After the slasher-heavy aughts and the found-footage saturation of the early-2010s, it seems we have finally entered a new era of prestige horror. Between “It Follows,” “The Witch,” “Get Out,” “It,” “Hereditary,” and dozens of others, it’s been proven time and again over the past few years that being a great horror movie and a great movie period are not mutually exclusive. One perpetually mentioned influence on these new horror auteurs is the legendary John Carpenter, whose star has only continued growing in his eight-year-long absence from directing (almost as long as his prior hiatus of nine years). Though his most popular and successful films have always been regarded as classics in their respective genres, it seems as though Carpenter’s singular genius has only come to be widely recognized in his absence from the world of movies. The writer/director/producer/composer has had an incalculable impact on genre filmmaking, with gorgeous widescreen cinematography, groundbreaking use of special effects, and a talent for building tension that rivals the likes of Stanley Kubrick.
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Carpenter’s childhood in Kentucky would give him a love of Westerns and science fiction films, leading him to the University of Southern California, where he would hone his skills alongside contemporaries such as future collaborator Dan O’Bannon, with whom he would make 1974’s “Dark Star.” After a brief period working in films for television, Carpenter exploded onto the scene with “Halloween,” singlehandedly birthing the slasher movie, fundamentally changing the horror genre forever, and cementing his legacy as a great filmmaker. Carpenter would then go on to direct almost two dozen films of wildly varying tones, genres, and styles, and with a new (Carpenter-approved) “Halloween” sequel in theaters now, it seems only fitting to reexamine the storied career of one of Hollywood’s most accomplished and multi-talented filmmakers, so here is a retrospective of each of John Carpenter’s films. —Jake Naturman
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“Dark Star” (1974)
Everyone needs to start somewhere. For John Carpenter, as well as his one-time screenwriter partner Dan O’Bannon, the beginning was found with “Dark Star,” a sci-fi romp that was more overtly comedic, but no less pulpy and enjoyable, than the films that followed in the next 10 or so years for the legendary genre filmmaker. And like many directors’ first films, it didn’t come easily for Carpenter in the beginning. Produced while he and Bannon were still under the University of Southern California, “Dark Star” was made with a limited budget over an extended period of time (at least, as far as Carpenter’s movies are concerned). With a budget under a measly $60,000 and produced between 1970 and 1972, before making its official theatrical debut in 1974, it is not the film that Carpenter is best known for, nor was it particularly well-received by audiences during its initial run in cinemas. But over time, as it is sometimes the case for Carpenter’s underappreciated works, it grew a substantial following as a cult film, and it became beloved for the film that started it all for the filmmaker that’s pretty much as iconic as they come. Following a crew aboard the starship Dark Star, where we follow them twenty whole years into their mission to terminate planets that might endanger the colonization of other planets, it is certainly a labor of love for the creators. With Carpenter on deck to direct, co-write, produce and, of course, score the feature, while O’Bannon served as an editor, production designer, actor (playing Sergeant Pinback) and visual effects supervisor, it is a movie made with intense passion and clear love for the craft, as many first films tend to be, and while it isn’t without some rough edges, it is an enjoyable film to revisit when knowing what became of the filmmaker behind the ship. It also benefited enormously from the advent of home video, where it grew into the movie that it is known to be today. More than anything else, that’s perhaps the most nostalgic aspect about this first film: the notion that filmmakers could be boosted and brought to prominence through home video release. We are more than thankful to have John Carpenter’s impeccable vision brought before us, and what a legacy he went on to have. — Will Ashton
“Assault on Precinct 13” (1976)
Following “Dark Star,” a goofy sci-fi romp co-conceived by future “Alien” screenwriter Dan O’Bannon (their fallout would become the stuff of legend), Carpenter was approached to make another low budget genre movie. Having just sold the screenplay the investor wanted to do, “The Eyes of Laura Mars,” to Columbia, Carpenter decided to write an old-fashioned “siege” movie, in the style of his hero Howard Hawks‘ beloved Western “Rio Bravo.” But he cannily updated it, relocating the setting to the modern day inner city (to quote one of the movie’s title cards, “a Los Angeles ghetto”), with a police station serving as a stand-in for a besieged mission setting, and a multi-culti crew of gang bangers, hellbent on revenge after the police kill a half dozen of their own, replacing the prototypical Native Americans (“with