The Adventures of John Carpenter in the 21st Century: The Ward (2010)

Ok, so – let’s try to get this one over and done with as quickly as possible.

2010’s ‘The Ward’ is, at the time of writing, John Carpenter’s most recent film as director. I haven’t had a chance to do any research or read any interviews pertaining to Carpenter’s reasons for taking on the project, but I can only speculate that he must have agreed to do it as the result of some sort of personal favour or family obligation.

Was one of the producers his son-in-law or daughter-in-law or something? Or was it all a country club handshake deal with an old friend, or somesuch? I don’t know.

Such speculation may seem facetious, but I honestly just can’t think of any other reason – creative, artistic, even economic - for The Great John Carpenter return from semi-retirement to lend his talents to this thoroughly mediocre indie horror movie. (The only other possibilities would seem to involve blackmail or mob intimidation, but best not go too far down that line of thought.)

Unfortunately, pondering such back stage machinations is actually a more enjoyable prospect than trying to talk about ‘The Ward’, which is…. well, to be fair to it, I should probably admit that I’m perhaps not best placed to pass judgement on a film like this.

I watch very few contemporary horror films, and when I do make the effort, I tend to stick pretty strictly to those that have attracted positive critical attention or good word of mouth from people whose opinions I value. When it comes to what you might call the “next rung down” - the middling, largely unremarked efforts - whether mainstream studio releases that pop up for a few weeks around Halloween, or cheaper, straight-to-streaming imitations thereof – well, let’s just say that I don’t have enough experience to really assess how ‘The Ward’ stacks up against them. Is it a respectable effort in this vein, or an absolute stinker? Is it even quite good, as far as these things go? I really don’t know.

What I can say with slightly more authority is that, in and off itself, I thought it was pretty awful. A painfully derivative, blandly conceived effort that in the course of vaguely trying to be ‘clever’ and ‘serious’ (and failing on both counts) seems to have had everything that used to make lower budget horror movies fun systematically sucked out of it.

In particular, ‘The Ward’ serves to demonstrate the way in which themes that used to be (correctly) roped off as pretty heavy stuff within the genre – childhood trauma, false memories, mental illness, confinement, torture etc – have now become tokenistic horror signifiers, to be lazily thrown around and mixed up to no particularly clear purpose (or even just for the sake of good ol’ exploitation and sleaze, which is notably absent here).

Unlike the werewolves and Satanic cults of old furthermore, this kind of stuff is really just no fun without a decent storyline or committed performances to go with it, which leads to make me wonder why ‘The Ward’ and countless films of a similar ilk continue to even get made…. but, enough of my proto-geriatric ramblings.

In purely technical terms, it goes without saying that ‘The Ward’ is pretty well made. Compositions and camera movements are as slick as you’d expect from a director of Carpenter’s calibre, and the movie’s scary/ghosty bits are reasonably efficient, doing more or less what they are supposed to do.

Essentially though, getting John Carpenter behind the camera on this thing feels like putting a Rolls Royce engine inside a lawnmower, with literally no other aspect of the production rising to a level that would normally justify his participation or interest.

Going in, I was hoping some interest might emerge from the fact that much of the movie takes place within an all-female psychiatric ward, potentially allowing Carpenter to work up a sort of gender-reversed take on ‘The Thing’, perhaps? Well - no dice. I’m afraid anyone coming to ‘The Ward’ in search of a new twist on the director’s conflicted approach to gender will be sorely disappointed. A crass (or merely unimaginative) casting process results in the titular ward resembling a retreat for troubled super-models, and the script gives none of the actresses anything to work with, should any of them have had a yen to make something of their characters.

To give an indication of just how sloppy ‘The Ward’ gets as a character drama, the bulk of the action is supposed to be set in the 1960s, but upon first viewing I completely forgot about this until a retro, ‘Ghostbusters’-style ambulance rolled in for one of the closing scenes, such is the contemporary (or merely bland) nature of the cast’s dialogue, behaviour and appearance.

As you might gather from this, production design shoots for ‘austere’ but instead merely hits ‘boring’, with the drained colour photography and depressing aesthetic of white walls, iron radiators, peeling paint, empty rooms and the like predominating.

Built on confusing morass of flashbacks, flashforwards and god knows what, the story is superficial, poorly developed and pretty unconvincing, highlighting once again the extent to which the post-‘Sixth Sense’ obsession with trick endings and clunky, heavily signposted misdirection has so often made watching modern horror movies a drag.

