Carpenter Ranked

As I'm working on the finishing touches for my first Frankenheimer post, I thought it would be nice to get some content on the blog today. So I offer this little list (something I've wanted to do for other director's in this series but have just completely spaced on doing) of what I think are the best Carpenter films. I know we all love lists! So have it. Make fun of me, list your own rankings, or be boring and agree with me. Anyway, I'm hoping my first Frankenheimer post will be up sometime tonight or, at the very latest, tomorrow morning. Thanks to all of those that have been following along!

1. Halloween
2. The Thing
3. Big Trouble in Little China
4. Assault on Precinct 13
5. Prince of Darkness
6. Ghosts of Mars
7. They Live
8. The Fog
9. Dark Star
10. Escape from New York
11. Vampires
12. Body Bags
13. In the Mouth of Madness
14. Escape from LA
15. Masters of Horror
16. The Ward
17. Christine
18. Starman
19. Village of the Damned
20. Memoirs of an Invisible Man

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John Carpenter: The Ward

Warning: this review will read like that of a man who is at the end of a retrospective and feels like there isn’t really anything more to say. I apologize for the lack of reviewing that’s going on in this review and for the lack of enthusiasm surrounding this piece. But, hey, some of that is the film’s fault.

When The Ward was released in 2011, many fans of the genre — and of Carpenter especially — must have been thanking the heavens that the master of horror was returning to theatrical filmmaking in order to rescue the horror genre. Alas, this is not the case. This feels like the John Carpenter of Christine more than the John Carpenter of Prince of Darkness, and that's a shame, too, because that means we get the detached Carpenter rather than the Carpenter that truly loves the horror genre. In fact, The Ward felt an awful lot like his work for Masters of Horror: professionally made, easy to get through, but on the whole uninteresting and disappointingly average for Carpenter.

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John Carpenter: Masters of Horror – "Cigarette Burns"/"Pro-Life"

I realize that I’m in the minority when it comes to thinking that Carpenter had nothing to be ashamed of with Vampires and Ghosts of Mars. Sure, those films have flaws (the former more than the latter), but I liked that he was trying for something different. I made the argument in my last post that Carpenter made Ghosts of Mars as a deadpan comedy. Even if the film’s detractors agree to this notion, their argument is that the film — no matter how deliberately bad it is — is still a failure. Okay, but at least Carpenter was trying for something unusual. Carpenter took criticism to certain films very personally (The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China, come to mind), and his response was to always return to the bosom of the horror genre. So it’s no surprise that after the critical and commercial panning of Ghosts, Carpenter’s next project after a four year sabbatical (a return to theatrical work was still five years away) would be for the Showtime horror series Masters of Horror. And even though Carpenter's entries are arguably the best found in the two season the show ran, they're still pretty average Carpenter and really the furthest thing, aesthetically, from what he was doing with Vampires and Ghosts. Many would consider this a good thing; I find it disheartening, making for a pretty ho-hum viewing experience.

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John Carpenter: Ghosts of Mars

Well, we’re finally to the one film that everyone last year (when I announced I was doing a Carpenter retrospective) seemed to peg as the one review they were the most interested in. Yup, we’re finally to Ghosts of Mars. I've been hinting at it throughout this retrospective, but I suppose I should just get the superlatives out of the way: I think it’s brilliant. I think it’s a brilliant genre film, it’s a brilliant midnight movie, it’s a brilliant satire, and it’s one of the (intentionally) funniest movies Carpenter has ever made.

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John Carpenter: Vampires

“You ever seen a vampire? No... Well first of all, they're not romantic. Its not like they're a bunch of fuckin' fags hoppin' around in rented formal wear and seducing everybody in sight with cheesy Euro-trash accents, all right? Forget whatever you've seen in the movies: they don't turn into bats, crosses don't work. Garlic? You wanna try garlic? You could stand there with garlic around your neck and one of these buggers will bend you fucking over and take a walk up your strada-chocolata WHILE he's suckin' the blood outta your neck, all right? And they don't sleep in coffins lined in taffeta. You wanna kill one, you drive a wooden stake right through his fuckin' heart. Sunlight turns 'em into crispy critters. Got it?”