touches of ‘Night of the Living Dead‘ and exploitation movies of the time,” Carpenter would later admit). For all intents and purposes, “Assault on Precinct 13” was John Carpenter’s first real movie, and as such, it’s a stunner. The movie has a mesmerizing effect that borders on the hypnotic. This is true right from the very beginning, with Carpenter’s percussive, synth-laden score washing over you, bringing with it both anxiety and dread. The images that follow, of the gang bangers riding around Los Angeles on the prowl, is striking due mainly to its simplicity and realism: it could be your street they’re driving down. Carpenter’s love of luxuriously widescreen photography (35 mm Panavision) is already very much in play, and he shoots the arid Los Angeles inner city like he was lensing a desolate border town in an old Western. The director’s preoccupation with an almost apocalyptic gloom is also fully accounted for, with the entire movie staged as the beginnings of an all-out war against cultured civilization and the forces of anarchical lawlessness. This all culminates in the moment, a sequence so shocking Carpenter says that he wouldn’t have included it if he was making the movie today. In this scene, a young girl, complete with blonde, braided hair the color of sunshine, stops for ice cream at an ice cream truck. She walks away, and the gang members overtake the truck. She realizes she was mistakenly given the wrong flavor, and when she returns to exchange it, one of them shoots her dead. This is all explicitly depicted, with the kind of frankness that makes your jaw drop. The fact that the murder is witnessed by the little girl’s father, who then follows the ice cream truck and becomes an integral part of the melee, makes things even more heartbreaking. Censors threatened to give the movie an X-rating, but Carpenter simply removed the sequence during a review, slipping it back into the film after it had secured an R. “Assault on Precinct 13” has a number of flourishes that would become Carpenter hallmarks: Darwin Joston‘s Napoleon Wilson would become the prototypical wise-ass Carpenter antihero (“I don’t sit in chairs as well as I used to”); long, unbroken takes meant to establish mood and atmosphere (the movie seems to have had a profound effect on Nicolas Winding Refn); a playful tweaking of cultural (or counter-cultural) iconography (one of the gang members looks like a version of Che Guevara); and a knowing exploitation of what middle-class white people are deathly afraid of (in this case the violence lurking in the inner city). When “Assault on Precinct 13” was released, it was met with critical and commercial indifference, even though the film played at Cannes, where the director of the festival called it “astonishing” (George A. Romero, who was attending the festival with “Martin,” became an early, vocal supporter). In time, it would become a bonafide cult sensation, but initially, it was largely ignored. — Drew Taylor
“Someone’s Watching Me!” (1978; TV Movie)
Even after the creative explosions that were “Dark Star” and “Assault on Precinct 13,” it was not immediately apparent that Carpenter would be the singular talent that he proved to be. His third film, produced by Warner Bros. and broadcast by NBC, was made just a few months before Carpenter’s breakout “Halloween,” and drops more than a few hints of the brilliance that he would show in that film. Starring Lauren Hutton and Carpenter’s future wife Adrienne Barbeau, “Someone’s Watching Me!” tells the story of a woman who is stalked by an older man after moving to Los Angeles. The film generally doesn’t separate itself too far from other late-night TV movies, but evidence of Carpenter’s eye for visual terror is clear, especially the use of voyeuristic POV that made Michael Myers such an intensely iconic villain. The film was acknowledged as the “lost Carpenter film” due to its lack of availability on home video — NBC never re-aired the film after its initial broadcast and as such, very few copies of it existed. Thankfully, Shout Factory’s horror distribution label Scream Factory restored and released the film on Blu-Ray, finally giving Carpenter completionists the opportunity to finish their collections.—Jake Naturman
“Halloween” (1978)
After a festival screening of “Assault on Precinct 13,” John Carpenter was approached by a pair of producers, Irwin Yablans and Moustapha Akkad, who asked if the filmmaker was interested in directing a cheapie horror movie about babysitters getting murdered. With a budget of $300,000 (peanuts, but nearly three times what he had for “Assault on Precinct 13”), Carpenter deferred much of his pay and instead insisted that every dollar be accounted for on the screen, which included shooting the movie in anamorphic widescreen (costly, but inherently powerful). What could have been just another horror film instead became a zeitgeist-capturing game changer; the kind of movie that is still endlessly analyzed and studied today (in addition to being a beloved favorite of slumber parties everywhere). Part of what makes “Halloween” so special was the craftsmanship and attention to detail: the long, unbroken Panaglide shots (see test footage here) that compounded and amplified the