We all go a little mad sometimes...

A Quick Hit on Insanity

      I've always thought that I am a little quirky. I'm sure in many books I would be considered insane. I talk to myself and answer myself sometimes. Perhaps this is insanity and perhaps this is me working through my own stuff out loud. It can be quite embarrassing to have someone catch me talking to myself. I always shut up and pretend I didn't get caught. I try to make the person who caught me think that they didn't catch me and that it is in fact their own head voices they heard. I've been in love with someone for two years that doesn't love me and probably never will. I've barely tried to meet anyone new and those I have met bore me because they are so normal. You ever wake up from a dream where you rejected yourself? I have. So insanity may be something I have a good idea about. So I give you my top 5 insanity movies.

In The Mouth Of Madness

My roommate just recently made the observation that Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is the real world incarnation of a Lovecraftian theme. It is that quite astute thought that made me think of In the Mouth of Madness. In the Mouth Of Madness is the third movie in John Carpenter’s apocalypse trilogy and is arguably the best of the three. I could make the argument for John Carpenter's The Thing and I am sure someone out there holds a torch for Prince of Darkness but I still choose this movie. The movie stars Sam Neill as a insurance detective asked to look into the disappearance of famed horror novelist Sutter Cane and how his search that takes him down the rabbit hole into insanity. That he is committed at the beginning of the movie tells you that much. Yet the movie is more about the razor’s edge between the insane and the sane. What if the world went insane? Do the sane people then become the insane? I’ve watched the movie many times and each time it disturbs me. The movie slowly creeps up your spine tickling parts of your mind that might be better left untickled. Go buy it or rent it from Amazon or if you know me ask me for the DVD. I don't think you'll be disappointed and if you are well I can hardly be blamed for your problems.

Mr. Unhappy sez: The end of the world as told by the insane. To quote Ron Weasley "Wicked."

Fight Club

      Based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk this movie is literally about two men who inhabit the same body. Edward Norton is the unnamed narrator who lives his life going to self help groups so he can feel OK enough to go to sleep. Brad Pitt plays Tyler Durden, the man Norton meets who changes his life. That Norton and Pitt are in fact the (spoilers) same person (and if you didn't know that where the hell have you been since this movie came out?) is something you never even suspect until the end of the movie. Once you see it, you can understand and look at the movie in new and interesting ways. I thoroughly enjoy the story of a man who really doesn't know who he is anymore and it takes his own Id to show him a new way to live. This movie, literally, lets you follow insanity and even when you know the trick, you can still enjoy finding all the clues throughout the movie you missed and you get to wonder. How did I not see this coming? 

Mr. Unhappy sez: Don't you hate it when you bang the girl you hate while in a fugue state? Although you are banging...could be worse things to do...like destroy the world.

The Shining 

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Perhaps the scariest movie ever. I think at one point a walrus is blowing a bear. I'm not sure. You got Jack Nicholson at his full Jackness, Shelley Duvall looking like a shaky girl with a mild meth problem, Scatman Caruthers as a freaked out pimp who loves to get in kids heads and give them the sexy eyes, and two twins that speak in unison and then flash into being cut up into not quite even pieces. It isn't the violence...it's the non uniformity of the pieces. Watching The Shining, you wonder if Jack is being haunted or is simply insane. Proof for being haunted is when he walks into room 237 and he makes out with the decomposing girl in the tub. Proof he is insane, my favorite line. "I'm not gonna hurt you, I'm just gonna bash your brains in, bash em right the fuck in!" and the novel he is writing. All I know is that when Shelley Duvall goes running through the hotel finding creepy things along the way, I felt as insane as Jack did. Redrum indeed.

Mr. Unhappy sez: Redrum...redrum...watching a father go insane to the point he'd kill his family. Madness had never been so clear and precise.

Mullholland Drive  

If you've ever watched the scene from David Lynch's Twin Peaks where the little person in a red suit speaks backwards and dances creepily, you understand that a David Lynch movie is not gonna be the most normal experience of your life. Mullholland Drive is a movie that throws you off by simply changing whenever it decides it has run out of story. Mullholland Drive is the short story collection of movies. One minute your watching the story of a young actress who comes to Hollywood to achieve fame the next you are in a diner where a man is describing the dream he had that suddenly becomes true. Then you are back with the actress who now starts a lesbian relationship with the roommate who crawled into her house with no memory of who she was. Then you are transported to the future when the actress and the no memory girl are broken up and she is masturbating in the living room and finally some tiny old people (like smurf sized) grow into normal sized people and chase the actress around the house until she dies of fear because it is scary as shit to have smiling old people chase you. Still gives me the willies. This is the movie equivalent of being schizophrenic...I think.

Mr. Unhappy sez: This movie makes me want to give David Lynch a lifetime achievement award just so I could sit down with him and find out what the hell this movie means. Like seriously what the hell is with those old people?

Psycho 

The original movie about madness. The movie itself keeps the watcher off balance as it takes you through the first half of the movie following Janet Leigh's Marion Crane only to kill her off. The shower scene has made baths the sexy choice when at a motel in the middle of nowhere. Anthony Perkins is genius playing Norman Bates with a likable charm that hides the storm of madness beneath his cool exterior. I've enjoyed this movie from the moment I first watched it. Alfred Hitchcock was the master of suspense and gave you a glimpse into the mind of a psychopath. Based on real life serial killer, Ed Gein, Psycho was and is a portrait of a man who loves his mother and what boy doesn't love his mother. I loved mine. Not enough to keep her corpse in the basement and hold conversations with her. Just a note: The 1998 Gus Van Sant shot for shot remake is well done. There are some minor problems with it but as Kevin Smith pointed out to me, if you pause the shower scene just right as Anne Heche falls over and the camera pans above her you can see her butthole. Juvenile...yes...are you gonna check to see if it is true? Of course you are.

Mr. Unhappy sez:  If you ever wanted to see a man play crazy as deftly as humanly possible, watch Anthony Perkins. If you just want to see b-hole...check out Anne Heche.

Identity

I was gonna end on Psycho. It is the movie I quoted as the title to this blog entry but I was looking for something to watch and saw Identity and realized just how awesomely well it would fit with this theme. Identity is the story of a group of people, all stuck during a storm at a Motel where a serial killer is killing them off one by one. One of them is the killer but the trick is figuring out who it is. I'll give you a hint, it is not who you think it is. Also the overwhelming arc is regarding a serial killer being sent to the electric chair unless his last ditch effort to prove himself insane gives him a reprieve. The killer and the folks at the hotel are connected but how they are is the great twist of the movie. I like this movie. It is a smart movie that keeps the viewer engaged and wondering whodunit until the very end.  Like The Sixth Sense, you may want to watch the movie over again to see the things you've missed because it seems so simple once you get it. John Cusak, Amanda Peete, Ray Liotta, Jake Busey, and John C. McGinley all bring their "A" game and deliver a solid mystery and a creepy movie. Not every one's cup of tea but if you give it a chance, I think you'll be happy.

 

 Mr. Unhappy sez: Identity is a movie about who you are and what goes on in a killer's head. Although I may or may not cackle out loud when John C. McGinley's wife gets hammered by a car. Hilarious.

 

 

***

 This is not a complete list of movies that show you madness but it is a good list. Some others you might want to see...

1. Antichrist

2. One Flew over The Cuckoo's Nest

3. Black Swan

4. Shutter Island

5. Misery

 In Closing...

 

Mr. Unhappy sez: Ask not what a psycho can do to your friends, ask what friends you would like to see killed by a psycho.