…in decapitated half-hearted appreciation of john carpenter...
…as presented via textual blind contour so to commemorate Halloween in the year 2022 a full week after it happened while a blood moon lunar eclipse in Taurus sets on my decaying zombie hands…
“I can play just about any keyboard but I can’t read or write a note.” – John Carpenter
John Carpenter is one of the coolest dads in the world, has made the greatest horror and sci fi movies of all time, created some of the finest synth soundtracks ever, and has chosen the finest basketball team (aka the Oakland Warriors) to cheer on. As far as I can imagine his nightly routine, he smokes weed in his basement, plays synthesizer jams with his son and friends, and then has a whiskey and watches NBA league pass in some sort of leather chaired basement mini-theater. To that end I want to honor his legacy with poorly remembered capsule reviews of each and everyone of his films which I have watched way way way too many times while I play italo disco in the back of a comedy club preparing for a western themed roast of an elephant loving comedienne…
I don't watch my films. I've seen 'em enough after cutting them and putting the music on. I don't ever want to see them again. – John Carpenter
1974 || Dark Star || Bryanston Distributing Company
I watched this film with 3 friends in a dorm room, confused by the quality of the audio, and unaware that this was the screenwriter from Alien’s first attempt at making an alien movie [he also made return of the living dead and lifeforce and is thus a gawd]. The alien in this film is a huge beach ball, the movie smells like a well skunked pile of bushy joints, and I think it ends with a dude surfing a spaceship into the cosmos. Roger Avery & Quentin Tarantino also dove deep on the quality of this cosmos a few months ago…I think this movie is also about when the grateful dead went to altamont and thought the vibes were too bad to stay…you can hear an audio version of it here…
1976 || Assault on Precinct 13 || Turtle Releasing Organization
This is basically a western on the streets of an LA type city and the idea of badguys/goodguys being one and the same in certain situations is radical. Just like life. I think a kid gets shot in the first 20 minutes of this. Jackasses. Criminals attack a jail and the cops and prisoners inside the jail need to fight back against the local hoodlums. The dude who has bottle hands in Warriors may be in this and if he isn’t he should be and his nickname should be Hoodie Bottlehands [that hurt to write so apologies if you read it…] We live in such a data centric world and only 30% of all crimes get solved so why isn’t silicon valley tech trying to lifehack us all towards a world full of criminality? Oh wait…crypto. The music is so pounding in this one and I want to drink the spiked lemonade flavor of this soundtrack.
1978 || Halloween || Compass International Pictures / Aquarius Releasing
True story: there wasn’t even a Halloween holiday before this film was made. Traditionally pre-1978 people would celebrate the last day of October with rummikub tournaments and chocolate sodas. It used to be called Octofestivus1 and in ancient circles you would braid a baby’s mullet, leave your teeth unbrushed and buy chotchkes to celebrate the entering of Novemberance, aka the remembering of novelty. This movie is a celebration of the novelty of William Shatner’s face and bad babysitting. Donald Pleasance seems like a good hang and a bad doctor.
“Halloween put me on the map, and I’m very sad to hear of his death.” – John Carpenter
1979 || Elvis || ABC Television
I could review this and say Kurt Russel is a great ELVIS, but I prefer to talk about whatever Tom Hanks just did in Baz Luhrman’s ELVIS. He sounds like an evil version of the swedish chef in that movie. Hanks’ movie is also called Elvis…but it is 100% about Col. Tom Parker, his wild cowboy hats, his sinister laugh, and a grotesque nose prop and should be called COLONEL or TOM or PARKER or THE NOSE. To be fair I like the concept of bait and switch biopics focused on secondary or eightiary characters moving forward for all filmmaking. Give me the Michael Jordan movie about Will Perdue or the Abe Lincoln movie about his world famous pastrami-making brother Gabe Lincoln.
1980 || The Fog || AVCO Embassy Pictures
This is like THE BIRDS, if the birds were fog and ghost pirates. John Carpenter’s ex-wife Adrienne Barbeau is in this, and she is awesome. She is like lady tarzan and in every movie she is in my little-boy-mind was kept in a state-of-fear-boner. She might kill me or bite me or hate me. In reality she would probably not even notice me as she leaves a 20 penny tip in my gas station coin share. My main takeaway from this film is we need way way way more movies about seaside radio stations DJs being hunted by ghost pirates who live inside the weather. Maybe just more movies about scary things in weather in general. I hope Twister 2 is about demon pigs who live inside level 5 cyclones and sit at the foot of a cattle dog spirit played by Bill Paxton.