And… what else can you say really? I think I’d best call it day on this one. Basically, I just really, really hope that John Carpenter manages to come back and direct something else at some point in the future, even if it’s just a cartoon or a short or something, because it would be a tragedy to see such a wonderful filmmaker go to his grave with this shrug of a movie as the final item on his CV.

The Adventures of John Carpenter in the 21st Century: Cigarette Burns (2005)

After effectively clearing his desk and waving goodbye to the Hollywood rat-race following the critical and commercial failure of ‘Ghosts of Mars’ in 2001, John Carpenter’s next directorial assignment was a one hour TV movie, produced as part of the first series of the ‘Masters of Horror’ project in 2005. Subsequent to its original broadcast, ‘Cigarette Burns’ has lived on as one of the most talked about and well regarded entries in that series… although the extent to which its success can be attributed to Carpenter’s participation is debatable, as we shall go on to discuss.

Before we get to that though, Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan’s script for ‘Cigarette Burns’ is very much a “high concept” number, and a pretty great one at that, so a quick synopsis is probably in order.

Basically, the story here is nothing less than a cult movie in-joke blown up into a full-blooded piece of cosmic horror, built around what is basically a celluloid equivalent of Lovecraft’s ‘Necronomicon’ (or, more prosaically, a movie-world version of the 1999 Polanski thriller ‘The Ninth Gate’).

Our protagonist is Kirby (Norman Reedus), the proprietor of a struggling Alamo Drafthouse-style repertory cinema, who also holds a formidable reputation for tracking down elements for lost and ultra-obscure films. It is in the latter capacity that Kirby visits the home of a decadent, ultra-wealthy collector named Bellinger (played for maximum creep effect by Udo Kier), who offers him enough money to immediately write off his debts and save his cinema, if he can track down a print of one particular film.

All well and good then, but we can almost feel Kirby’s guts perform a somersault when Kier dramatically announces that the film he wishes to locate is… ‘La Fin Absolue du Monde’.

The near mythic final work of a controversial (and deceased) European director named Hans Backovic, ‘La Fin Absolue du Monde’ was publically screened only once, at the Sitges festival in 1969. Legend has it that people died, and blood ran in the aisles. Survivors refused to discuss what had happened in the screening room, and were never quite the same. The director’s sole print of the film was reported to have been seized by the Spanish authorities and destroyed. Or was it…?

Bellinger has of course been obsessively collecting ephemera related to ‘La Fin Absolue du Monde’ (a framed poster hangs next to his priceless three-sheets for ‘Metropolis’ and ‘Nosferatu’), and the stakes are raised further when he offers to show Kirby the jewel of his collection – a living souvenir from the production that subsists in darkness, chained in his basement.

Now, if you’re anything like me, by this point the rest of this review will pretty much be moot. You will need to seek out and watch ‘Cigarette Burns’ immediately.

Ever since Lovecraft first placed the idea in my head as a teenager, I’ve loved the notion of a cultural artefact so terrible (in the literal sense of the word) that it destroys those who come into contact with it, and have always found myself totally captivated by stories along those lines.

That the ephemera surrounding weird, esoteric movies also greatly appeals to me should be no-brainer given the nature of this weblog, and I’m happy to report that, for the most part, McWeeny and Swan’s script tackles this material as well as could be wished for, mixing up just the right quantities of mystery and ambiguity, attention to detail and engrossing detective work to create a slow, creeping sense of dread and fascination around ‘La Fin Absolue du Monde’, building up our anticipation of the moment when Kirby finally finds himself touching the canisters containing the reels of the film to fever pitch.

Given that this review strand focuses on John Carpenter though, we should probably divert our attention back toward his contributions, and, the first thing that will be obvious to the director’s fans is that ‘Cigarette Burns’ does not feel very much like a John Carpenter film. I’m not sure at what stage of the pre-production Carpenter became involved, but suffice to say that, beyond the actual, technical business of directing, the other distinctive touches that feed into what we think of as “a John Carpenter movie” – usually incorporating everything from the writing, to the casting, to the score – are notable by their absence.

My gut feeling is that Carpenter must have approached this one as a straight “shoot the script as written” job, and, given the strength of the material provided him by the writers and the wealth of interesting plot detail to be covered, that was probably a good call.

