John Carpenter

In a beginning film course at USC Cinema during 1969, Carpenter wrote and directed an 8-minute short film, Captain Voyeur. The film was rediscovered in the USC archives in 2011 and proved interesting because it revealed elements that would appear in his later film, Halloween (1978).[9]

The next year he collaborated with producer John Longenecker as co-writer, film editor, and music composer for The Resurrection of Broncho Billy (1970), which won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. The short film was enlarged to 35 mm, sixty prints were made, and the film was released theatrically by Universal Studios for two years in the United States and Canada.

Carpenter's first major film as director, Dark Star (1974), was a science fiction comedy that he co-wrote with Dan O'Bannon (who later went on to write Alien, borrowing freely from much of Dark Star). The film reportedly cost only $60,000 and was difficult to make as both Carpenter and O'Bannon completed the film by multitasking, with Carpenter doing the musical score as well as the writing, producing, and directing, while O'Bannon acted in the film and did the special effects (which caught the attention of George Lucas who hired him to work with the special effects for the film Star Wars). Carpenter received praise for his ability to make low-budget films.[10]

Carpenter's next film was Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), a low-budget thriller influenced by the films of Howard Hawks, particularly Rio Bravo. As with Dark Star, Carpenter was responsible for many aspects of the film's creation. He not only wrote, directed, and scored it, but also edited the film using the pseudonym "John T. Chance" (the name of John Wayne's character in Rio Bravo). Carpenter has said that he considers Assault on Precinct 13 to have been his first real film because it was the first film that he filmed on a schedule.[11] The film was the first time Carpenter worked with Debra Hill, who played prominently in the making of some of Carpenter's most important films.

Carpenter assembled a main cast that consisted of experienced but relatively obscure actors. The two main actors were Austin Stoker, who had appeared previously in science fiction, disaster, and blaxploitation films, and Darwin Joston, who had worked primarily for television and had once been Carpenter's next-door neighbor.[12]

The film received a critical reassessment in the United States, where it is now generally regarded as one of the best exploitation films of the 1970s.[13]

Carpenter both wrote and directed the Lauren Hutton thriller Someone's Watching Me!. This television film is the tale of a single, working woman who, soon after arriving in L.A., discovers that she is being stalked.

Eyes of Laura Mars, a 1978 thriller featuring Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones and directed by Irvin Kershner, was adapted (in collaboration with David Zelag Goodman) from a spec script titled Eyes, written by Carpenter, and would become Carpenter's first major studio film of his career.

Halloween (1978) was a commercial success and helped develop the slasher genre. Originally an idea suggested by producer Irwin Yablans (titled The Babysitter Murders), who thought of a film about babysitters being menaced by a stalker, Carpenter took the idea and another suggestion from Yablans that it occur during Halloween and developed a story.[14] Carpenter said of the basic concept: "Halloween night. It has never been the theme in a film. My idea was to do an old haunted house film."[15]

Film director Bob Clark suggested in an interview released in 2005[16] that Carpenter had asked him for his own ideas for a sequel to his 1974 film Black Christmas (written by Roy Moore) that featured an unseen and motiveless killer murdering students in a university sorority house. As also stated in the 2009 documentary Clarkworld (written and directed by Clark's former production designer Deren Abram after Clark's tragic death in 2007), Carpenter directly asked Clark about his thoughts on developing the anonymous slasher in Black Christmas:

...I did a film about three years later, started a film with John Carpenter, it was his first film for Warner Bros. (which picked up 'Black Christmas'), he asked me if I was ever gonna do a sequel and I said no. I was through with horror, I didn't come into the business to do just horror. He said, "Well what would you do if you did do a sequel?" I said it would be the next year and the guy would have actually been caught, escape from a mental institution, go back to the house and they would start all over again. And I would call it 'Halloween'. The truth is John didn't copy 'Black Christmas', he wrote a script, directed the script, did the casting. 'Halloween' is his movie and besides, the script came to him already titled anyway. He liked 'Black Christmas' and may have been influenced by it, but in no way did John Carpenter copy the idea. Fifteen other people at that time had thought to do a movie called 'Halloween' but the script came to John with that title on it.

— Bob Clark, 2005, [16]

The film was written by Carpenter and Debra Hill with Carpenter admitting that the music was inspired by both Dario Argento's Suspiria (which also influenced the film's slightly surreal color scheme) and William Friedkin's The Exorcist.[15]

Carpenter again worked with a relatively small budget, $300,000.[17] The film grossed more than $65 million initially, making it one of the most successful independent films of all time.[18]

Carpenter has described Halloween as: "True crass exploitation. I decided to make a film I would love to have seen as a kid, full of cheap tricks like a haunted house at a fair where you walk down the corridor and things jump out at you."[19] The film has often been cited as an allegory on the virtue of sexual purity and the danger of casual sex, although Carpenter has explained that this was not his intent: "It has been suggested that I was making some kind of moral statement. Believe me, I'm not. In Halloween, I viewed the characters as simply normal teenagers."[14]

In addition to the film's critical and commercial success, Carpenter's self-composed "Halloween Theme" became recognizable apart from the film.[20]

During 1979, Carpenter began what was to be the first of several collaborations with actor Kurt Russell when he directed the television film Elvis.