Prior to sitting down and watching Vampires last week, I for the life of me couldn’t remember the plot —all I could remember was that this was “the one with all of the dissolves in it.” Granted, it’s also the one with the really great performance from James Woods. But there wasn’t much that I remembered about the film, but damn if I didn’t have a lot of fun watching it again for this retrospective.Vampires has a down and dirty (I just love the way that the un-PC and self-aware dialogue at the head of this post gleefully flows from James Woods’ mouth) , B-movie kind of charm. I fully understand that not all of the elements work (especially the much maligned dissolves), but I don’t care, I really love Vampires, warts and all.

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John Carpenter: Escape from LA

Despite my somewhat muted praise of Escape from New York — one of the most beloved of Carpenter’s films — there’s no denying the elements that fervent fans of the cult classic point to as reasons why it’s one of the best action films of the ‘80s. The primary reason being of course Kurt Russell’s performance as Snake Plissken, so it’s no surprise that there were always plans to bring the character back. However, time kept passing and opportunities kept getting stunted, and it wasn’t until 1996 that Carpenter and Russell would re-team (along with Carpenter’s long-time writing/producing partner Debra Hill) for Escape from LA, the long-awaited sequel fans of the original had been pining for. Alas, the film is not a sequel as much as a re-introduction to the character, and it suffers because of this. Even though I wasn’t the hugest fan of the original, it would have been interesting to see a true sequel to the film. Instead, the film plays exactly like Escape from New York both in terms of narrative and in entertainment value. I know that may be sacrilegious to suggest that LA is just as good as New York, but aside from the film’s huge budget (50 million, which is the largest Carpenter’s ever received for a film by a significant margin), there is really nothing different about the film. What’s true about New York is true for LA: they’re both flawed films that are worth seeing for a couple of standout setpieces, some memorably wacky side characters, the great musical score, and for Russell’s performance.

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John Carpenter: Village of the Damned

I knew coming into this retrospective that Village of the Damned was going to be the shortest review of this series because I had already seen it, already knew that there was nothing to talk about, and already knew that there is nothing in the film that would tell you it’s a John Carpenter film. I was hoping a second viewing would change my thoughts on the film, but alas, there just isn't, well,  anything to say substance to say about the film . Even Elvis, the most banal of Carpenter’s films, inspired me to write something because at least I hadn't seen that film before, and it was of some significance considering it was Kurt Russell’s first film with Carpenter (not to mention it killed in terms of TV ratings). Village of the Damned, though, nothing. It’s about as dull as a film calling itself a horror film can get. I have no idea what possessed Carpenter to make the film — audiences in 1995 weren’t necessarily breaking down theater doors to get to horror films — or why he would even begin to think that a remake of the 1960 film (of all the films to remake?) was a good idea.

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John Carpenter: In the Mouth of Madness

There is a general belief among fans of John Carpenter’s work that In the Mouth of Madness is the American auteur’s last movie worth a damn. Allow me to get this out of the way: that’s so, so wrong. But before I get too far ahead of myself, let me finish my thought: There also seems to be a general belief that In the Mouth of Madness is the best horror film Carpenter made since The Thing. A few things: the first issue raised here saddens me because it seems that even many of Carpenter’s most ardent fans dismiss Carpenter’s 1987 Prince of Darkness, a film that is vastly superior to In the Mouth of Madness, when mentioning the best horror films of Carpenter’s career. The second issue: I think that not just fans of Carpenter but the fans of the horror genre really, really overrate In the Mouth of Madness. Oh, that’s not to say it isn’t a good horror film — and sometimes an even great horror film — it's just that the film doesn’t live up to the reputation given to it by its supporters. It’s a self-aware, postmodern horror film that isn’t even the best self-aware, postmodern horror film of the mid-90s (that would be New Nightmare). But, it does show Carpenter, just as he did with Prince of Darkness, dabbling in the outré and making a horror film that, good or bad, goes for something different and certainly stands out as a stark contrast to his earlier horror films.