Nonetheless, I hate to say it, but…. I can’t help but feel that the intermittent weaknesses that compromise this otherwise excellent film could potentially be interpreted as the result of Carpenter bungling certain aspects of the script that simply presented him with situations and ideas that he was simply unable to get a proper angle on.

It’s not as if Carpenter hadn’t taken a few creditable shots at cosmic horror in the past (see ‘Prince of Darkness’ (1987) and ‘In The Mouth Of Madness’ (1994) in particular), but, whilst I like both of those films, I’ve always felt that his sensibility as a director does not really lend itself to grasping the totality of the Lovecraft/Kneale-derived stories he so obviously admires.

Caprenter’s take on things is just too, I dunno… pulpy, for want of a better word. His best films are down to earth, action-orientated, practical. At times, he has been able to conjure great power and atmospheric gravitas from Weird Tales-esque subject matter, but when more careful notes of subtlety are required, or when things start to get more cerebral, multi-layered or mind-bending, he has a tendency to (sometimes literally) lose the plot.

Thus, whilst the treatment of ‘La Fin Absolue du Monde’ during the first half of ‘Cigarette Burns’ achieves an absolutely sublime level of eeriness, things become progressively more inconsistent as our protagonist gets closer to comprehending the true nature of the film-within-a-film.

Personally speaking, I found the story’s ‘angels & demons’ angle to be both tediously over-familiar and pretty poorly handled, and the film’s conclusion is also marred by the inclusion of an excruciatingly silly, sub-Fulci gore set-piece that seems to have been thrown in purely as a rather patronising attempt to keep the horror fans ‘on-side’ – but whether you wish to place the blame these minor fumbles on script, director, the producers of the series or some combination thereof is largely a moot point.

A more significant misstep comes I think when Carpenter actually begins to let us see pieces of footage from the dreaded, blasphemous reels of ‘La Fin Absolue du Monde’, and – in the tradition of every film you’ve ever seen in which a character is built up as an artistic genius whilst the poor production designer is handed the thankless task of coming up with some evidence to justify this assertion – it is inevitably a bit of a let-down.

As if echoing the real life experience of soaring expectation followed by crushing let-down that frequently befalls those of us who make a habit of tracking down weird and obscure movies, the scene earlier in ‘Cigarette Burns’ in which we get to see some production stills from ‘La Fin Absolue du Monde’ is almost heart-stoppingly exciting - all the more so given how closely it mirrors the feeling I’m sure we’re all familiar with, when one sees a hazily suggestive black & white still from some extraordinary, esoteric movie reproduced in a reference book and thinks, “my god, what is this movie?! I must see it!”.

It is in these moments – whilst interrogating the networks of fascination, repulsion and obsession that underlay our shared desire to seek out non-mainstream films – that ‘Cigarette Burns’ is at its strongest, finding new ways to fuse the real life interests and activities of its perceived viewers with intimations of doom-laden supernatural horror.

The moment it becomes clear however that ‘La Fin Absolue du Monde’ basically just resembles some pretentious, Catholic-baiting Euro-arthouse S&M/torture flick – the kind of thing a particularly po-faced student might come up with after watching a few Borowczyk or Robbe-Grillet films - the spell is broken.

Another significant drawback arises from the fact that, whereas in his own films Carpenter has pretty much always framed his characters within a semi-fantastical, action-adventure environment, ‘Cigarette Burns’ by contrast requires him to present his protagonist’s back-story (which involves drug addiction, the death of a partner and a hefty burden of subsequent guilt and responsibility) in strictly realistic, harrowing terms.

As a result, the scenes in question are played so heavy-handedly they’re almost laughable, raising sniggers from moments in our characters’ lives that should be devastating, and botching the whole (potentially very interesting) aspect of the story wherein the power of ‘La Fin Absolue du Monde’ lies in its ability to become toxically entwined with the personal failings and guilty consciences of the individuals who become involved with it. Such an idea is, admittedly, pretty difficult to fully elucidate on screen, and I hope readers will understand that it is not necessarily a criticism of Carpenter when I say I suspect that, working under the time and budgetary constraints of a one hour TV movie, he couldn’t really make it fly.

