Directors Cut: John Carpenter

The apostrophe was not forgotten…It was omitted. 

This is not a place where we look at the remastered, extended editions originally intended by filmmakers, commonly called a Director’s Cut…

This is instead a place to celebrate the filmography of a director…

 Who either cut their teeth on horror films…

Or took a random stab at them with resonating success…

The cutting-edge masters of years past…

On the other side of the globe…

Or in years to come.

 Now, I have found (the occasional dud notwithstanding), that in the unreliable world of watching horror movies, any advantage in the search for a good one is well received. When a director proves themselves to the audience by creating a horror classic, they also create a fanbase. A fanbase, that buys tickets and home video for everything that director’s name is attached to.

 

So let’s take a chronological look at every damn thing John Carpenter has ever directed…Some of them you may have seen…Some you may not…But buddy, you definitely should.

 

 

 Dark Star (1974) – This was originally  a student film, and the first film to be released theatrically by John Carpenter. Fellow USC classmate Dan O’Bannon, wrote the screenplay for this, and such classics as, Alien, Dead and Buried, Lifeforce, Total Recall, and Return of The Living Dead. The film was marketed as a serious sci-fi film, and anyone who has seen it, knows that it doesn’t have a serious bone in it’s body…The intense and gripping scenes where O’Bannon’s character, Pinback is being chased around the ship by a beach ball with clawed flippers, should let you know what you’re dealing with…It is a snarky, sardonic, send-up of space operas like 2001: A Space Odyssey…I mean it’s actually funny…I absolutely lost my shit when Doolittle had a philosophical debate about existentialism with an artificially intelligent bomb.

Here’s Doolittle waxing philosophical with the bomb…

 

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) – With nods to movies like Rio Bravo, and Night of the Living Dead, this film was snubbed here in the U.S., loved in the U.K., then we woke up, and loved it here, finally…A cult classic action film with a great script full of ballsy, smart-assed, strong-willed dialogue, a tension building score, and vivid visuals, brought to us by one incredible artist. Carpenter truly set the tone for the rest of his film career…He is fearless, and dedicated, and of course…Willing to shoot a cute little girl while she’s bitching about getting the wrong kind of ice cream…The more times I watch this film, the more of a classic it becomes…One of my all time favorite action movies.

Maybe you should’ve been content with vanilla, kid…

 

 

Someone’s Watching Me! (1978) – Also known as High Rise, this TV movie aired in 1978 on NBC, and stars Lauren Hutton as Leigh Michaels, a woman who moves to L.A. after a breakup…She befriends Sophie, played by Carpenter’s former real-life squeeze, Adrienne Barbeau, a co-worker at the television station where she just got hired…Can I just say?…Carpenter’s writing in this is progressive as hell…The two friends not only discuss openly the fact that Sophie is a lesbian, but they even discuss the social dynamics involved…Did I mention that this aired on network television in 1978?…Anyway…This  is a classic stalker story, before laws against stalkers had been written. Forced to deal with this torturous harassment on her own, Leigh shows the tough as nails aspect of her personality, known to be ever-present in a number of Carpenter’s female characters.

Oh…So someone’s actually watching her?…That explains the title.

 

 

Halloween (1978) – Hands down, not only the most well known John Carpenter film, but his most well received film, as well. This film basically created the slasher genre, while at the same time setting the bar so high for it’s slasher successors, that the mold was pretty much broken…If you don’t know anything about this film…Two things…

1) Glad you crawled out from the rock you’ve been under for almost four decades…

And…2) Watch the damn thing.

What do you want to be for Halloween, Mikey?…A clown? 

Hey, parents of Michael Myers…That was your first clue.

 

 

Elvis (1979) – Now, I saw this as a kid, on ABC…Didn’t care much about Elvis, but watched it with the family (Back then the one TV in the house, stayed on whatever channel your parents wanted)…Re-watched it recently….Still don’t care much about Elvis…But…One very important thing happened in this well made biopic with a great performance by Russell as The King…Kurt Russell met John Carpenter. Russell up to this point had been a Disney actor, relegated to spending his twenties grabbing various TV roles…Two years after meeting Carpenter though, the two would join forces to create a character that couldn’t be further from his Disney persona.

Kurt’s not Plissken yet…But he’s finding his inner bad-ass nonetheless…

 

 

The Fog (1980) – A classic tale of “We Reap What We Sow”…The citizens of Antonio Bay are preparing for their centennial celebration…And in honor of this milestone, the boat full of lepers that they murdered and robbed 100 years ago have come back for some recompense. This is a dark, creepy and karma-friendly ghost story…And one thing I love about Carpenter’s ghost stories, is they’re never these ethereal, wispy spirits with a penchant for jumping out of closets…Nope…When his ghosts want to physically hurt you…Man, lemme tell ya…They will fuck you up.