Carpenter followed up the success of Halloween with The Fog (1980), a ghostly revenge tale (co-written by Hill) inspired by horror comics such as Tales from the Crypt[21] and by The Crawling Eye, a 1958 film about monsters hiding in clouds.[22]

Completing The Fog was an unusually difficult process for Carpenter. After viewing a rough cut of the film, he was dissatisfied with the result. For the only time in his filmmaking career, he had to devise a way to salvage a nearly finished film that did not meet his standards. In order to make the film more coherent and frightening, Carpenter filmed additional footage that included a number of new scenes.

Despite production problems and mostly negative critical reception, The Fog was another commercial success for Carpenter. The film was made on a budget of $1,000,000,[23] but it grossed over $21,000,000 in the United States alone. Carpenter has said that The Fog is not his favorite film, although he considers it a "minor horror classic".[22]

Carpenter immediately followed The Fog with the science-fiction adventure Escape from New York (1981). Featuring several actors that Carpenter had collaborated with (Donald Pleasence, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins, Charles Cyphers, and Frank Doubleday) or would collaborate with again (Kurt Russell and Harry Dean Stanton), as well as several notable actors (Lee Van Cleef and Ernest Borgnine), it became both commercially successful (grossing more than $25 million) and critically acclaimed (with an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes).[24]

His next film, The Thing (1982), is notable for its high production values, including innovative special effects by Rob Bottin, special visual effects by matte artist Albert Whitlock, a score by Ennio Morricone and a cast including young actor Kurt Russell and respected character actors such as Wilford Brimley, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Keith David, and Richard Masur. The Thing was distributed by Universal Pictures.

Although Carpenter's film used the same source material as the 1951 Howard Hawks film, The Thing from Another World, it is more faithful to the John W. Campbell, Jr. novella, Who Goes There?, upon which both films were based. Moreover, unlike the Hawks film, The Thing was part of what Carpenter later called his "Apocalypse Trilogy," a trio of films (The Thing, Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness) with bleak endings for the film's characters. Being a graphic, sinister horror film,[25] it did not appeal to audiences during the summer of 1982, especially when E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which presented a much more lighthearted and family-friendly depiction of alien visitation, was released two weeks prior. In an interview, Carpenter stated that E.T.'s release could have been largely responsible for the film's disappointment.[26][27][28][29] As The Thing did not perform well commercially, it was Carpenter's first financial disappointment.

During filming of The Thing, Universal offered him the chance to direct Firestarter, based on the novel by Stephen King. Carpenter hired Bill Lancaster and Bill Phillips respectively to adapt the novel into different versions of the screenplay. Carpenter had intended Richard Dreyfuss as Andy McGee, but when The Thing was a financial disappointment, Universal replaced Carpenter with Mark L. Lester.[30] Carpenter's next film, Christine, was the 1983 adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name. The story concerns a high-school nerd named Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon) who buys a junked 1958 Plymouth Fury which turns out to have supernatural powers. As Cunningham restores and rebuilds the car, he becomes unnaturally obsessed with it, with deadly consequences. Christine did respectable business upon its release and was received well by critics; however, Carpenter has been quoted as saying he directed the film because it was the only thing offered to him at the time.[31]

Starman (1984) was produced by Michael Douglas, the script was well received by Columbia Pictures, which chose it in preference to the script for E.T. and prompted Steven Spielberg to go to Universal Pictures. Douglas chose Carpenter to be the director because of his reputation as an action director who could also convey strong emotion.[32] Starman was reviewed favorably by the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and LA Weekly, and described by Carpenter as a film he envisioned as a romantic comedy similar to It Happened One Night only with a space alien.[33][34] The film received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Jeff Bridges' portrayal of Starman and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Musical Score for Jack Nitzsche.

After seeing footage of Starman, the executive producer of the Superman film series, Ilya Salkind, offered Carpenter the chance to direct the latest Alexander–Ilya Salkind fantasy epic Santa Claus: The Movie. Salkind made the offer to Carpenter during lunch at The Ritz, and while he loved the idea of differing from his normal traditions and directing a children's fantasy film, he requested 24 hours to think about the offer. The next day he had made a list of requirements should he direct the film; they were: 100 percent creative control, the right to assume scriptwriting duties, being able to co-compose the film's musical score, total editorial control, the casting of Brian Dennehy as Santa Claus and a $5 million signing-on fee (the same amount that the film's star Dudley Moore was receiving). Salkind withdrew his offer for him to direct.