But, I don’t want to accentuate the negative too much here. Although flawed to a certain extent, ‘Cigarette Burns’ is nonetheless a captivating and thought-provoking effort that – in direct contrast to the reassuringly familiar terrain of ‘Ghost of Mars’ – sees Carpenter casting the net of his ambitions way beyond the limits of the comfort zone he had carefully established for himself in preceding decades, producing a bold and unique horror film that, whatever your eventual take on it is, certainly stands as a ‘must see’ for anyone with an interest in cosmic horror, the culture surrounding ‘cult films’, and the potential intersection between the two.

Were it not a TV show, this would be one of those movies for which you would be well advised to book a table in advance for the post-screening discussion, which is liable to get just as involving as the movie itself. I highly recommend tracking it down, despite having just spent the best part of a thousand words griping about all things it got wrong.

The Adventures of John Carpenter in the 21st Century: Ghosts of Mars (2001)

Strangely enough, I’d pretty sure I actually attended the UK premiere of John Carpenter’s last Proper Movie to date way back in… 2001, I’m assuming? If I recall correctly, this event took place in the inauspicious environs of Leicester’s local arts cinema, and, as a student in the city at the time, I’d snagged a season ticket to their annual Fantastic Film Fest (oft referenced here in the past), and so went along.

The reception, it must be said, seemed muted. In fact I don’t recall the atmosphere being much different to that of yr average Tuesday night movie screening. Until I re-watched it this year, I didn’t remember very much at all about the film itself, but, being at the time a rather snobbish fan of cerebral, “big idea” sci-fi and avant garde freakiness, I don’t think I liked it very much.

More fool me then, and more fool the rest of the world, who apparently joined me in consigning ‘Ghost of Mars’ to unremembered oblivion amid the millennial whirl of the early ‘00s, prompting (or at least accelerating) Carpenter’s decision to pack it in and make a tactical withdrawal from the world of mainstream filmmaking.

Returning to the film in 2017, with of fifteen years of water under the bridge, I’m sure I won’t be the only Carpenter fan to take a chance on the recent blu-ray reissue and discover that, whilst it’s certainly no lost classic, ‘Ghost of Mars’ is, in a profound sense, actually pretty good.

I mean, clearly no one is going to try to make the case for ‘Ghosts..’ as one of Carpenter’s best films, and in terms of production value it’s probably one of his least ambitious projects, but in a sense it is the very modesty of the film’s ambitions that serve to make it such an enjoyable prospect today.

Taken on its own terms as a late-VHS-era b-movie in fact, I would contend that ‘Ghost of Mars’ is rock solid, with Carpenter’s distinctive guiding hand discernable in just about every aspect of the production, from the initial concept to the final edit. So - if the idea of John Carpenter directing a rock solid late-VHS-era b-movie pleases you, hesitate no longer over that “add to basket” button, because I’m confident you’ll have a good time here.

I don’t imagine that Carpenter planned ‘Ghosts..’ as his “last hurrah”, but in retrospect the movie’s tendency to fall back on story elements retooled from ‘Assault of Precinct 13’, ‘The Fog’ and ‘The Thing’ certainly gives it a self-referential “last lap of the track” vibe that – whilst much criticised in contemporary reviews - now allows us to indulge in some pleasurable nostalgia for an era in which movies such as these actually got made.

For those of us of a certain age and inclination in fact, ‘Ghosts of Mars’s potential as rainy day comfort viewing is immense. Not only is it probably the closest Carpenter ever came to the kind of modest, Hawksian western he always claimed he really wanted to make, but, speaking as a child of ‘90s video rentals, I also found myself loving ‘Ghosts..’s production design, which resembles a kind of perfect amalgam of every mid-budget/straight to video sci-fi actioner that that decade produced.

It’s full of unfeasibly bulked up post-‘Aliens’ assault rifles, tense walks down clanking corridors, faux-tough guy posturing, infra-red “monster-vision”, cyber-punky made up drugs and set within one of those weird, brightly lit ‘Total Recall’-esque dystopian off-planet colonies that actually looks quite nice and orderly -- and, somehow, all this squares quite nicely with the kind of no nonsense script that could easily have been “Raid on Dry Gulch” or some-such in a former life.