otherworldly tension (beginning with the prologue, a sequence that seemed like one take but was in fact three, cannily spliced together), the editing that suggested terror was lurking in every shadow or around every corner, and Carpenter’s musical score, which added a terrifying dimension while being starkly simplistic. This was all anchored by a lead performance by Jamie Lee Curtis, whose amateurishness in the role doesn’t detract from her power but intensifies it further. This is a real girl who is really being terrorized by a faceless specter. The fact that Curtis was the daughter of Janet Leigh, who starred in Alfred Hitchcock‘s original “Psycho,” added a meta-textual knowingness that suited the movie’s decidedly postmodern approach to the genre. “Halloween” felt like a line in the sand, with every horror movie afterward (and there were many, including almost a dozen sequels and remakes attached to the “Halloween” brand) being compared to it in some way, either creatively, financially (for a while it was the most profitable independent movie ever), or artistically. It’s a movie that every horror filmmaker, seems to be inspired by, but that none have ever been able to top. —DT
“Elvis” (1979; TV Movie)
As a filmmaker indispensably connected to genre movies, Carpenter’s strengths as a dramatist are generally overlooked, which is why many people forget that he took the helm on ABC’s classic biopic of the King of Rock and Roll. Reveling in a normal, grounded setting, Carpenter delivers one of the most character-driven, tender films of his entire career. Thanks to an Emmy-winning performance from Kurt Russell, the first of his varied, fantastic collaborations with Carpenter, “Elvis” wholeheartedly demonstrates just why The King was The King, with pitch-perfect recreations of Elvis’ most iconic performances and Carpenter’s typically unique camerawork heightening the depictions of the star’s rise and fall from fame. Starring alongside Russell is Shelley Winters as Elvis’ mother Gladys, Season Hubley as Priscilla, and Russell’s own father, Bing Russell, as Elvis’ father Vernon. Carpenter’s film, produced just two years after Presley’s death, can be tepid in its examination of Elvis’ decline and glosses over some of the more unsavory aspects of Presley’s life, but considering the network of its production and the timeframe of its release, it’s hard not to understand why. Regardless, “Elvis” is a high watermark for musical biopics, and remains one of Carpenter’s most unexpected accomplishments as a director. —JN
“The Fog” (1980)
Carpenter’s theatrical follow-up to “Halloween” ended up being one of his most difficult, both creatively and personally, as he dealt with both an incomprehensible first cut that required more than a third of the film to be entirely reshot and the dissolution of his relationship with producer and co-writer Debra Hill, who had been a huge part of the success of “Halloween” and would continue to be a strong creative voice in many of his subsequent films. Instead, Carpenter was falling in love with Adrienne Barbeau, whom he cast in “The Fog” as Stevie Wayne, the owner of a radio station in the sleepy seaside hamlet of Antonio Bay, on the night that a ghostly haze rolls into town, carrying with it murderous spirits hellbent on revenge. Assuming a similar dynamic to that of his “Assault on Precinct 13,” “The Fog” is the closest Carpenter has come to mimicking Robert Altman, with a collection of interlacing stories, including the tale of a young girl (Jamie Lee Curtis) who gets picked up by a hitchhiker (Tom Atkins) and subsequently stranded in the sleepy town, with Barbeau’s doomed DJ (perched atop her evocative lighthouse radio station), and a priest (Hal Holbrook), who is dealing with the sins of the past in an effort to save his future. “The Fog” is, above all else, a mood piece, with the titular meteorological anomaly beautifully brought to the screen in big, milky clouds that Carpenter and his cinematographer Dean Cundey light from behind for maximum scariness; the killer pirates (leprosy victims murdered by the town’s forefathers) taking on a raggedy fairy tale quality which, coupled with the fog, gives off the impression that they’ve stepped out of your nightmares and into real life. “The Fog” isn’t completely successful—the mixture of creaky ghost story spookiness, exemplified by the film’s opening, in which John Houseman literally tells a ghost story for about five minutes, with splatter movie violence, is often times uneasy. But it is still really, really scary and truly influential—French electronic duo Justice seem to have designed their whole live stage show based on the last five minutes of the movie (complete with the light-up cross), and Sony, in their infinite wisdom, decided to remake the movie in 2005 as a bloody teen horror movie starring a pair of quickly forgotten television actors and with none of the original’s wit, humor, or heart. —DT
“Escape From New York” (1981)
