John Carpenter

[TeenageRepublican]

John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors. He's extremely talented and knows just the right mood for his films. For those of you that do not know who he is, he is the man who directed:

Halloween (the original)
The Fog
The Thing
Escape From New York
Big Trouble in Little China
In the Mouth of Madness
Village of the Dammed (new one)
Christine
And many others...

So far, I haven't seen one movie of his that I DIDN'T like. The movies I've listed are the ones I've seen. Since I've only gotten good opinions on this board, I would like anyone to recommend another director or another Carpenter film.

The ones that are on my list that I want to see:
Masters of Horror: Pro-Life
Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns
Prince of Darkness
They Live!

Anyone else a John Carpenter fan?

[Kylester1987]

Escape From New York and Halloween are in my mind, his masterpieces

[TeenageRepublican]

Wow. Someone actually responded to this. lol.

Halloween is a masterpiece. The remake totally sucked.

[Kylester1987]

yeah, i only saw the trailer, and knew the remake was gonna suck, the only good horror remake was the blob, escape from new york is awesome......but halloween is just as awesome

[TeenageRepublican]

I disagree with you there. I think The Thing was also a pretty good remake as well as Village of the Damned.

[Kylester1987]

i have yet to see the thing or village of the damned....so, from i have seen so far, i like escape from new york and halloween, i will end up watching the thing sometime.....

[TeenageRepublican]

The Thing is a horror masterpiece. It's on IMDB's (www.imdb.com (http://www.imdb.com)) top 250 movies list.
I love it. The level of paranoia in it is thick.
See Village of the Damned after that one. That's good, but not Carpenter's best.

[Un Con Troll Able]

Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" was excellent (and terribly unknown).

[TeenageRepublican]

How good was that?

[Un Con Troll Able]

Pretty darn good. It ain't a vampire movie, either.

Think...science versus Satan. It has Donald Pleasance and the Asian sidekick and Egg Shen from Big Trouble in Little China.

[TeenageRepublican]

I've heard it was super scary if you're a Christian.

[Un Con Troll Able]

Oh, yeah. Count on it. Up until a while back it was nearly impossible to find for rent or purchase.

[Gato es Verde]

The Fog (the original) was one of my all time favs in the horror genre.

[Un Con Troll Able]

You can read what the Amazon reviewers say about Prince of Darkness here:

http://www.amazon.com/Prince-Darkness-Donald-Pleasence/dp/B0000AOX0A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1204330063&sr=1-1

[TeenageRepublican]

Thanks. It's on my Netflix list now. I've heard about it before now and wanted to see it but it didn't really seem to scream me...

[TeenageRepublican]

The Fog (the original) was one of my all time favs in the horror genre.

That movie scared me to death. Very underrated. A true classic. :claps:

[EveningStar]

I didn't care for Carpenter's remakes of The Thing or Village of the Damned, even though The Thing was MUCH closer to the original story, Who Goes There? (http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Highrise/3756/jc/who/bonusid.htm)

[TeenageRepublican]

What about those films did you not like ES?

[DoctorDoom]

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/Entertainment/ThingHead150.jpg" />

Wonderful!

[EveningStar]

What about those films did you not like ES?
They focussed on being crude and gross-out. They were not really scary.

[TeenageRepublican]

They focussed on being crude and gross-out. They were not really scary.

I thought both were extremely unique and they caused me to actually think. My favorite kind of horror is the kind that makes you think.

But, if you can't handle the gore and violence of both those films then I could see why you wouldn't like that. I recommend The Fog for those looking for non-gore type films. It's violent, but it's not bloody violence. A couple of stabbings is pretty much all you see.

[TeenageRepublican]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/Entertainment/ThingHead150.jpg


Wonderful!

Why are you posting pictures of Hillary Clinton's offspring? :evilgrin:

[Beowulf]

He's not a horror writer, unless you count "The Godfather" as horror but Francis Ford Coppola comes to mind as one of the great directors.

Some of his credits:
-The Godfather Trilogy.
-Apocolypse Now
-The Conversation.

[TeenageRepublican]

He's a good one too. But JC is a little known director with enormous talent. Horror is not all that JC does. He's done action, sci-fi, etc.

[TeenageRepublican]

They focussed on being crude and gross-out. They were not really scary.

Village of the Damned has a really good message in it about violence and our youth.
One of Hollywood’s most celebrated genre filmmakers, Village of the Damned marks JOHN CARPENTER (http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/theman.html)’s 17th feature as a director. Calling the project "an opportunity to remake a kind of classic science fiction thriller," Carpenter drew his primary inspiration from John Wyndham’s 1957 Novel, The Midwich Cuckoos.

When MGM and filmmaker Wolf Rilla first bought Windham’s tale to the big screen in 1960 at the height of the Cold War, many critics interpreted the film, titled Village of the Damned, as yet another alien invasion masking the threat of communism, a theme prevalent in many of the sci-fi films produced during the 1950s.

CHRISTOPHER REEVE (http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/bios/creeve.html), who became an overnight star as the man of steel in the 1978 blockbuster Superman, portrays the films heroic and sympathetic town doctor who must confront an alien threat not only to his own tranquil village, but to the planet as well. Reeve notes, "When they made the movie in 1960, the evil alien, if you will, was Communism. This was the threat, the disease, that could overtake this healthy American organism of liberty and democracy."

"With the demise of the Cold War, we don't have that threat anymore," he continues. "But we have something else - the indifference to violence. And the message in this film is the banality of violence, of evil. Death has no consequence, and, metaphorically, we see that here as a kind of infection, which certainly exists in our culture today."