Natasha Henstridge from the ‘Species’ movies turns in a surprisingly strong performance as our resident space-sheriff, proving beyond doubt that she had the necessary acting chops to carry this kind of movie (if only anyone had been paying attention), and, if Ice Cube sadly doesn’t make much of an impression as our Snake Plissken/Napoleon Wilson surrogate (“Desolation Williams”!), there’s no shortage of other interesting contenders to fill the vacuum, from Jason Stratham doing his latter-day cockney action man thing to Robert Carradine drivin’ the big train, Joanna Cassidy from ‘Bladerunner’ fleeing across the Martian desert in a shakily CGI-assisted hot air balloon (shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs, perhaps..?), and, how can you say no to Pam Grier as the butch dyke space police commander? (With difficulty is the answer you’re looking for.)

Given its status as an unpretentious action-adventure movie furthermore, I think some of the ideas in ‘Ghost of Mars’ aren’t half bad. Considering the kind of comic machismo, barely concealed homo-erotic sub-texts and quaintly adolescent fear of women that had long dominated Carpenter’s films by the time he made this one, the decision to make the Mars colony a matriarchy is certainly an interesting one, and, though the implications of this are never really explored in much depth, there is nonetheless an enjoyable frisson to be found in watching an action movie in which most positions of power and normative authority belong to female characters, with the men conversely portrayed as ‘plucky underdogs’ and suchlike. (I also enjoyed the way that the film’s outlaw characters sneeringly accuse each other of “workin’ for The Woman”.)

The possessed Martian miners who comprise the film’s monster-threat are pretty good too, representing a distinctive and genuinely alarming spin on what could easily have been a rather ho-hum “Indians-via-zombies” type effort. With their bodies now inhabited by the spirits (or “ghosts”, y’see) of barbaric ancient Martian warriors, the human colonists begin filing their teeth, practicing grotesque self-mutilation and forging improvised new weapons for themselves, until they resemble some goth-damaged take on a Warhammer 40,000 army, waving their war banners and hefting improbably massive multi-bladed hand weapons as they bear down upon our heroes’ encampment. Though the mall-goth type make up they favour is.. kind of strange (well, it was 2001 I suppose), this is all pretty awesome, to be honest.

Although the film’s climactic siege situation had generally been read as a rehash of ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ (Henstridge & Cube’s similarly ‘Rio Bravo’-inspired sheriff/prisoner relationship certainly suggests as much), these more visible and flamboyant antagonists really make it more of a space-age/’Road Warrior’-filtered take on a good ol’ Rourke’s Drift scenario, and Carpenter clearly had a ton of fun with this notion, even throwing in a blatant homage to ‘Zulu’ at one point as he has his survivors adopt a first rank / second rank firing strategy to take down the Martians pouring through their over-run defenses.

All in all, it is difficult for me to find anything to dislike in a film that panders to my rose-tinted ideal of John Carpenter making a sci-fi action film in 2001 quite as warmly and generously as ‘Ghosts of Mars’. Even the soundtrack, built around woefully dated layers of down-tuned nu-metal guitar, worked quite well for me this time around, with the characteristic rhythmic drive of Carpenter’s compositions adding a welcome sense of urgency and forward momentum that such candy-coated sludge often lacked in the hands of the bands who popularised this questionable sound around the turn of the century.

I don’t want to build expectations for ‘Ghosts of Mars’ up too high in the midst of all this praise however. As stated, the film is certainly no gold-plated classic, but – and this is the key point – it doesn’t intend to be. If only more 21st century productions were content to set out with such modest, genre-constrained ambitions; perhaps more would succeed in fulfilling them half as well as Carpenter does here, and perhaps as a result us long-suffering viewers might have more fun of a weekend movie night. (Just sayin’.)

The Adventures of John Carpenter in the 21st Century: Intro.

 On Halloween night last year, my wife and I went to see John Carpenter and his band performing live at a large London concert venue. In spite of the obvious drawbacks that come with being inside a large London concert venue, we had a pretty great time.

Mr Carpenter stood at the front of the stage behind his midi keyboard, somehow looking more youthful than he did in interview footage filmed about ten years ago, and said helpful things like “MY NAME IS JOHN CARPENTER”, and “I MAKE HORROR MOVIES”, to much applause.

Sadly there was no Coupe De Villes material (boo), no Benson, Arizona, and I’m not sure ‘Assault of Precinct 13’ really benefited from a full band arrangement with rock guitars, but no matter - basically it was great. Actually, truth be told, I probably would have deemed it ‘great’ even if J.C. had just pulled up a comfy chair and taken it easy for a couple of hours, such was the pleasure I felt merely being in the presence of such a beloved cultural figure (and especially given that he seemed to be having a grand old time with the whole “being a rock star” business).