Huh…So you were scared of them when they were just lepers?…

Man, I love irony…

 

 

Escape from New York (1981) – As I previously mentioned, Kurt Russell playing Elvis with Carpenter at the helm was setting the stage for this momentous occasion…The birth of Snake Plissken, the real King…Sorry Elvis…But in this futuristic tale of a time when the island of Manhattan has been walled off, and is being used as a penitentiary…The president has been kidnapped and is being held somewhere within those walls…And the only person able but not too willing to save him is former Special Forces and current criminal by the afforementioned name of Snake Plisken…Hands down the biggest of the big-screen badasses.

The King of Badassery…

 

 

The Thing (1982)- This one is a reimagining of the Howard Hawks classic, The Thing from Another World…In Carpenter’s version, the team at an American research station in the arctic witness a neighboring Norwegian team flying above them in a helicopter, chasing and firing at a dog…This act results in a ton of research into the why of the helicopter vs. dog chase…And that’s when we realize that the dog is just a Xerox copy of a dog…A malicious alien that can take the form of any mammal that it comes in contact with…That’s when the real crux of the film rears its ugly head…Not the alien…The paranoia that comes from not trusting your fellow man. One of the best alien invasion movies that I have ever seen.

If you like practical effects…

Rob Bottin’s work here is incredible…

 

 

Christine (1983) – In the 80’s, there were a handful of amazing Stephen King adaptations…This was one of ’em…It tells the tale of teen angst…Of what being on the receiving end of bullying can do to your psyche…And how transformative of an experience it can be when you get your first car…

Especially when it’s possessed…

And it’s turning you into kind of a dick…

Shitters beware.

 

This scene was years before CGI…

But somehow…The car fixing itself effects still hold up…

 

 

Starman (1984) – This one is the E.T. for grown-ups…It’s the story of a kind-hearted and benevolent being from another world, who takes the form of a woman’s deceased husband…Karen Allen plays the recently widowed, Jenny…And Jeff Bridges stars as the Starman…The story is a touching one…We the viewer see more of what’s gone missing from humanity from an entity that is not even of our Earth. The most poignant of these scenes, is when Starman brings a recently killed deer back to life, much to shit-kicking chagrin of the hunters who did the killing.

I never should have asked him to put the porch light on…

 

 

Big Trouble in Little China (1986) – It’s really hard for me to pick my top three favorite Carpenter films…It would be even harder to pick my favorite…But with both the gun to your head, and the deserted island scenarios in place, I might have to pick this one to take with me to the island…Plus a shit-ton of peanut butter…What? It’s survival food, folks…Anyway, this one brings Russell and Carpenter together again to create another memorable hero…Much like Plisken and MacReady…Jack Burton is the bad-ass you want standing next to when the shit hits the old fan…Much like a technicolor acid trip version of The Raiders of the Lost Ark, this flick has a coolness factor that is off the freakin’ charts.

I know…I know…

Sometimes you have to let off a little steam…

 

 

Prince of Darkness (1987) – In my humble opinion, this is the best film about the devil ever made…Here’s why…The cast is primarily made of up some very scientific-minded scholars…Their skepticism mirrors that of the audience, so when the group one by one, experience by experience, begin to believe the demonic elements of this story…We the audience begin to suspend our disbelief, as well…Look out for Alice Cooper as a demonic homeless person in this one.

If Satan’s homeless zombies had a King…

Makes sense to me that’d be Alice Cooper…

 

 

They Live (1988) – “I’ve come to kick ass and chew bubble gum…And I’m all out of bubble gum.” This classic line was not in the script, but was a moment of epic genius improv by the late, great Rowdy Roddy Piper…Anyone who thought that casting a WWF wrestler in a lead role meant that John Carpenter had lost his mind, clearly never saw this flick…This counter-culture, anti-Reagan, anti-conformity tale has a subversive alien species from another world that has infiltrated our society by blending in…With the help of some kick-ass Ray-Ban knock-offs, Rowdy Roddy can see through not only the facades that the aliens are wearing, but the subliminal messages they’ve planted in every aspect of our media.

This epic fight scene…

Lasts six freakin’ minutes…

 

 

Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) – This is not your typical John Carpenter film…It’s not John Carpenter’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man…The script is not written by him…He didn’t compose the score…It is a big budget Warner Bros. release, that was initially meant for director Ivan Reitman, but due to disagreements between he and Chevy Chase, he backed out… Carpenter knew what he was getting into…He said Warner Bros “is in the business of making audience-friendly, non-challenging movies.” This film was advertised as a comedy, but it wasn’t funny…Instead you will have to cling to the very well done invibility effects that Carpenter brought to the screen.