As explained by a robotic female voice during the opening moments of the movie, “Escape from New York” takes place in a dystopian future where, following a 400% rise in crime by the year 1988, “the once-great city of New York has become the one maximum security prison for the entire country. There are no guards inside the island; only prisoners and the worlds they have made. The rules are simple: once you go in, you don’t come out.” It’s in this sooty Tomorrowland that we meet Snake Plissken, played by frequent Carpenter fave Kurt Russell, who is imprisoned for a bank robbery (a sequence ultimately cut out of the movie but serving as one of history’s more memorable deleted scenes) and tasked with retrieving the President of the United States (Dr. Loomis himself, Donald Pleasence) after Air Force One crashes on the deadly island (as part of a terrorist plot), whose urban jungle landscape has mutated into a fearsome, burnt-out wasteland, ruled by warlords like the The Duke (Isaac Hayes, his velvety voice bottomed-out into a gritty snarl). Snake’s utter indifference (he’s been injected with a tiny bomb), plus the enormity of the situation outside of New York (the entire world teeters on the brink of a global war if a doodad the president is carrying doesn’t reach its destination), adds for an endlessly exciting adventure. Carpenter’s vision of New York City (actually a post-riot St. Louis) is certainly bleak but it’s not colorless or humor-free; there are a number of flourishes that border on the downright whimsical (things like Ernest Borgnine‘s Cabbie character and the streak of “Dr. Strangelove“-style satire). In fact, the director brought on old pal Nick Castle, who played “The Shape” in “Halloween,” to rewrite his original draft, which Carpenter found too serious and straightforward, with an eye towards making it weirder and more esoteric. Castle (and Carpenter) succeeded, tenfold. “Escape from New York” was Carpenter’s first large-scale production, at least compared to his earlier films, with a budget of more than $6 million (five times what he had for “The Fog”), and his ingenuity shines through in every sequence. Unburdened by prototypical visual effects, the movie feels damningly real, with some of his sharpest, most stark widescreen cinematography, full of deep blacks and otherworldly lens flares (this kind of ethereal nighttime photography would become a Carpenter hallmark). Carpenter’s cast, too, totally shines, with Lee Van Cleef, Harry Dean Stanton, Tom Atkins, and Adrienne Barbeau putting in fine supporting performances, along with the larger roles essayed by Pleasence and Hayes. Of course it’s Russell’s Snake Plissken, a tattooed, one-eyed, walking “fuck you,” that would serve to be a bonafide cinematic icon, the kind of delicious anti-hero adored and endlessly quoted (“I don’t give a fuck about your war“) by fans of a certain shade of low budget, high concept genre cinema. “He has no higher cause or sense of righteousness,” Carpenter would later say. When Russell and Carpenter would revisit this particular world, for 1997’s “Escape from L.A.,” the results weren’t as rewarding. While the film has a certain amount of goofball charm, it’s largely undone by cripplingly awful visual effects (including a number of primitive computer-generated effects), the lack of a cohesive backstory and the feeling like everyone involved was striving to recapture lightning in a bottle, without noticing the bottle had already cracked. Plans for a third film, “Escape from Earth,” were quietly shuttered after the commercial and critical failure of ‘L.A.’ Still, a grizzled old Snake Plissken, finally the age of the Western heroes Russell was emulating, might be a complete and total blast. —DT
“The Thing” (1982)
The summer of 1982 is the stuff of legend, if you’re a fan of quality big-budget studio genre movies, taking on the mythical quality of the Summer of Love or The Year We Made Contact in the mind of most film fanatics. This single sunshiney season gave us “Poltergeist,” “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” “The Road Warrior,” “E.T.,” “Conan the Barbarian,” “TRON,” “Blade Runner,” and “Rocky III.” Oh, and “The Thing.” Carpenter finally intersected with his longtime hero Howard Hawks when he remade the director’s 1951 sci-fi classic “The Thing From Another World” (a movie that one of the babysitters is watching in “Halloween”) as “The Thing,” an altogether different beast that hedged closer to the original John W. Campbell short story and featured cutting-edge effects by the wizardly Rob Bottin and Stan Winston. “The Thing” once again stars Kurt Russell, this time as a helicopter pilot stationed at a desolate arctic research station who comes in contact with a deadly, shape-shifting alien who is able to duplicate human form almost perfectly. While most of the attention “The Thing” received was due to its shocking visual effects, including a sequence when a member of the team who has been replaced by “The Thing” turns into a giant monster, his head popping off his body, sprouting legs, and scuttling away, but even more overwhelming than the film’s gory monster effects was the inherent palpable sense of claustrophobia and paranoia. Brilliantly constructed, “The Thing” was Carpenter’s first big studio movie, with the director relinquishing much of the one-man-band-style control he had doggedly maintained throughout his earlier films (it was based on a script by Bill Lancaster and featured a score by Ennio