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John Carpenter: Body Bags

Just as he did after the deflating experience working for the studio on Big Trouble in Little China (not to mention the equally deflating returns at the box office), John Carpenter would once again, this time after the disaster that was Memoirs of an Invisible Man, return to the safety of low budget, independent horror. In 1987, this return to small horror resulted in one of the American auteurs best films, Prince of Darkness. In 1993, however, things were a tad different in regards to theatrical horror films. Unless you had Freddy, Jason, or Michael Myers, it was unlikely that a horror film in the early ‘90s was going to have a lot of success with audiences. It was a dying genre (and even returns for those films were dwindling with each unnecessary sequel). So, Carpenter, returned to television for his next project, which was never intended to be a Portmanteau horror film but rather a television series made for Showtime in order to rival HBO’s “Tales from the Crypt.” However, the series didn’t get picked up after Showtime backed away from their initial plans to turn it into a series, and the final product turned into Body Bags — an extremely entertaining horror anthology in the vein of the EC Comics that inspired Carpenter as a kid and the Amicus productions of the ‘70s. Body Bags showcases a great horror director riffing and having fun with the genre, free from the shackles of the studio system.

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John Carpenter: Memoirs of an Invisible Man

After the back-to-back success of his smaller projects, Prince of Darkness and They Live, Carpenter found himself — like he was post-Halloween and The Fog — once again intrigued by the prospect of working within the studio system. With a better, less naïve, understanding of how making a movie for a big studio works, perhaps Carpenter felt that he could try his hand at it again albeit with a more carefree, detached approach that wouldn’t leave his confidence in shambles this time around. Unfortunately, Carpenter was assigned a film that was losing proposition from the onset. Like Starman, Memoirs of an Invisible Man shows Carpenter at the helm of another studio film with an interesting premise that begins promisingly enough but ultimately tapers off, becoming something uninteresting and tiresome.

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John Carpenter: They Live

John Carpenter’s deconstruction of the American action hero was never more honed than it was in his 1986 film Big Trouble in Little China. Kurt Russell’s portrayal as Jack Burton was filled with all kinds of wonderful moments of bumbling bravado — the perfect satire of the Rambo prototype littering theaters in the late ‘80s. In Carpenter’s brilliant, politically charged science-fiction film They Live, he offers up another ‘80s action hero prototype for deconstruction in the form of a drifter named Nada. Nada is the “Man with No Name” prototype (and in fact is never mentioned by name in the film) and is played by professional wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. Nada, in a lot of ways, is the quintessential Carpenter action hero: quiet, terse, intense, and bound by a code of ethics akin to the old gunslingers of the wild west. A mix of catchphrase espousing Burton and the brusque Snake Plissken without the cynicism, Nada is one of Carpenter’s most memorable heroes, making They Live one of my absolute favorite Carpenter films.

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John Carpenter: Prince of Darkness

Carpenter’s disillusionment and frustration with the major studios after their constant over-the-shoulder producing and general overall interference on the set of Big Trouble in Little China is quite known by now. Because of this, Carpenter swore off the studio system he so badly began his career wanting to be a part of and instead went back to basics. In 1987, Carpenter returned to his independent and horror roots with Prince of Darkness, an extremely underrated horror picture that is often seen as a throwaway entry in the American auteur’s oeuvre. But Prince of Darkness, as “silly” as Carpenter claims it to be, isn’t a throwaway picture in the least — the film is one of Carpenter’s most atmospheric and satisfying efforts — and in the opinion of this humble blogger fits perfectly in slot number three of Carpenter’s best horror films right underneath Halloween and The Thing.

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John Carpenter: Big Trouble in Little China

Note: This is going to be a bit of an odd entry into this retrospective; I am going to focus more on Kurt Russell and what an action hero was in the 1980s than on Carpenter. For a better review of the film and a more comprehensive look at its production, check out J.D.’s fantastic post on the film from his Carpenter blog-a-thon a couple of years ago.