By complete coincidence, the following six months have found us watching or re-watching every significant directorial assignment that Carpenter has completed since the turn of the millennium, so, what more of an excuse do I need to write a bit for you about these oft-overlooked late era additions to his formidable legacy?

Three posts will be forthcoming over the next couple of weeks, conveniently scheduled to cover a stretch of time I’m spending out of the country and away from the computer. Have fun while I’m gone...

#24The Fog(John Carpenter, 1980)

“So I never hitchhiked before, and I just wanna be careful. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Are you weird?”
“Yes. Yes, I am weird.”
“You’re weird? Thank god! The last ride I had was normal it was disgusting..”

There is something irreducible about The Fog – a simple story strongly and imaginative told, it inhabits a self-defined world oblivious to criticism. It is a slower, gentler and more visually expansive film than we would have expected from John Carpenter in 1980, and one of very few modern(ish) American horror films to zero right in on the kind of ‘comforting eeriness’ that forms such integral part of the appeal of the kind of older, ‘weird tales’ horror that the fim quietly references throughout. A beautiful communal viewing experience, “The Fog” plays as a mass media-era equivalent of the campfire ghost story so memorably narrated by John Houseman in the film’s opening.

A digression: can only speak for myself here, but I’ve always hated that Stephen King-birthed style approach to American horror stories that started to become prevalent through the ‘70s and ‘80s, wherein our story is seen to take place in a normal, healthy suburban community which is threatened by some malign outside influence. I mean, like I could give a crap whether Suzy and Bobby can get to school safely, or whether sinister occult forces are out to undermine the sanctity of marriage, or any of this other OH NO, THREAT TO THE STATUS QUO bullshit! I’m here to hang out with the weirdos! No, what I like are horror stories in which the world itself is weird - in which time and space seem frozen in some strange interzone in which the conflict or threat seems to grow, or return, from the surroundings that nature or humanity has built for it, rolling in as naturally as, well.. the fog.

I’m not sure whether I’m explaining myself very well, but this is something that is returned to time and time again in the films that appear further up this list, and it is a feeling that Carpenter captures perfectly through the town of Antonio Bay in “The Fog”.

Imagine if you will, a perpetually off-season Northern California coastal town, full of dark, empty streets, cheaply-built beach-houses stretching out into the bay. Businesses failing from a basic lack of people to patronise them, but continuing nonetheless, running on empty cos the rents are so low. Nautical knick-knacks, weather stations on the cliffs. Everyone is friendly, but kinda suspicious with it. Adrienne Barbeau is a single mother who runs a radio station that broadcasts out of a lighthouse, playing anonymous, jazzy muzak through the dark hours of the night. As the only DJ, she chooses to run the station through the night, and shuts it down during the day, for some reason. Janet Leigh is the mayor. Sailors and harbour officials look out to sea and talk boat-talk. Nobody ever really seems to do any work, and everyone is very vague about the concept of, y’know, leaving.

If you’re thinking “I wanna live there” then join the club. Come on over and and we’ll watch “The Fog” together. Rarely have I seen a more perfectly inviting mini-universe built up in a film, a place I’d be more inclined to walk straight through the screen and become part of. Dark secrets and vengeful ghost pirates notwithstanding, I wanna take a ride out to Spivey Point right now.

So many of the elements compiled in “The Fog” help to define a certain, strange strain of horror that I love, but that I don’t really have a name for. The isolation, the coastal setting. The disembodied radio broadcasts, severed communications, fragmented narration. The weird, highly localised folklore. Figures emerging from/returning to the sea. The lighthouse. These things move me wherever they turn up, but, oddly, we’ll be seeing every single one of them again in another film higher up the list – a film made before “The Fog” that I think is even better. I don’t believe the similarities are anything more than completely coincidental, but in some ways they are truly uncanny, as if the two were tapping directly into the same nexus of imagery and atmosphere…

Anyway, I could happily list the many, many qualities of “The Fog” all day long, but I’m sure that would be surplus to requirements. Should you ever find your faith in john Carpenter slipping, just consider that he made this – a film about vengeful ghost pirates so great that the vengeful ghost pirates are the least good thing in it.