Morricone) and embracing the technology and shooting schedule that the money afforded. Instead of being hailed, as it should have, as a visionary, nearly apocalyptic landmark, it was met with a hostile response from both audiences and critics, who took the film to task for its excessive, overtly grotesque special effects. Critic David Ansen famously wrote in Newsweek (in a review called “Frozen Slime”) that, “John Carpenter blows it.” Even genre critics, who you’d think would be sympathetic, were withering, with sci-fi magazine Starlog taking the director to task and suggesting he’d be better off directing automobile accidents than movies. Russell seemed to acknowledge early on that “people aren’t going to appreciate this for 20 years,” due to the movie’s effects, but the reaction to the movie seemed to deeply affect Carpenter, even though the movie’s failure to connect with audiences had less to do with Carpenter’s pitch black worldview and more with the cinematic climate: audiences were loving the feel-good fuzziness of “E.T.;” they weren’t interested in a dread-filled character piece with an alien this horrifyingly violent (Carpenter reacted by making a sweetly nuanced riff on “E.T.,” “Starman“). Thankfully, “The Thing” has gone on to become a major cult film, accepted by the cultural mainstream as a true achievement in the genre: an artful, scary-as-hell meditation on man’s inherent loneliness and the dark corners of the human psyche, dramatized by Carpenter’s note-perfect direction that favored characterization expressed by action rather than dialogue and cluttered, comic book-style framing. —DT
“Christine” (1983)
Is there a more perfect creative union than John Carpenter and Stephen King? It’s hard to think of any filmmaker and storyteller who are more well-suited for one another — whether King agrees or not, that’s another matter altogether. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the beloved cult filmmaker and the adored author only blended their brilliant minds together for one film: 1983’s adaptation of King’s best-selling novel, “Christine,” based on a killer automobile — in more ways than one. And while it wasn’t as warmly received by critics as some of Carpenter’s past films, it did, of course, garner its own cult following in the years to come, thanks in no small part to its iconic score, its effective simplicity, and its pulpy edge, capturing something that only a handful of other King adaptations have gotten right about the author’s literary work. It isn’t often considered among the filmmaker’s best and brightest, but it has no shortage of love from genre fans and fans of both King and Carpenter. One would wonder, particularly with the resurgence in popularity in both Carpenter’s past properties and King’s lore (Carpenter was once attached to make “Firestarter”), if the meeting of the minds would happen again, although it doesn’t sound like Carpenter is much interested in revisiting any works written by King anytime soon — at least, professionally. But hey, never say never… — WA
“Starman” (1984)
Returning once again to the science fiction genre, Carpenter’s romantic and idyllic “Starman” is typically remembered for being one of many feature films where its star, Jeff Bridges, earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, before eventually and finally getting his proper, honorable due with “Crazy Heart” some time later. But as a film, “Starman” isn’t quite as iconic nor as recounted upon as some of Carpenter’s other, more beloved films on his resume, but it did earn a warm and friendly critical response upon release, and that fondness hasn’t necessarily dissipated over time. Rather, some people consider it among his overlooked films, even though it received no shortage of praise and consideration upon release — even though that wasn’t necessarily reflected by its middling box office receipts. Telling the story of a humanoid alien (played by Bridges) who visits Earth upon an intergalactic request, eventually forming a bond with Karen Allen’s Jenny Hayden, it is the type of plotline that sounds more at home with, say, Steven Spielberg than John Carpenter. Yet the film, which is more gentle and intentionally touching in its approach, is winsome and easygoing. And it makes sense that Carpenter used this type of good-natured film to try to shed away the notion that he was tied down to dark thrillers and horror films. While his later films would, dare one say, return to his more crass sensibilities (and that’s meant with affection, for the record), it’s a nice, lovely change-of-pace from a ever-expanding and truly unbridled journeyman filmmaker who was never completely consistent — not in terms of quality, but in what type of stories suited his fancy at any given point in time. —WA
“Big Trouble in Little China” (1986)