1981 || Escape from New York
This movie is amazong. New York becomes a prison island and Kurt Russel aka Elvis aka not Col. Tom Parker has to rescue the president in 24 hours or he is killed by some blood poison. There are some sweet underground boxing matches in this, cool car chases, and so much dirty early punk rock vibes happening in the costumes. My first time to New York city I escaped to an industrial city across the river and slept in a high rise hotel with no door locks for $20 a night. It looked and felt like the set of this film and I ended up having to sleep in the van to protect music equipment because that was safer than the hotel we rented. I think we tried to buy local seafood and ended up with a 7/11 local tuna salad sandwich. I think it was made with river smelt and tennis shoe. 7/10 on amounts of tasty & 7/11 on likelihood of severe food poisoning.
1982 || The Thing || Universal Pictures
Dude. Russel Kurt is in all these movies. Righteously so. This movie is about aliens turning into siberian dogs into russian helicopter military dudes into dogs again and then into a bunch of surly antarctic construction buddies. What games would you play if you were stuck in a snow warehouse with a bunch of dudes and America’s coffee dad, Wilford Brimley? Top 5 choices…rocket league…risk…jacks…farkle…shut-the-box…torches…also fire looks super cool on snow…
“Monsters in movies are us, always us, one way or the other. They’re us with hats on. The zombies in George Romero’s movies are us. They’re hungry. Monsters are us, the dangerous parts of us. The part that wants to destroy. The part of us with the reptile brain. The part of us that’s vicious and cruel. We express these in our stories as these monsters out there.” – John Carpenter
1983 || Christine || Columbia Pictures
A Boy and his car. Dude has a possessed car that falls in love with him and gives him a new fonzie look. Then he is so greasy he likes killing dudes, and so does the car so I guess it is love. Titane is a remake of this from the car’s perspective. I am pretty sure as soon as “machine learning” gets to its teenage years and hits the internet, the machines are going to immediately look up porn and then we will have a whole lot more of cars sexing on the streets. Slick roads people, slick roads.
1984 || Starman
David Bowie stars as Jeff Bridges alongside Karen Allen in a remake of Indiana Jones that takes place entirely in the bar she runs. Jeff Bridges becomes a baby that then grows up to become The Dude. Specifically Quincy Jones version of the dude. Ai No Corrida indeed.
1986 || Big Trouble in Little China || 20th Century Fox
One of the best movies of all time has a sewer sasquatch, created Mortal Kombat characters, features a dude blowing his face up like a balloon, has half the cast of Everything Everywhere All At Once, and features the greatest version of San Francisco ever seen on film. There should be a big trouble movie every year in a different part of the Bay Area. I need Big Trouble on a Stockton Riverboat exposing the monstrous underbelly of northern california delta fishing with a dude whose feet blow-up and a lagoon cannibal mermaid.
1987 || Prince of Darkness || Universal Pictures / Carolco Pictures
You would be mistaken to think this movie is about the big beelzebub. It is really about a homeless Alice Cooper attacking a church filled with mystical green goo that comes from future TV Sets. I thought Tom Atkins was in this because he is in every John Carpenter movie but alas his mustache is missing here. Every movie needs that mustache. I think this movie ends in outerspace too, thus stuck in the true darkness that surrounds us whole. Trust the shatner people.
1988 || They Live
Barack Obama ripped this movie off when running for president. Well kind of. This is the movie that inspired Shepard Fairey to make the Andre The Giant Obey Icon which led to him getting hired to create the Obama Believe posters that drove him into the oval office. Is there something cynical and gross about a politician winning an election based on mind control tricks…I guess we should check in with Donald Trump and see…anyhow I don’t like getting into politics but I do like pro wrestling and this movie features a 15 minute alleyway fight over putting on sunglasses and has super iconic lizard face people controlling the media. This movie is your uncle’s wet dream of a documentary. And it has Rowdy Roddy Piper in it.
Well, 'They Live' was a primal scream against Reaganism of the '80s. And the '80s never went away. They're still with us. That's what makes 'They Live' look so fresh - it's a document of greed and insanity. It's about life in the United States then and now. If anything, things have gotten worse. – John Carpenter
1992 || Memoirs of an Invisible Man || Warner Bros.
I am an invisible man and these are my memoirs…ouch…ouch…fuck…ouch…quit stepping on me…ouch…wtf…this movie, but that idea, is what I wanted…what I got was Chevy Chase in a drama about pharmaceutical research.