For further elucidation, I direct your attention to this great piece written by Erich Kuersten of Acidemic earlier this year. I concur with all points made, and for some reason had never previously clocked the uncanny parallels to “The Birds”.

John Carpenter Blogathon Fail.

I had very much intended to take part in the John Carpenter blogathon thing being coordinated this week by Radiator Heaven. After all, it was only a few months ago that a sudden moment of drunken clarity led me to the realisation that John Carpenter is THE BEST DIRECTOR EVER. I’m told that in my enthusiasm I may have also deemed him THE KING OF THE WORLD, but that’s up for debate. Point is - I think he has made a lot of great movies, and I really enjoy his whole, y’know, ‘John Carpenter’ shtick. So naturally I wanted to do my bit.

I had it all planned out – I was gonna write this amazing, free-wheeling essay that’s been bouncing around my head for years, about my memories of first seeing “John Carpenter’s Vampires” on TV, and about the notion of John Carpenter being an ANTI-auteur (much in the sense of an antipope), ticking all the boxes of established auteur theory but at the same time embodying the complete opposite of all the unspoken virtues that it is assumed an ‘auteur’ should represent, and about how “Vampires” in all it’s ridiculous, ugly glory is the purest distillation of Carpenterism thus committed to screen.

But sadly, I fucked up, and forgot to factor in all the stupid crap modern life compels me to do when I should be sitting in quiet repose contemplating John Carpenter movies, and that essay is just not going to get written this week I’m afraid.

All I can think to do by way of compensation is to post this video again – that is, John Carpenter’s video for The Coupe de Villes, the band he formed with two other horror movie directors(?!?), rocking out on the theme tune he recorded for his own movie, “Big Trouble In Little China”. Truly, a more convincing testament to the joys of Carpenterism would be hard to find.

By visiting this post at The Manchester Morgue, you can download the entirety of The Coupe de Villes' couldn’t-be-more-perfectly-titled album “Waiting Out The Eighties”. Featuring hits like “She Has Friends in LA”, “Midnight Train” and “Darlin’ (All Night Long)”, I speak with no irony whatsoever when I declare it an absolutely brilliant listen.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m gonna run, run into the mystic night, and try to finish off a few new movie reviews to see us through the next couple of weeks…

Deathblog: Dan O'Bannon(1946-2009)

I haven’t had much time for writing over the past few days, but thought I owed it to myself to at least get down a few words to mark the passing of Dan O’Bannon, a man who I guess never really quite made the grade as a household name or a big deal auteur, but was nevertheless to be found hovering in the background behind many of the most entertaining and influential sci fi and horror movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and, being some hopeless kind of nerd, his name has certainly been lodged in my mind since I was busy watching ‘em all as a teenager.

I’d imagine most obits will have him down as “guy who wrote ‘Alien’ dies”, and whilst I’m sure it was a fine script and all, he gets eternal respect from me for two other projects he was involved with.

Firstly, there’s his directorial debut from 1985, the kind of directorial debut that would have had me writing cheques for a ten picture deal, although sadly things didn’t work out that way, ‘Return of the Living Dead’!

What can I possibly say about ‘Return of the Living Dead’? For all my love of the strange and wonderful and poetic and obscure in cinema, if you were to feed me enough beer and ask me about the elements that go together to create a GREAT MOVIE (as opposed to a good film), ‘Return..’ is pretty much the dictionary definition. For any Halloween “get drunk and watch movies” type party, it’s always the number one choice, now and forever – satisfaction guaranteed for horror freaks and innocent bystanders alike. Frankly, I think the fact the guy who directed ‘Return..’ died without a long and illustrious string of directing credits to his name speaks very poorly of the human race as a whole.



Over a decade before all that, O’Bannon was also co-writer/editor/production designer/actor etc etc. on John Carpenter’s student film turned directorial debut, ‘Dark Star’ (1970/74), a film I love deeply, however much it bored and baffled me as a fourteen year old. For all its obvious debt to ‘2001’, ‘Dark Star’ is a beautifully strange, stoned, dreamlike, funny and affecting thing, the like of which neither of its creators attempted in their subsequent careers.

In fact, however goofy and low budget it may be, I think this might still be the most beautiful ending to a film I’ve ever seen. It gets me every time, and it’s a perfect way to end an obituary post. R.I.P. Dan O’B, hope Benson’s close by.