“Who is Jack Burton?” crowed the ads for “Big Trouble In Little China,” mistakenly selling this rare Carpenter blockbuster, produced for major studio 20th Century Fox, as a heroic star vehicle for the forever-underestimated Kurt Russell. The truth was, not a single person within the narrative cares about this white interloper, a commentary on the genre that might have been a generation too early. The story follows an ages-old conflict between warring factions of superpowered Chinese warriors utilizing magic (the darkest kind!) to hold dominion over the planet, thanks to the exoticism of two green-eyed girls (just go with it). Into this mess walks urban cowboy Burton, a truck driver who crashes this mystical Eastern throwdown like John Wayne mistakenly falling ass-backwards into “The Chinese Connection” and attempting to tough-guy his way out. Burton is clever and eager enough to assist the good guys, entering their territory in disguise, or freeing captured prisoners. But he’s also pigheaded enough to accidentally knock himself out as the climactic battle rages on around him, before getting pinned underneath increasingly heavy objects. ‘Big Trouble’ might be Carpenter at his campiest, funniest best, a hodgepodge of genre ideas that still somehow feels as fresh today as it was when it first flopped in the eighties. Much of that comes from Carpenter’s frequent collaborator Russell, who could always be trusted to be loose, charismatic, and dangerous in their joint ventures and who here showcases an affable vulnerability even when he’s attempting to be the hero. With Burton’s smarmy sarcasm and bloated sense of self-worth, Russell’s mixture of alpha male aggression and almost absurd boobery lets the film get away with its increasingly-outlandish storyline and its artful visual effects, composed via optical effects and make up augmentation, has aged gracefully over the years. —DT
“Prince of Darkness” (1987)
After a string of excellent, yet financially unsuccessful, bigger-budgeted films, Carpenter returned to smaller-scale — but no less thematically grandiose — filmmaking. Opening with one his best musical compositions (with the title card arriving nine minutes in), Carpenter takes many of the themes that he has explored throughout his career (man’s capacity for evil and how humanity can turn on one another at the flip of a coin) and morphs them into a literal physical manifestation (that being the green canister of Satan’s essence that drives the plot). “Prince” is an incredibly slow-burn, and outside of Donald Pleasence doing his best work in a Carpenter collaboration since “Halloween,” there are some rough performances to get past (which may explain the polarizing nature of this particular film). But, if you can get past them and get sucked into the haunting atmosphere and terrific climax, you will be rewarded with one of Carpenter’s messier, but most fascinating films. Fans of more recent, meticulous “satanic panic” films like Ti West’s “The House of the Devil” or Na Hong-jin’s “The Wailing” should go back and seek this one out, if they haven’t already. — Ryan Oliver
“They Live” (1988)
Only John Carpenter could turn a movie whose plot goofily hinges on a pair of magical sunglasses (that expose the alien menace lying just beneath the surface of everyday life, in black-and-white for some reason) into a stone-cold classic, one whose imagery has been appropriated by both Barack Obama‘s 2008 presidential campaign and American skateboard culture and deemed worthy of both an entire book-length dissection by acclaimed novelist Jonathan Lethem as well as a shot-for-shot remake on acclaimed animated television series “South Park.” Weirdly, it seems that “They Live,” a low budget B-movie takedown of Reagan-era politics starring a non-professional actor (wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) and pleasurably lo-fi visuals straight out of a fifties sci-fi movie, would go on to become Carpenter’s second most influential movie of his career after “Halloween.” Part of what makes “They Live” so much fun is how on-the-nose it is; it’s rare to see a movie of Carpenter’s this uninterested in nuance. And it’s kind of liberating. There is nothing subtle about “They Live,” from the evil alien menace being a stand-in for the Republican party, to the epic fight sequence between Piper and “The Thing” alum Keith David that seems to go on forever, to the surprisingly effective lead performance by Piper (who fits perfectly into the Carpenter “fuck you” hero mold and ad-libbed immortal lines like “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum”), to the ghoulish design of the aliens, who are straight out of a Saturday matinee shocker. One of the great moments on the “They Live” Blu-ray, also produced by Shout Factory, is when an interviewer asks Carpenter if there was ever any consideration given to cutting down the seemingly endless fight sequence between David and Piper. Carpenter’s face curls into a snarl and he says, with mock incredulity, “Fuck no.” The sequence in the film when Piper puts on the sunglasses and the “real” world is revealed—”composed with the serene assurance of Hitchcock or Kubrick” according to Lethem—is the source of much of the film’s influential power. The black-and-white signage that says “OBEY” was appropriated first by street artist Shepard Fairey for his own campaign and later for Obama’s initial presidential run; replicas of the sunglasses (embossed with the film’s memorable logo) are sold on fashion websites; and a lone man, awash in a sea of bullshit, has become a striking metaphor for being halfway aware of what was happening while Reagan pushed his dangerous economic and social agendas. On that same Blu-ray interview, Carpenter said, “I would like to point out that I think that the eighties have never ended. They’re still with us today. We’ve never repudiated this Reaganomics idea. They’re still here. And they’re still among us.” In other words: they live. — DT