John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China is a lively, funny, and energetic; the exact kind of follow-up he needed to remedy the effect his previous film — the prosaic friendly alien film Starman — left on viewers. Big Trouble in Little China is a movie that never fails to make smile — a joyful mix between old school Oater and Indiana Jones; it’s the type of film that is always good for whatever ails me in the way that Raiders of the Lost Ark or Die Hard or Lethal Weapon seem to always cheer me up. Nostalgia naturally plays a role in this — I grew up watching these types of action movies, and the aforementioned triad were some of my very favorites — but there is something about these types of action films that acts as the perfect remedy for a bad day or week. Whether it’s Nazis trying to steal the Ark of the Covenant, Germans taking a high rise hostage, or mystical Chinese bad guys running things from a lair beneath Chinatown, these are films that elicit genuine glee despite their ridiculous premises. They’re all filled with great setpieces, memorable dialogue, a wacky premise that makes you smile, and, most importantly, a great hero that the action revolves around. I think Big Trouble in Little China works (along with the aforementioned films) so well as this kind of “antidote movie” the characters (and the filmmakers) take all that ridiculousness very seriously — and so the laughs and the smiles and the thrills are all feel earned.

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John Carpenter: Starman

Starman is not a good movie. And let me be clear from the onset: it’s not that the film doesn’t work simply because John Carpenter decided to make a love story, nor is it because he decided to make a blood/horror free science-fiction film. And it certainly isn’t because of Jeff Bridges. No, the acting is light years better than Carpenter’s previous film, Christine, but it’s just, well, banal. The whole thing chugs along its familiar “road movie” path towards its inevitable ending that feels like nothing more than another studio trying to make its own E.T. (hey, at least it’s better than Mac and Me). I admire Bridges' performance and Carpenter’s desire to make a non-genre film (although I’m sure he’d be the first to admit that even though he got into the business to be a studio filmmaker in Hollywood, he really just made Starman for the money), but Starman ultimately is as forgettable as Christine: a movie with a handful of elements that get the viewer through the experience unscathed but will evaporate from one's mind by day’s end. In fact, the experience I had watching Carpenter's two films post-The Thing reminded me of a popular Truffaut quote: “I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between.” Boy, are Christine and Starman two films smack-dab "in between."

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John Carpenter: Christine

Due to the critical (and somewhat financial) shellacking Carpenter’s previous film, The Thing, took in 1982, it’s easy to see why the auteur would distance himself as much as possible from the material of his next film. After failing to get the opportunity to direct the Stephen King adaptation that really interested him (Firestarter), Carpenter was essentially a director for hire on his next two films — Christine and Starman. And it’s no surprise that these two films mark what was — at that point in his career — his worst stretch of films (and really, what an amazing thing it is that the streak ends at two). So, off of one King adaptation and onto another, Carpenter was asked to make Christine, the story of a killer car that King had published earlier in the same year the movie was released. That kind of expediency makes my brain hurt, and it’s probably one of the reasons why the film doesn't feel complete, reeks of an apathetic director just doing one for a paycheck, and is a chore to get through. 

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John Carpenter: The Thing

Every Halloween, I end the night with a “comfort food” type of horror film. Films like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Beyond, Suspiria, The Church, Psycho, or Alien may not be considered the best horror films (although most on that list certainly qualify), but they make for a nice, familiar end to the night. Another film I often consider to end the night on is John Carpenter’s brilliant science-fiction/horror hybrid The Thing. Ask me on the right day, and I might even tell you that I like The Thing more than Halloween. While Halloween — as we’ve already discussed in this retrospective — embodies everything that is great about the horror genre and is pretty much the perfect horror movie, The Thing, however, adds another, more cerebral, layer to both the horror and sci-fi genre. There are moments throughout The Thing that are so perfectly executed — that so expertly showcase the bleak tone and evoke such a perfect tone of dread — that I could be convinced that I’m looking at a more complete and complex (and yes better) film than Halloween.