These are the effects I was talking about…

 

 

 

Body Bags (1993) – Carpenter tapped into his inner Crypt Keeper in this one, as host to and creator of, a bad-ass horror anthology…Initially planned to be a series on Showtime, but sadly, the network scrapped the idea…Damn them…Carpenter directed the first two segments, The Gas Station, which tells the tale of a young woman who while working her first night at a gas station is tormented by an escaped serial killer…The second segment, Hair…Has Stacy Keach as a man obsessed with his waning hairline and gets a possessed hair transplant…The final segment The Eye, was directed by Tobe Hooper, and starred Mark Hamill…Keep an eye peeled for all of the horror guru cameos in this one.

Carpenter is a lot funnier than the Crypt Keeper, too…

 

 

In the Mouth of Madness (1994) – This film pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft…Not only is the title a play on his novella, At the Mountains of Madness, but it also dives head first into the realm of insanity, as does Lovecraft’s work  on a regular basis…The writer who alters the reality here is named Sutter Cane…Homage is also paid to Stephen King as well…This is one you either love or hate…Typically, if you are a huge Carpenter fan, you will most likely fall under the love category.

Looks like he’s a huge Carpenter fan…

 

 

Village of the Damned (1995) – Carpenter always says that this is the one film that he has directed that he was not passionate about…And sadly, the subsequent side effect from that, is that we the audience weren’t all that passionate about it either…Course it was fun to watch Mark Hamill as a preacher on the edge of madness…

Here’s ol’ Reverend George now…What’s that you got there, Reverend?…

Oh, it’s a sniper rifle, you say?…Okay then, see ya on Sunday.

 

 

Escape from L.A. (1996) – With his passion for a project rejuvenated, Carpenter created what he refers to as the better of the two Snake Plissken films…Say what you will about it…It’s gotta be pretty freakin’ hard creating a sequel to a cult classic…But you did hear me say that Snake Plissken’s in it, right? Because frankly, that’s all I needed to hear.

Here’s our boy, Bruce Campbell…

Barely recognizable in his role of Surgeon General of Beverly Hills…

 

 

Vampires (1998) – It’s a vampire-western, man…A band of brutal vampires battle against a band of brutal vampire slayers in this very Carpenter-esque tale of good vs. evil…James Woods is awesome as Jack Crow, the leader of the slayers…And Thomas Ian Griffith is equally awesome as Jan Valek, the leader of the vamps…I dig this one…After Escape from L.A. there were rumors that Carpenter was quitting the biz…So glad he didn’t.

These guys gear up for killing vampires…

Like Rick Grimes and Co. gear up for killing zombies…

 

 

Ghosts of Mars (2001) – Originally designed to be a Snake Plissken film called, Escape from Mars…The studio did not want another box office failure like they got with Escape from L.A., so they changed the main character to Desolation Williams, and forced the casting of Ice Cube…Regardless of the fact that Carpenter felt even more burnt out at this point in his career…There are still a ton of things that work in this twisted little sci-fi horror film…Cube was even more of a bad-ass than Statham…And Natasha Henstridge was more of a bad-ass than both of them.

Sorry fellas…

The GWAR concert has been cancelled.

Masters of Horror – Season One, Episode Eight – “Cigarette Burns” (2005) – Starring Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead) as Kirby Sweetman, a man who has a knack for acquiring rare films…The film in question La Fin Absolue du Monde upon its premiere caused its audience to break out in a homicidal riot…The cause for the reaction is explained by revealing not only the existence of, but the brutal mutilation of…An angel.

Here’s our boy, Norman Reedus…

All clean and fresh faced…Pre-Daryl Dixon.

 

Masters of Horror – Season Two, Episode Five – “Pro-Life” (2006) – A bunch of gun-toting rednecks are trying to protect their sisters baby from being aborted by a bunch of godless liberals…It’s a fun tale of irony…The male members of a family, who are adamantly anti-abortion…Fight to save the life of a child…The child they are fighting for, may not be a child at all…It is one of my favorite episodes from this shortlived but amazing television series.

And the results are in…

Satan…You ARE the father.

 

 

The Ward (2010) – As a self proclaimed John Carpenter super-fan, there is no excuse for why I waited so long to see this movie…Perhaps I was waiting because after a big screen hiatus that has lasted six years and counting, I was afraid that this might have been his last effort…If this sadly is the final entry into the epic Carpenter Canon…Well then, at least it was another worthwhile addition to the list. Amber Heard (All The Boys Love Mandy Lane), plays Kristen, a girl whose mysterious past slowly unfolds while institutionalized in a place that holds unfolding mysteries of it’s own. In this psychiatric hospital, both the natural and the supernatural forces at work will fill the viewer with a palpable tension and a potent sense of dread. Top-notch performances from not only Kristen’s fellow patients, but the menacing Cuckoo’s Nest style staff as well. Carpenter’s visuals are here in full effect…But I must admit…I missed him as the composer…Nothing really wrong with the score here, just that it wasn’t Carpenter.

 Like I’ve always said…

 Carpenter’s ghosts…Are not to be fucked with.