"What about the people who don't read?" - Dr. Wren

"There's a movie." - John Trent

A unique set of objects used in the 1994 film In the Mouth of Madness are now on display inside Scared to Death: The Thrill of Horror Film at the Museum of Pop Culture.

Pictured below, The Breathing Tunnel, The Feeding, The Whisperer of the Dark, The Thing in the Basement, Haunter Out of Time, and The Hobb's End Horror make up the six Sutter Cane novels from In the Mouth of Madness that you can see for yourself at MoPOP.

Sutter Cane novels from 'In the Mouth of Madness' (1994) | Courtesy of Tristan Evans

Directed and scored by John Carpenter and written by Michael De Luca, In the Mouth of Madness is the third and final chapter of Carpenter’s Apocalypse series, which includes The Thing (1982) and Prince of Darkness (1987). The film is a modernist take on the gothic horror of H.P. Lovecraft with a nod to Dario Argento’s bizarrely beautiful imagery and twisting storytelling. Satirizing the idea that film violence causes real world violence, a popular argument in the 1980s that culminated in media parental advisory warnings by the 1990s, Carpenter and De Luca take that idea to its most extreme conclusion where a book causes psychotic breaks in its readers, prompting the end of the world.

Sutter Cane novels from 'In the Mouth of Madness' (1994) | Courtesy of Tristan Evans

Fun fact: Arranging the book covers in a certain order creates a map of New Hampshire, revealing the location of the town of Hobb's End.

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