The majority of filmmakers try not to find themselves pigeonholed and end up known for one movie above all others, but sometimes it isn’t quite that simple. There are a huge number of directors with countless efforts under their belts, but often there’s one title that people remember better than all the rest.
John Carpenter may have long since cemented his reputation as an icon of genre cinema throughout the 1980s having helmed the likes of The Thing, Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China and more, but Halloween will always remain his defining outing behind the camera.
That’s completely understandable, too, when you consider that it’s one of the most important and influential horrors ever made, one that kicked off the entire slasher boom and went on to spawn a franchise that’s still going strong well over 40 years later. In a new interview, Carpenter admitted that he’s got no issues being known as ‘the Halloween guy,’ either, despite the strength of his back catalogue as a whole.
“No, I love it, and I’m still loving it. Are you kidding me? Being ‘the Halloween guy’ gave me a career in movies. And even now I’m working on the new Halloween movies that are being released by David Gordon Green. I’m as happy as a pig in sh*t. Halloween gave me everything. It’s great. I get to be John Carpenter.”
Halloween might have been his third feature after Dark Star and Assault on Precinct 13, but it certainly set him up for life. The sequels may have suffered greatly from the law of diminishing returns until David Gordon Green’s 2018 smash hit, but it massively increased his standing in the industry nonetheless, giving him the profile and name value to tackle whatever sort of projects he wanted from there on out.
There are no doubt plenty of directors who would dismiss the idea of being recognized for one movie above all else, but when it comes to John Carpenter and Halloween, the association has been more than beneficial to both parties in the long run.
