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"The American way of death," the ideal junction of George A. Romero and Stephen King. "Are You Lonesome Tonight" is the motif for twins gone but not forgotten, the fraternal tumor is a peeper that opens wide in the budding author's gray matter. The highbrow professor (Timothy Hutton) has a nom de plume for churning out sleazy pulp, he lives happily with wife (Amy Madigan) and towheaded toddlers while envying the "simple, violent nature" of the counterfeit self. A weaselly blackmailer (Robert Joy) triggers the rupture, the sheriff (Michael Rooker) follows the ensuing trail of corpses. "It's my turn to be storyteller, okay?" Bertolucci's Partner is the useful antecedent, the artistic psyche between mainstream and underground is the split of the filmmaker lovingly re-creating a Nabokovian New England in his native Pittsburgh. Outer and inner beings, the "peaceful frame of mind" versus the vile muse, the grisly creativity that seizes the hand holding the pencil. The slashing of the literary agent (Rutanya Alda) takes note of a Cats poster in her office, a dark hallway fitfully illuminated by crimson and blue neon gives a friendly nod to Argento, who has his own version of the fable in Tenebrae. "What's going on?" "Murder. D'you want some?" The academic "witch doctor" (Julie Harris) deems the unleashed beast "a conjuration," just the chance for the somber Hutton to cut loose as a putrefying, razor-wielding greaser-demon. A writing bout suits the meeting of the self, sparrows multiply out of Hitchcock but Romero goes direct to the source with Goya's sleep of reason, a vortex climaxes the search for wholeness, "ugliness" and all. Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness is strikingly concurrent. With Chelsea Field, Royal Dano, Beth Grant, Kent Broadhurst, Tom Mardirosian, and Glenn Colerider.
--- Fernando F. Croce |