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John Carpenter: Escape from New York

Thanks to the success of The Fog, Carpenter was given a six million dollar budget for his next project, the dystopian adventure film Escape from New York. Re-teaming with star Kurt Russell, Carpenter’s film is a mixed-bag of genres — part action/adventure film and part post-apocalyptic movie (which were in abundance around 1981) set in grimy New York City (ah, “grimy New York City,” another sign of the film being released in 1981) — Escape from New York is also a film with mixed results. It’s a film I remember having a great fondness for in high school, but it just doesn’t hold up. The music and performances (it has great ensemble of colorful character actors) and set-pieces are all top-notch, but Carpenter’s reliance on stories that take place within a 24-48 hour timeframe backfires here. He tries cramming too much of his budget into the film’s short runtime, so instead of a coherent adventure story, we’re left with a film where the parts are more impressive than the whole.

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John Carpenter: The Fog

Blogger’s Note: When I first started this retrospective, I always had my eye on The Fog, for it is probably the most popular John Carpenter film I had yet to see. Crazy, I know, but the film had always eluded me, so I’m more than thrilled to have finally rectified this particular blind spot.

By the time The Fog had come out in 1980, Carpenter was on a bit of hot streak: he had seen success in Europe with Assault on Precinct 13, and had had major success in both American theaters (Halloween) and television (Elvis). It made sense that his next theatrical film would be a horror movie; after all, Halloween at that time had been the highest grossing independent film, and so it made sense for the auteur to return to the horror genre for no other reason than it seemed like a profitable idea. Indeed The Fog was a hit for Carpenter (the film cost only a million dollars to make and made over 21 million at the box office), but I have to say: it falls short of being in the upper echelon of Carpenter’s filmography. The film is a wonderfully told ghost story filled with atmosphere (thanks to Dean Cundy’s great cinematography) and dread and impressive set-pieces — it has all of those things in spades — and another great Carpenter music score, but there’s something that just isn’t right about the execution of the film’s ending, specifically in how it deals with its antagonists: ghost pirates (or as I prefer to see them as: zombie pirates) out for revenge. There’s so much in The Fog that is tremendously executed and effective that I can see why some would claim it as one of the filmmaker’s best films — calling it a masterpiece of the horror genre in the process — and I don’t dispute that a lot of the elements in The Fog work brilliantly and show the master in fine form, but It certainly falls under the oft-used expression, “a flawed masterpiece.”

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John Carpenter: Elvis

If you’re a fan of Elvis and like to think of him only as the hip-swayin’, Cadillac buyin’, white jumpsuit wearin’ showman, then John Carpenter’s Elvis is the Elvis biopic. There’s nothing in this movie that even hints at the darker side of Elvis’ life. Similar to the rags-to-riches story arc that is found in other Rock and Roll biopics like The Buddy Holly Story, Carpenter’s film is a hagiographic retelling of the life of one of music’s greatest performers. It’s not an overarching biopic seeing how it ends in Vegas prior to Elvis taking the stage for his big comeback (a few years prior to his downfall), and it doesn’t even come close to covering all of the aspects of Elvis’ life, but it’s satisfying and entertaining and contains a great lead performance that was the beginning of one of 1980’s most underrated actor/director collaborations.

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John Carpenter: Halloween

I'm always amazed with Halloween. Here's a film that I could easily write about from memory, yet I was glad to give it another viewing for this retrospective. I found myself pulled into it yet again. I wrote about Halloween a couple years ago for the great blog Wonders in the Dark as a part of their Horror countdown. My dilemma then revolved around two assignments I had: write about Alien and write about Halloween (the two are natural companions, actually, despite the former taking in place in space). What does one write about such films? How does one approach a film that has been written about ad nauseam? I feared that anything I wrote would sound silly since so many better than me have covered those great films. What was there left to say? Well, the truth is nothing. There’s nothing left to say about a lot of films, but that doesn’t mean we are less thrilled by them and that we cease talking about them. So, let’s talk about John Carpenter’s magnum opus Halloween.

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