1994 || In the Mouth of Madness || New Line Cinema
A prequel to jurassic park set inside of the metaverse. In the metaverse Dean Koontz is making monsters based on H.P.Lovercraft and disappointingly sends them to the middle of Indiana to brag about how Hoosiers is the greatest basketball movie of all time. Steven Wright throws an ax at a restaurant rather than give a bad yelp review and gets discounted 20% on his next organic farm fresh smoothie. I saw this in grade school and was so afraid I pulled my legs up from the floor so that an octopus wouldn’t decapitate my ankles. The movie is set inside a movie of the book of the movie…spoiler…
“There are two different stories in horror: internal and external. In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside, the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don’t understand. Internal is the human heart.” – John Carpenter
1995 || Village of the Damned || Universal Pictures
Superman has to fight nazi children. They say it takes a nation to raise a village. Well it takes one superman to destroy said village and then he will be cursed to horse harm in the real realm. The moral of the story is that no matter how powerful you are you should night combat damned children. Just let them stay in their village and become children of the corn or ABBA or a new furniture warehouse company. Buy our new Strikloum recliner.
1996 || Escape from L.A. || Paramount Pictures
The greatest movie about basketball ever. In the future basketball is a one minute game where you have to score on both hoops in every style including a courtside lob or else the entire world explodes. Space Jam 2 would have been so much better if this was the plot, instead that movie is about LeBron James buying bored ape NFTs and selling them on Binance. The sequel to Uncle Drew should be a remake of this movie, as a documentary about the hollow world, starring Steve Buscemi’s tricky cabbie in this film, but focused on his day life playing pull tabs at the apocalypse oil bar.
I don't want to be a part of the demographics. I want to be an individual. I wear each of my films as a badge of pride. That's why I cherish all my bad reviews. If the critics start liking my movies, then I'm in deep trouble. – John Carpenter
1998 || Vampires || Sony Pictures Releasing
Danny Baldwin helps James Woods research conspiracy theories for his truth social bios, while the incredible Greg Sierra does a Fisher Stevens impression. Sadly there is not a mohawk wearing robot to fight crime, but this movie does introduce the concept of there being more than 100 rules to fighting vampires. There should be more movies that equate job interview skills for amazon corporate to fighting vampires for all of existence. There is some sort of metaphor in there and/or I am just saying Jeff Bezos is a vampire. Amazon only has like 16 rules you need to remember for interviewing for their cult…Vampires have hundreds…and Jeff Bezos is a vampire.
2001 || Ghosts of Mars || Screen Gems
This movie has a flashback inside of a flashback inside of a flashback and is a sequel to Warren Zevon’s most famous song Werewolves of London. This brings us to a nu metal future where the unmasked cast of Slipknot work on running in slow motion. There are space prison trains and Mars looks breathable. This may be the inspiration for Elon Musk’s dystopian version of our future where cars are driving us to jobs we no longer have on a planet you can’t go outside in so you are stuck in some doge coin run metaverse where you friends are crypto memes and shitposts. Potential future sequels include Gremlins of Uranus and Frankenstiens of Venus. I am currently part of the cast for Mouthbreathers of Earth.
2010 || The Ward || ARC Entertainment / XLrator Media
This movie is about an old man named Ward who complains on his couch about “the north” alongside a laugh track. He has a pet parrot who helps him cook and gets divorced to mail order brides each episode. Eventually his pet boa constrictor gets loose and the entire show ends with him and Pinocchio trading animal belly stories at an intestine campfire. This is what happens inside of you when you eat ghost peppers. Boo…then my tummy hurts…
2015 || Cigarette Burns || Anchor Bay Entertainment
They say La Fin Absolue Du Monde like 80 times in this movie. There is a beer of a similar name you should drink everytime they say it in this movie and you will get the gift of bloatiness. When I was in my late teens all the music venues let you smoke inside and everything smelt like a burning ash tray and you would drink one dollar beers that tasted like hot dogs and wake up feeling like you swallowed razor blades. This is the cinematic equivalent of that only with angel deaths and intestines being used for film reels. Beers are still a dollar though…
“We all question our sanity. Everyone has had an experience of loss of control of something.” – John Carpenter
Dear John Carpenter,
I am sure you are super busy, or not, and that everyone in the world is writing you write now. I think your movies are awesome, your music is awesome, and that you are awesome. I play baritone and electronic sax in the bay and would be down to jam if you ever wanted to. I hope you make more movies someday because every single movie you have ever made is amazing [except for the chevy Chase one…but that doesn’t count]. Please stay cool and go Warriors!
Cheers,
Fis
* Notes on how to recreate the Octofestivus celebration → Double straw suck the chocolate soda into at least two open orifices, but preferably three, in ten minute increments while chanting “We Are Wanda” for all whom don’t listen. Call rummikub at conclusion. This day and age babies can no longer grow mullets, so feel comfortable stapling wigs onto your neighbor's children when they are not paying attention and then hire a local hairsmith wunderkind for the braidling work. Toothbrushing these days is largely chewing fennel, hee-haw logs, and gargling activated charcoal. Avoid such delights of the earth and instead visit your local dollar general and focus on the toy and living room section. That $4 dollar Oreo cat clock is yours to savor and to time travel with. See you next Novemberance!