Emphasizing his point, Reeve says, "What these children in the story represent are kids in our society without remorse, without conscience, children with no sense of what life and death actually mean. Today, we have evil perpetrated by children, young offenders who are so sated by Images of violence, they have no remorse for having shot somebody because, to them, death isn't real."

"It's difficult for us as parents, as grown-ups, to see children as the enemy," the actor, also a father of three, adds. "My character, like any parent, has a hard time believing that his sweet little baby could be so evil, so malignant a monster. That's very hard for an adult to accept."

Co-star LINDA KOZLOWSKI (http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/bios/lkozlo.html) (Crocodile Dundee), whose character Jill McGee gives birth to one of the children, concurs, stating "I think people will relate to the film because we are having lots of problems with our youth today. The message here is one of hope, that humanity and human beings will be good in the end and will triumph."

"This seems to fit right into the kind of movies that I've always been attracted to as a filmmaker," admits director Carpenter, who has portrayed themes of isolation and alienation in such diverse works as his 1982 remake of The Thing (http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/themovies/th/th.html), They Live (http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/themovies/tl/tl.html), and Starman (http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/themovies/st/st.html).
http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/themovies/vd/vdpronotes.html

[hosl]

John Carpenters beats the hell out of Wes Craven any day of the week. Wes Craven doesn't know how to make a good movie. John C. on the other hand, quite the opposite...

[NRP]

Hmm, no comment on 'Ghosts of Mars'?
I saw it when it came out but don't remember how good it was. I've never heard of 'Prince of Darkness', but after your comments, looks like it's time to Netflix it.

[TeenageRepublican]

Hmm, no comment on 'Ghosts of Mars'?
I saw it when it came out but don't remember how good it was. I've never heard of 'Prince of Darkness', but after your comments, looks like it's time to Netflix it.

Every director has his/her bad flicks. Ghost of Mars sucked.

[TeenageRepublican]

I just saw "Prince of Darkness". Scary as hell. Need new pair of pants. Wasn't quite as scary as "The Thing", but it was pretty close.
"The Thing" made me hate dogs for a week. This one really makes me want to not look in mirrors for three days. So, not quite the same effect...

[TeenageRepublican]

John Carpenters beats the hell out of Wes Craven any day of the week. Wes Craven doesn't know how to make a good movie. John C. on the other hand, quite the opposite...

75% of John's films are excellent. The 25% that remain are his most recent. He's been making some craptacular flicks lately. And I don't know why he keeps letting film makers remake his films ("Halloween", "The Fog") when they're perfect just the way they are.
Wes Craven has talent, he just doesn't know how to use it. I loved "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (which was a truly creative horror movie) but hated "The Last House on the Left". I also loved "Red Eye".
Wes needs to stop making incredibly graphic and gory films. They're not scary... at all.
George Romero, director of "Night of the Living Dead", is also a genius, in my opinion.

[hosl]

75% of John's films are excellent. The 25% that remain are his most recent. He's been making some craptacular flicks lately. And I don't know why he keeps letting film makers remake his films ("Halloween", "The Fog") when they're perfect just the way they are.
Wes Craven has talent, he just doesn't know how to use it. I loved "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (which was a truly creative horror movie) but hated "The Last House on the Left". I also loved "Red Eye".
Wes needs to stop making incredibly graphic and gory films. They're not scary... at all.
George Romero, director of "Night of the Living Dead", is also a genius, in my opinion.

I hated, hated, HATED the original "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Scream". George Romero is the reason why I love zombies.

[TeenageRepublican]

I hated, hated, HATED the original "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Scream". George Romero is the reason why I love zombies.

I hated both the new version and old version of "The Hills Have Eyes". I thought they both went overboard on the gore and violence.

[hosl]

I hated both the new version and old version of "The Hills Have Eyes". I thought they both went overboard on the gore and violence.

I could care less about gore and violence, but it was so tedious and boring... which is NOT what someone wants when they see a horror movie.

[Eagle1]

The ones that are on my list that I want to see:
Masters of Horror: Pro-Life
Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns
Prince of Darkness
They Live!

Anyone else a John Carpenter fan?

I love Carpenter's movies, even when they are bad.

Cigarette Burns is his best as far as I am concerned, and it is really more of a thriller than a horror flick.

[TeenageRepublican]

I love Carpenter's movies, even when they are bad.

Cigarette Burns is his best as far as I am concerned, and it is really more of a thriller than a horror flick.

I loved "Cigarette Burns". It was like "In the Mouth of Madness" but instead of a writer, it's a film maker.
However, I personally have come to believe that "The Thing" is his best work. That had the thickest atmosphere I have ever seen on film.
These are my favorite films of his, from greatest to least.

1. "The Thing"
2. "Halloween"
3. "Prince of Darkness"
4. "In the Mouth of Madness"
5. "The Fog"
6. "Cigarette Burns"
7. "Pro-Life"
8. "Vampires"

I could care less about gore and violence, but it was so tedious and boring... which is NOT what someone wants when they see a horror movie.

Same here, I just don't think that gore and violence should be used for the sake of gore and violence, which both films did.

[TeenageRepublican]

I decided to sit down and watch "Ghost of Mars" (to give it one more chance) and found that it wasn't that bad of a movie, in fact, I would give it at least a 3/5.
I thought the idea was original, I thought the script was original, and I thought it was well-made (like most of Carpenter's films). What went wrong with this movie was the actors.
It's not that they were bad, it's just that they didn't fit the atmosphere of the film. If this was remade (some parts begged to be edited) by Carpenter and the actors were replaced, I bet would it be a great flick. Not a terrible movie if you have two or so hours to kill.