my new plaid pants: John Carpenter

Showing posts with label John Carpenter. Show all posts

Thursday, January 16, 2025

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

John: This shit really sells doesn't it?
Linda: More than you'd think. Surprised?
John: Lady, nothing surprises me anymore.
We fucked up the air, the water, we fucked up each other.
Why don't we just finish the job
by flushing our brains down the toilet?

A happy 77 to the legend John Carpenter!

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Good Morning, Halloween

Rise and shine, my favorite freaks!
It's our day! OUR DAY!

Monday, November 13, 2023

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Maniac Cop (1988)

Frank McCrae: Whole city's goin' to hell.
You can't take a pee anywhere anymore.

A very happy 88th birthday to horror icon Tom Atkins!

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from

The Thing (1982)

MacReady: How you doin', old boy?

Dr. Blair: I don't know who to trust.

MacReady: I know what you mean, Blair.

Trust's a tough thing to come by these days.

Tell you what - why don't you just trust in the Lord?

The king called Wilford Brimley

was born 89 years ago today.

Monday, October 31, 2022

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Halloween (1978)

Loomis: I met him, 15 years ago. I was told there was nothing left - no reason, no conscience, no understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this... six-year-old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and... the blackest eyes - the Devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up, because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil.

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

I've been pretty relentlessly ripping on David Gordon Green's Halloween trilogy for the past week (see this Twitter thread here or read my review of Halloween Ends right here) -- and with good reason! He really shit the bed with it! It's an incoherent jumble of half-thought-out ideas, and I am being extremely generous when I call them "half" thought out. But worst sin of all is I could cut several fingers off of my left hand and still be unable to count up as many scares as I had left fingers stretched across the entire damned run of films. DGG proved himself to be wildly inept at building tension, and I shudder to think what he's about to do to The Exorcist. (As long as Ellen Burstyn gets paid really really well I suppose we should be happy with that much.)

All that said as the world's tiniest olive branch I will say that this moment in Green's 2018 film where Michael Myers drops a handful of bloody teeth over the bathroom stall door? That shit is wildly effective. Maybe the only legitimately creepy moment in the entire trilogy? The scene with the motion-sensor light in the backyard in the first movie, the scene with Kyle Richards being hunted in the park in the second movie... honestly what else even is there? Certainly not a single goddamned second of Ends, that's for sure. What a waste of time and money and legacy these movies turned out to be. Also I was gonna ask where the hell Michael got those teeth from, but it was probably the dead gas station mechanic he stole his coveralls from, right?

Click here for the "Toilets of Halloween"... if you dare!

Saturday, October 22, 2022

13 Toilets of Halloween #4

Does anyone else think of Michael Myers when the T-Rex

does that little head-tilt in the first Jurassic Park movie?

I always do, but then I'm weird. So I feel as if I should ask. Anyway I wouldn't put it past the animators and technicians who brought the T-Rex to life to have done that on purpose -- that movie is filled with so much character when it comes to all of the animals (the impatient claw-tapping velociraptor!) that they all feel all the realer.

Of course now, much like Michael Myers' head-tilt, they feel the need to do the same damned things every time -- they had one of the raptors tapping its toe in the latest Jurassic World abortion and all I could do is groan. We don't need you to copy things, we need you to make new interesting choices dammit! I digress -- we're here to talk about that lawyer getting eaten by that Tyrannosaur on that toilet!

But then because of course I have I have already done this scene as one of my "Ways Not To Die" posts (and I did it like fourteen years ago -- good grief I have been blogging this site for-literal-ever) so maybe you should check that out. I do find it crazy how on the eve of this film's 30th anniversary the special-effects still look perfect though -- everything having to do with the T-Rex in the first film looks better than literally anything that came after it in any of the other Jurassic movies. It's astonishing. In related news there's a massive new book about Phil Tippett, the special-effects legend behind the Jurassic dinos and the Starship Trooper bugs and the Robocops and the Star Wars, that's coming out in November -- I have already pre-ordered my copy! You should too! Or else...

And click here for all of the "Toilets of Halloween" so far!