“Memoirs of An Invisible Man” (1992)
Comedy had never been a defining factor of Carpenter’s filmography until “Big Trouble in Little China” proved his knack for blending humor into his usual science-fiction fare. That most likely explains why Chevy Chase picked him to take the helm of his passion project, an adaptation of the 1987 book of the same name by H.F. Saint. Coming four years after Carpenter’s sharp, biting satire of “They Live,” “Memoirs of An Invisible Man” was the first clear misstep for the director, who even refrained from labelling the film as “John Carpenter’s,” as he had done for the majority of his prior films, as a way of acknowledging that Warner Bros. had more creative control over the project than he did. Originally developed as a project for Ivan Reitman to direct, Carpenter’s direction is, frankly, pretty bland, feeling like a pale imitation of another director without any of the unique perspectives in place that defined his niche as a filmmaker. The film’s saving grace comes from its groundbreaking visual effects, in particular, a scene where Chase’s Nick Halloway has his invisible silhouette outlined by standing out in the rain, but even these effective uses of spectacle can’t save a shoddy script and a bevy of weak performances. —JN
“Body Bags” (1993)
John Carpenter has had a rough go trying to get anthology horror storytelling up-and-running. He first attempted with “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” (believing the Michael Myers story was complete with “Halloween II”) — which was disliked by fans and critics and tanked at the box office — and then “Body Bags” was supposed to launch a “Tales From the Crypt”-esque series when it debuted on Showtime in 1993. Naturally, it didn’t, but this team-up between Carpenter and the late Tobe Hooper is a gem; a moody, silly, and well-made anthology where each short (sans the first one set at a gas station, with cameos from Sam Raimi and the late Wes Craven) is based on a different body part. “Hair” — directed by Carpenter — sees a wonderful Stacy Keach as a balding man who gets more than he bargained for with a new hair product, and “Eye” — directed by Hooper — finds Mark Hamill as a baseball player who gets a replacement eye that, well, doesn’t go properly. Carpenter himself is clearly having a ball as the mortician in the film’s shell story introducing these shorts. It’s a fun, charming anthology, but also a bummer seeing the series — and potential directorial talent for later segments — that could have been. — RO
“In the Mouth of Madness” (1994)
Carpenter has faced his fair share of criticism from detractors about the violence in his films. And after showing his subversive side with “They Live,” it only makes sense that he would take on a project that examines the relationship — loving, tumultuous, or downright dangerous — between the artist and the consumer. Informally tying in with “The Thing” and “Prince of Darkness” as the final chapter in Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy,” “In the Mouth of Madness” fits into the same “messy, but fascinating” mold as ‘Darkness.’ It starts out as an astute examination of horror fandom, the extremities that one could take it to, the media’s role and responsibility in handling such material, and the critics who dismiss the genre outright as trash. Then, it goes from using a Stephen King-surrogate author to address these themes by going whole-hog in the insanity department. It’s a film that may occasionally be at odds with itself, but Carpenter’s reverence for the material — coupled with Sam Neill’s committed performance that matches Carpenter at each twist and turn he takes — makes this an essential viewing in the director’s oeuvre. Also worth noting that this came out the same year that fellow horror maestro Wes Craven was also diving into the relationship between art and viewer with “New Nightmare.” — RO
“Village of the Damned” (1995)
Between remaking “The Thing From Another World” and the creature design of the aliens from “They Live,” it’s clear that Carpenter has a deep love for 50’s and 60’s B-movies. With that in mind, it makes sense that Carpenter would want to revisit Wolf Rilla’s 1960 adaptation of John Wyndham’s book about all of a town’s women becoming mysteriously pregnant with alien children. Despite knowing the premise, the build-up is quite eerie and well-paced, with Carpenter’s score perfectly underscoring the mystery and confusion. Once the kids are born though, the film takes a turn for the worst, falling into a repetitive rhythm and fumbling the setup for its otherwise well-executed finale. The film loses all steam once the mystery is revealed, and while there are talented performers here (Kirstie Alley and Christopher Reeve in one of his last film roles), it’s hard to tell if they’re trying to fit the film’s off-kilter vibe, or if it is just an unfortunate miscast. It ultimately just feels like a bigger-budget version of the B-movies that Carpenter holds dear, but without the master touch we come to expect from him when he takes these concepts and adds craft and class to them. — RO
