a dangerous forbidden horror tale), but the heroine here is a little stronger and isn't dealing with any kind of past trauma. She's just an intellectual who slipped into the wrong book and didn't know what would come from it. We need to find another movie with someone like that.
• This is a movie with a cat scare. I don't know if that's relevant, but I just really love movies where a cat jumps in front of someone at the right moment. Jenny Wright sells it well too. I kinda love her. That last sentence wasn't relevant, but I do. This whole bullet point is irrelevant, I guess. But I love cats and Jenny Wright. Let's move on.

Now, let's get to our double feature pick.....

In The Mouth of Madness

1994, Directed by John Carpenter

This almost seemed like too easy of a pick. One movie's about a book that drives someone nearly insane, the other's about a book that drives a lot of people insane. I almost called off this recommendation about halfway through watching both movies again, but then a revelation hit me. We'll get to that in a minute.

More people are probably acquainted with In The Mouth of Madness, arguably John Carpenter's last great horror picture, than they are with I, Madman. It's easy to see why from watching this film - it's a bigger budget horror film with a bigger name cast. (Charlton Heston is in it!) The films have a lot of similarities in their plots - a dangerous book, skeptical male leads who question the artistic value of horror fiction, an author who has dark powers to taunt his victims, a lot of blood and deformities - but it's their differences that really made me think this had become a fun double feature.

While I, Madman focuses on an obscure book that seems to target only the woman who found it, In the Mouth of Madness is about a man named John Trent, played by Sam Neill (Jurassic Park), who is the target of a famous author who outsells Stephen King. (Carpenter makes sure we hear that multiple times, just to hammer it home.) Trent, an insurance investigator hired to locate author Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow, Das Boot), becomes the target of the author - but there's also a much more grand design behind Cane's game. And while I, Madman brings its villain into Virginia's world, In the Mouth of Madness invites Trent into Cane's world. The lines of reality and fiction are blurred, but here it's even more obvious that things are wrong. We know at certain points in I, Madman that Virginia is still in her world, but at a certain point in In the Mouth of Madness that Trent has gone too far into Cane's world and there will be no letting up on him from that point forward.

Watching these films as a double feature made me think about the Mad Max franchise, and not just because all these movies have the word "Mad" somewhere in the title. Particularly, I was thinking about the original Mad Max - a small film where one man has his limits pushed and has to survive - and Mad Max: Fury Road - a big budget reboot where things are so much bigger in scale and it feels like the whole world is hanging on the conflict at the center of the film. That's the same kind of relationship that you get from an I, Madman/In the Mouth of Madness double feature. One film is small and focused on one thing, the other has a whole lot going on and a lot more at stake than just the lives of a small group of people. 

So, I recommend you hit up I, Madman first, for a taste of what can happen when a horror book comes after a few people, then take it to the next level with In the Mouth of Madness, where you can joy some full-blown, cats-and-dogs-living-together mass hysteria. Once you're done you can pick up your favorite horror novel and be happy that the author hasn't set their sights on you.

Yet.