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Kit Harington Seven Times

Does anybody else keep completely forgetting that Kit Harington is in the Eternals movie? I feel as if I have seen very little of him around, although I will admit that I haven't paid a ton of attention to whatever trailers and clips have come around after the first one. Also there are one thousand cast memmbers in it, all of them new, and the movie's not out for another month. So we'll see, I guess. Anyway here is indeed a new photoshoot of him, and I will use this to make my graceful exit stage right for the night, as I'm off to see a screening of the new probably terrible Halloween movie. I hope to be proven wrong! but after re-watching the 2018 one this week and being reminded how very much it stinks my hopes are not stratospheric. Hit the jump for more Kit...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Halloween: H20 (1998)

Laurie Strode: Molly please, do you have
any thoughts on Victor and Elizabeth?
Molly: Well, um, well I think that Victor should
have confronted the monster sooner. He's completely
responsible for Elizabeth's death because he was so
paralyzed by fear that he never did anything.
It took death for the guy to get a clue.
Laurie Strode: And why do you think he was
finally able to confront his monster?
Molly: I think that Victor had reached a point in his life
where he had nothing left to lose. I mean the monster
sought to that by killing off everybody that he loved.
Victor finally had to face it. It was about redemption
... it was his fate.

One, it's Michelle Williams' birthday today, and two, I am actively avoiding any and everything regarding the screening of the new Halloween film (Halloween Kills, aka Halloween Bangs) in Venice yesterday, so why not distract ourselves with this look back at the original "Laurie Strode came back to fight her dumb brother and only got a decapitation in its sequel for her efforts" joint. (PS I am not saying I know whether she lives or dies in the new movie -- as I just said I am avoiding everything about it.)

Anyway in H20 Laurie Strode has become an alcoholic English teacher and in a fun if thuddingly obvious throwback to the original film -- where Laurie's seen sitting in English class prattling on about "fate" in whatever book it was she was reading -- we have this "Molly" character of Michelle's spelling out the plot of the film they're currently in, via a discussion of Frankenstein. "Fate" echoes through the decades, Laurie Strode! We'll have to keep our ears peeled for mentions of this sort of thing in the new film, but I have absolutely no doubt it'll be there. And we probably won't have to strain too hard for it, either. In summation...

... Josh Hartnett in this movie.

That's all. Just Josh.

Tuesday, June 08, 2021

Bryan Fuller's Killer Car Cometh

Now this is the sort of news I've been waiting for! Deadline is reporting that our beloved Bryan Fuller, he of Hannibal and Pushing Daisies fame, is writing and directing a re-do adaptation of Stephen King's classic book Christine. Yeah the one about the sexy killer car that re-does its nerd and turns him into a bad boy. John Carpenter made a movie version in 1983 that I've always sorta liked, sorta not liked, but I'll admit I haven't watched the movie (or read the book, for that matter) in many many years. Smash cut to my Amazon cart looking a lot like this...

I'll be doing a re-watch and re-read of both of this as soon as I have them in my hot little hands, baby. Anyway Deadline says Bryan plans on keeping the film set in the 1980s and as close to King's book as he can. Also worth noting -- this will be Bryan's first director's credit, if IMDb isn't lying to me. He's always let other people sit in that chair, although his voice across projects has become so strong and distinctive enough that it's recognizable from space. Cannot wait to see how he aims it onto this project!

Wednesday, December 09, 2020

The Midnight Sky in 275 Words

Never have the heavens felt heavier than they do in George Clooney's The Midnight Sky -- perhaps that's because instead of their usual light and air they're suddenly stuffed with space debris, muddled exposition, exhausting musical compositions, bland characters, weird interior design, Felicity Jones' single facial expression, the eternal strain for some sort of emotional or philosophical resonance or significance, a splash of cosmos twinkle, and David Oyelowo's bicep-accentuating future shirts, maybe not in that order. No wonder Clooney's main character can hardly lift his head. It's heavy, man.

Set about 25 years in the future immediately following a vague apocalypse Clooney's character finds himself stationed at a stark frozen outpost -- my favorite thing in the film is the station's name, a Carpenter-ian flourish worth a smirk -- all on his lonesome. Except, hark Newt, he's not -- there's suddenly a mute little girl standing there. Cue the strings, and the strings, and the goddamned strings -- when Alexandre Desplat's soundtrack started plinking as the adorable little girl rolled some microwaved peas across the table I, for my sanity, had to check the hell out.

There are a couple of well-done set-pieces of the action sort -- what starts out as a rip-off of Gravity ends instead on a nicely underplayed note of tragedy, and there are scattered glimpses of cosmic brilliance in the film's expensively shot sheen. But my god I never cared. I never cared about the astronaut characters because they're never flesh-and-blood characters, and I never cared about the people on the ground because their scenes are so molasses-handed, thick with pushy melodrama, I skittered backwards in my seat as if shoved by a magnetic force.

Monday, April 27, 2020

Be Very Afraid

This week's "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" at The Film Experience -- read it at this link -- is getting real sticky with Geena Davis in David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly, which is one of if not the best horror remakes ever re-made. Right? What else is there, The Thing? I'd personally throw Luca's Suspiria in here but recognize we need to give it more time to solidify itself into that exact final form. Tell me your favorite Horror Remake in the comments!