After the financial failure of his big-budget action–comedy Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Carpenter struggled to get films financed. He resumed making lower budget films such as Prince of Darkness (1987), a film influenced by the BBC series Quatermass. Although some of the films from this time, such as They Live (1988) did develop a cult audience, he never again realized mass-market potential.

Carpenter was also offered The Exorcist III during 1989, and met with writer William Peter Blatty (who also authored the novel on which it was based, Legion) during the course of a week. However, the two disagreed about the film's climax and Carpenter refused the project. Blatty directed the film himself a year later. Carpenter said that although they argued about the ending, they had a mutual respect and talked about an interest they both shared: quantum physics.[35]

Carpenter's 1990s career is characterized by a number of notable failures: Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), Village of the Damned (1995), and Escape from L.A. (1996) are examples of films that were critical and financial failures. Also notable from this decade are Body Bags, a television horror anthology film that was made in collaboration with Tobe Hooper, In the Mouth of Madness (1995), yet another Lovecraftian homage, which did not do well either commercially or with critics[36] but now has a cult following,[37] and Vampires (1998), which featured James Woods as the leader of a band of vampire hunters in league with the Catholic Church.

Carpenter was originally in consideration to be the director for the Halloween (1978) sequel project, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). Since Jamie Lee Curtis, the main actress from the original and the sequel Halloween II (1981), wanted to reunite the cast and crew of the original film, she asked Carpenter to direct Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. Carpenter agreed to direct the film, but his starting fee as director was $10 million. Carpenter rationalized this by believing the hefty fee was compensation for revenue he had never received from the original Halloween, a matter that was still a contention between Carpenter and Halloween producer Moustapha Akkad even after twenty years. When Akkad balked at Carpenter's fee, Carpenter quit the project. Steve Miner assumed directing of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, which was a commercial success despite receiving mixed reviews.

During 1998, Carpenter composed the soundtrack (titled "Earth/Air") for the video game Sentinel Returns, published for PC and PlayStation.[38]

Carpenter in September 2001

In 2001, the film Ghosts of Mars was released. During 2005, there were remakes of Assault on Precinct 13 and The Fog, the latter being produced by Carpenter himself, though in an interview he defined his involvement as, "I come in and say hello to everybody. Go home."

In 2005, Titan Productions announced a new title in development for next-generation consoles. Psychopath, a first-person action game, was being made in collaboration with Carpenter. Titan has not yet announced a publisher, platform, or release date for the thriller. The only details that Titan has released about the game's story is that it revolves around a former CIA operative who is forced back into duty to stop a serial killer. Titan's aim in the industry was to push projects through multiple forms of media. In conjunction with the game, a film version of Psychopath was also in the works. Carpenter was to direct the film and the game's cutscenes and character design.[39][40] Since then, there has not been any further developments on the video game nor the film.

During 2007, Rob Zombie produced and directed Halloween, a re-imagining of Carpenter's 1978 film that resulted in a sequel two years later.

Carpenter worked as director during 2005 for an episode of Showtime's Masters of Horror television series as one of the thirteen filmmakers involved in the first season. His episode, "Cigarette Burns", received generally positive reviews, and positive reactions from Carpenter fans, many of whom regard it as on par with his earlier horror classics. He has since contributed another original episode for the show's second season entitled "Pro-Life", about a young girl who is raped and impregnated by a demon and wants to have an abortion, but whose efforts are halted by her religious fanatic, gun-toting father and her three brothers.

The Ward, Carpenter's first film since 2001's Ghosts of Mars, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2010. Carpenter narrated the video game F.E.A.R. 3, while also consulting on its storyline.[41] On October 10, 2010, Carpenter received the Lifetime Award from the Freak Show Horror Film Festival.[42] Test footage from the set of Darkchylde emerged in July 2010[43] and on October 31, 2010, it was announced Carpenter will direct.[44] On February 3, 2015, the indie label Sacred Bones Records released his album Lost Themes.[45] On October 19, 2015, All Tomorrow's Parties announced that Carpenter will be performing old and new compositions in London and Manchester, England.[46]

In February 2016, Carpenter announced a sequel to Lost Themes titled Lost Themes II, which was released on April 15, 2016.[47] He then released his third studio album, titled Anthology: Movie Themes 1974–1998, on October 20, 2017.[48]

Carpenter acted as executive producer, co-composer, and creative consultant on a new film in the Halloween film series, titled Halloween, and released in October 2018. The film acts as a direct sequel to Carpenter's original film, ignoring the continuity of all other previous films. It was his first direct involvement with the franchise since 1982's Halloween III: Season of the Witch.[49]

• Someone's Watching Me! (1978)
• Elvis (1979)
• Body Bags (1993)