“Escape from L.A.” (1996)
Before it was in-vogue to dust off older films and make a years-later sequel to them, Carpenter and Kurt Russell — on record saying that Snake Plissken is his favorite performance — returned to the dystopian world of major cities becoming maximum security prisons. With a budget eight times as much as “Escape From New York” – and yet, looks much worse – “Escape From L.A.,” much like “Die Hard 2,” is the ultimate “again” sequel. Snake gets injected with another deadly virus or serum, gets deployed to another city run amok with criminals, meets a new quirky driver (Steve Buscemi instead of Ernest Borgnine), has to play a basketball game against himself instead of a boxing match. You get the gist. Admittedly, Russell puts back on the eyepatch, camo, and combat boots and falls back into the swing of things with ease, and is compulsively watchable. Replacing the first film’s hard-edged, no-frills attitude is a much campier endeavor, complete with special effects that were dated on its second day of theatrical release (the surfing scene… ouch) and performances who ham it up instead of creating the original’s verisimilitude. It has its charms but is mostly a disappointing follow-up. — RO
“Vampires” (1998)
Carpenter has insisted that almost all of his films are westerns (see Kurt Russell’s occasional, misplaced John Wayne impersonations in “Escape From New York”), but “Vampires” may be his only film that is an actual western. Given that, it’s a shame that the film is such a hateful experience that feels anonymously directed. Treading similar “vampire western” ground as Kathryn Bigelow’s graceful, terrific “Near Dark,” “Vampires” strips away mysticism for a laughably machismo gorefest where the film’s protagonists are two most unlikable assholes you are ever to come across. The hindsight of James Woods being a real-life scumbag does the film no favors, but even if that weren’t the case, his on-screen persona does not lend itself well to “action hero that the audience is rooting for” (nor does Daniel Baldwin’s, for that matter). The only good performance is Sheryl Lee as Katrina, a prostitute who is slowly turning into a vampire throughout. She channels the tortured duality and doomed fate that she brought to Laura Palmer, and mostly overcomes the film’s disturbing male gaze, proving as she always has that she deserved to have a much healthier career than the one she has had. — RO
“Ghosts of Mars” (2001)
As the film industry entered the new millennium, science fiction and horror films were judged less and less on the strength of their concepts as they were on the size of their spectacle, which more often than not came from a proliferation of CGI. As the notoriously lacking effects in “Escape from L.A.” foreshadowed, “Ghosts of Mars” tried to keep up with the trends of its time and feels far more dated than Carpenter’s timeless classics of the 70s and 80s. Though it bucks the trends of Carpenter’s recent work to that point, returning to the unique storytelling that defines much of his filmography, the film never fully coalesced into the kind of movie Carpenter’s fans were expecting. Co-starring Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, Pam Grier, and Clea DuVall, “Ghosts of Mars” feels unmistakably like a relic of its time, and Carpenter’s history of utilizing small budgets to great effect fails to manifest here, with cheap-looking production design spoiling Carpenter’s strengths of mise-en-scene at every turn. The experience of making the film and enduring its horrid reception by audiences and critics was so stressful that it turned Carpenter off of filmmaking for almost a decade afterward, and one can only imagine how many potential Carpenter films we were robbed of because of this one. — JN
“The Ward” (2010)
There are few directors that have managed to maintain their strengths through the decades, adapting capably to developments in technology and genre over the years; unfortunately, John Carpenter is no Spielberg or Scorsese in terms of this category. Though he has kept the door open to direct again, Carpenter’s last film to date is this generic, underwhelming story of a girl in a mental institution. tormented by the ghost of her former cellmate. Starring Amber Heard, Mamie Gummer, and Jared Harris, “The Ward” features little of the visual flair that characterizes the rest of Carpenter’s work, and his signature emphasis on building tension before unleashing the horror of the piece feels sloppily rendered. The end result feels regrettably anonymous, a rare feat for a director as distinct in style as Carpenter, and was received as such, sparking the director’s second and current retirement from directing. It’s a mediocre whimper of a film to end a career on, but Carpenter seems content touring with his music, playing video games, and watching basketball. It makes one hope that Carpenter’s recent suggestions about a “They Live” sequel are more than just musings and that we may yet see the Master of Horror return to his rightful throne. — JN