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

The Thing Goes There, Again

In 2018 the sci-fi scholar Alec Nevala-Lee discovered a never-before-seen longer version of John W. Campbell's short story "Who Goes There" while researching his book on the so-called "Golden Age" of science-fiction publishing, aka the previous early mid-century-ish. The new version was forty-five pages longer than what ultimately got published in 1938 in Astounding magazine, which was edited by none other than Campbell himself. The story "Who Goes There?" is of course notable for being the inspiration for Howard Hawks' 1951 classic film The Thing From Another World and then eventually John Carpenter's terrifying remake in 1982.

I hadn't heard about any of this, not even when the longer version of the story got Kickstartered and published under the title Frozen Hell last October. I missed it all! That is I missed it until today when I read that Blumhouse is planning on making yet another movie version of the story -- no word if they'll stick with the title The Thing or if they'll got with Frozen Hell but if I had to place any bets I'd wager they'll go with the known property title. Hey remember the 2011 prequel with Joel Edgerton and Mary Elizabeth Winstead?

I think I'm one of the few horror nerds who thought that version was not good -- I recall it getting a lot of love at that moment, and then vanishing entirely into the ether five minutes later. Anyway I wasn't very happy with it, here's my review. I think it's best it vanished from memory. We don't have any names attached to this new version yet, and until I read Frozen Hell I don't know what new things have been added to the story, so this is all a question mark. But in the wake of the generally successful Color Out of Space I'm not surprised we're getting this -- maybe the Lovecraftian kick can continue until we finally get Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness...

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Dark Star (1974)

Doolittle: Don't give me any of
that intelligent life crap,
just give me something I can blow up.

Here on the god-head John Carpenter's 72nd birthday I sullenly have to admit I actually can't recall whether I've ever seen his first film Dark Star or not. I know what it's about but I could know what it's about without having seen it. When one's seen as many movies as I have seen this becomes a problem, but I'm sure plenty of you nerds have felt this same feeling.

I was watching the new documentary about the making of Alien the other day -- which is pretty good if weirdly Sigourney free, which was upsetting -- and Dark Star came up a couple of times therein since they were both written by Dan O'Bannon, and I went through this whole false memory process then too. I just can't remember. Anyway any Dark Star fans in the house? I should just watch it again, or possibly for the first time, right?

Monday, October 28, 2019

Happy Almost Halloween Forever

As of yesterday we've had Jamie Lee Curtis playing Laurie Strode in our lives for 41 years -- seeing as how I am 42-years-old that is mathematically speaking a mighty high percentage! Unfortunately my parents didn't take one-year-old me to see Halloween when it came out in 1978 -- talk about lousy parenting. Anyway I personally will always consider Laurie Strode the ultimate Final Girl and I wrote a little bit about that over at The Film Experience today, what with it being the week of All Hallows and all, you should go read it.

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Starman (1984)

Jenny: What's it like up there?
Starman: It is beautiful. Not like this, but it is beautiful. There is only one language, one law, one people. There is no war, no hunger. The strong do not victimize the helpless. We are very civilized, but we have lost something, I think. You are all so much alive, all so different. I will miss the cooks and the singing and the dancing. And the eating! And the... other things.

I have spent the last week, ever since they honored Jeff Bridges at the Golden Globes, wanting to watch Starman and not having the time - perhaps I will tonight since it's John Carpenter's birthday. It's been a very very very long time - in fact there's a good chance I haven't seen Starman since I was a kid and I have no doubt that Starman was not made for kids. What the hell was I doing watching Starman when I was a kid anyway? Bad parenting, y'all.

Anyway last year on JC's birthday I asked y'all to vote on his best movie -- that poll is still running here a year later so if you'd like to go vote again have at it! As of now twelve whole months in it's a perfect tie for first place between Halloween and The Thing which is actually exactly perfect and what I'd pick. Good job, everybody.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Last Night I Dreamt...

My attitude towards remakes has shifted somewhat over the past couple of years - maybe we (unfortunately) can't always expect complete reimaginings like Luca Guadagnino did with his version of Suspiria, but even if the remake just treads the same ground and does so with less impact than the original... the original still exists! A remake doesn't obliterate the existence of the original. I can still see John Carpenter's The Fog and appreciate John Carpenter's The Fog - I can do that now in 4K even - and I don't have to waste a second remembering that time Tom Welling didn't take his shirt off.

