Growing up, John Carpenter was a complete hero of mine. Halloween, Assault From Precinct 13, The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing, Dark Star, Christine, Starman, Prince of Darkness, They Live, Big Trouble In Little China. The man could do no wrong. (I remember writing a fan letter to him — the only one I have ever written, I believe — and got a signed photo in the post.) He was the master of the B movie. And then something happened. Suddenly, around the time of Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, Carpenter stopped making good movies. In The Mouth Of Madness had some creepy moments but Escape From LA, Vampires, Ghosts Of Mars, the Village Of The Damned remake were all faintly embarrassing, especially coming from the director of The Thing. He's been in movie jail of late, dabbling in TV with a couple of episodes of Masters of Horror but his return to big screen movie making has been mooted for some time, and now comes news that he's teaming with Nic Cage on a prison thriller called Scared Straight. Now, I haven't warmed to anything starring Cage for a long time, and so this could be a disaster on so many levels, but the fan in me is praying and hoping that Carpenter comes good again.
Monday, 4 August 2008
John Carpenter
Growing up, John Carpenter was a complete hero of mine. Halloween, Assault From Precinct 13, The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing, Dark Star, Christine, Starman, Prince of Darkness, They Live, Big Trouble In Little China. The man could do no wrong. (I remember writing a fan letter to him — the only one I have ever written, I believe — and got a signed photo in the post.) He was the master of the B movie. And then something happened. Suddenly, around the time of Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, Carpenter stopped making good movies. In The Mouth Of Madness had some creepy moments but Escape From LA, Vampires, Ghosts Of Mars, the Village Of The Damned remake were all faintly embarrassing, especially coming from the director of The Thing. He's been in movie jail of late, dabbling in TV with a couple of episodes of Masters of Horror but his return to big screen movie making has been mooted for some time, and now comes news that he's teaming with Nic Cage on a prison thriller called Scared Straight. Now, I haven't warmed to anything starring Cage for a long time, and so this could be a disaster on so many levels, but the fan in me is praying and hoping that Carpenter comes good again.
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6 comments:
I was reading up about this yesterday. Can't say I'm too taken with that title...
Sounds like something Seagal would make.
A Seagal horror/comedy a la Beetlejuice or The Frighteners... Christ, just imagine that...
I'd rather not.
I love Carpenter's stuff too and have always felt that IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS was his last really good film (with THEY LIVE being his last truly great film). Some of his later stuff has shown glimmers of good stuff, like VAMPIRES which has its moments (mostly involving James Woods).
I really hope this new film is good, if only to allow Carpenter to make more movies. It should be interesting to see how he works with Cage.
Agreed. ITMOM has moments of eerieness and menace that are right up there with his best work. The film just doesn't hold together narrratively.
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