Tuesday, March 26, 2013

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...

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Blog note

Just a quick note about there not being any content on the blog this week: it's finals week, so I have a ton of papers and final exams to grade. I'll pick things back up starting next week. Expect the Carpenter retrospective to roll on starting Monday....

Monday, March 11, 2013

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...

Monday, March 4, 2013

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)...