Anyway that's all pretext to last night's news that Ben Wheatley, the British director I consider somewhat promising to put it mildly, is set to make a brand new film version of Daphne du Maurier's book Rebecca, which you may recall once won an Oscar for Best Picture when Alfred Hitchcock made a movie out of it in 1940 with Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Replacing those two in Wheatley's version? Armie Hammer and Lily James.

That is good casting, you guys! It took awhile for me to warm up to Lily James but that fully happened last year when she forced Jai Courtney to strip in The Exception, when she ogled Michiel Huisman in that Potato Peel movie whose title I am not writing out again, and, uh, when she larked about with Gary Oldman in a fat-suit. Yes even that last one - I liked The Darkest Hour, even if I do hold a grudge against it in retrospect for stealing Timothee Chalamet's most deserved Oscar statue...

Speaking of (Timmy, not the statue) heyyy Armie. Armie's worked with Wheatley before in the 2016 70s-set shoot-em-up Free Fire (my review here), which Armie was maybe the best part of, although my recollection's a little dim right now and might be colored by how much my appreciation for Armie has, uh, exceeded expectations in the wake of Call Me By Your Name. But you tell me an actor working today who is better suited to play Rebecca's "Maxim De Winter," a callous but profoundly charming rich boy who drags ladies in over their heads. I'll wait. I thought so.

So is a remake of Rebecca a good idea? I'm surprisingly not at all against it. We'll always have Hitch's movie - this won't erase that from existence. And Wheatley's going to make a masterpiece one of these days - he's come close already. And the story could benefit from a modern re-telling - its view on women is awfully of its time, and perhaps they can go full The Handmaiden and give us the full-blown lesbian jazz that Hitch could only wink wink nudge nudge us towards. Which brings me to the most important casting of all...

... who the hell could play Mrs. Danvers???

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

And That's Another Halloween, Folks

I hope everybody has a wonderful Halloween! My big holiday plans already happened this past weekend so I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing (read: watching) low-key tonight - I thought I might go see the remastered version of The Fog in the theater but now that I'm looking at my crazy schedule ahead for the next few days (like I'm seeing Suspiria a second time tomorrow finally) I'm just going home and chilling with something. Something unspeakable!

I want to hear what you're watching in the comments! You could get an idea or two from our list of the "13 Mustaches of Halloween" maybe. And if you're still racking your brain for something weird there's an excellent list of super obscure titles right here in Twitter List form - I haven't even heard of most of these so you're sure to find something interesting. Enjoy! Sweet nightmares! And a happy Halloween, my lovely ghouls and goblins...

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Halloween (1978)

Brackett: It's Halloween.
Everyone's entitled to one good scare.

Or forty years worth of good scares! Not to beat a dead babysitter with all the Halloween posts this week but today is officially the 40th anniversary of John Carpenter's original movie -- it opened in Kansas City, Missouri on this day in the year 1978. Kansas City? Why Kansas City? Well according to the film's producer Irwin Yablans in his book The Man Who Created Halloween, Kansas City was chosen for the movie's premiere because...

"He figured the area wouldn't attract too much attention and advertising costs there were manageable. The first day resulted in $200 per theater; however, business doubled the following night and the night after that. 'By the end of the first week, Halloween was the biggest thing in Kansas City,' said Yablans. 'It was a phenomenal example of word of mouth.'"

That ad there to the right is one of the original ads used to promote the film in Kansas. The film was made for 300K and ended up growing over 70 million dollars in its original run, which is the equivalent of nearly 300 million in today's dollars -- David Gordon Green's film (read my review here) has already grossed nearly 90 million in less than a week... we'll have to see if it has the legs to reach the original though, since horror movies do tend to drop quick. But this one's got another week of All Hallows on its side and the fact that the only other horror movie opening (Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria remake) is only hitting a couple of theaters this weekend on the coasts. So maybe it can!

Anyway I don't want to get bogged down in box office yammering since for all of its success John Carpenter's film is so much more than dollar signs - it's like a perfect thing dropped out of the heavens... or more precisely raised from the depths of Hell. The film is nearly two hours long but every single frame is accounted for, every moment adding to an accumulation of heavy-breathing atmosphere and chest-heaving terror.
.

This movie is so goddamn pretty, you guys pic.twitter.com/G66cqEbl7F
— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) October 19, 2018

Monday, October 22, 2018

Heart & Soles

Now that I've shrugged towards this week's Halloween remake in my just-posted review let's turn our gaze in a far more unreservedly affectionate direction -- towards the great P.J. Soles, Horror Icon, who has a barely-there cameo in the new film. Specifically I'm giving her some good love over at The Film Experience with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" contest. P.J. rules. Go vote!