Submitted by Brandon E.
If you’re a horror film enthusiast old enough to remember the visceral thrills you felt during the original 1978 release of John Carpenter’s Halloween, chances are you’ve followed his career through the ups and downs of the subsequent decades.
Though the 1990s and early 2000s contained more downs than ups for the iconic filmmaker, his work has had a recent renaissance. More and more filmmakers of the kinds of “genre” films that Carpenter is known for – straight horror films and hybrid films that often combine elements of horror with the psychological thriller or science fiction adventure – cite him as a major influence or let that influence show in their own work.
Just as one example, the director of the recent musical horror film Stage Fright cites Carpenter as an influence on his movie not just in some of the big ways you might expect but in minute details like the font used for his title sequence. He even claims that the red used in their titles is the exact red used in Carpenter’s film Assault on Precinct 13, Carpenter’s 1976 action thriller that, not incidentally, got remade in 2005. A generation that grew up on Carpenter’s scary and suspenseful thrills is beginning to reboot his stories for yet another generation.
Assault on Precinct 13 is a good example of the kind of diverse creativity that has been a hallmark of Carpenter’s career. He not only directed the film, but wrote, scored and edited it. That amazing amount of creative control, combined with a relatively low budget, seems to be the mark of most of the work that is now considered his best. Another mark of the film that seems to be a staple of much of Carpenter’s career is the fact that the film originally did poorly at the box office, but has since become a kind of cult classic thanks to play on niche cable channels like Robert Rodriguez’s horror and grindhouse-oriented El Rey network (which DTV offers now, along with some cable networks). It first garnered acclaim in Europe and eventually met with better critical acclaim in the U.S., where its violence has always been considered controversial.
Not many of Carpenter’s films were successful at the box office, though Halloween and Escape from New York, his 1981 science-fiction thriller, are notable exceptions. The suspenseful plot of Escape from New York involves a then-futuristic New York City that has become a maximum security prison. Kurt Russell wears an eye-patch in the memorable role of Snake Plissken, an ex-soldier who has been urgently dispatched to find the U.S. president after a plane crash inside the city. The movie cost six million to make but grossed over 25, and Plissken has become one of the best-known of Carpenter’s characters. Carpenter brought Plissken back in the 1996 sequel Escape from L.A., which unlike the original, tanked at the box office and did not make back its budget.
In some ways, that seems to be the kind of director Carpenter is: hit or miss. Time, however, has proven that many of his movies originally deemed as “misses” have actually added much creativity to the cinematic world he inhabits and influences.
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