A horror director rarely rivalled, John Carpenter is known for unsettling audiences worldwide. Most of his films are filled with slow-building menace, and he has a penchant for dystopian elements. Put simply, Carpenter’s films have attitude. After all, the character of Snake Plissken is basically a poster boy for everything anti-establishment.
Here are the 10 best works from the master of modern horror cinema.
10. Escape From L.A.
While it isn’t the most outstanding project Carpenter ever worked on, Escape From L.A. gets number 10 on this list because of the excellent performance of Kurt Russell. Essentially a rehash of the much superior Escape From New York, this West Coast version does have one of the greatest basketball-to-the-death scenes ever made.
9. Christine
“Hell hath no fury…like a 1958 Plymouth.” A car with a murderous streak takes over the mind of a nerdy teenager and seeks to take the boy’s human girlfriend out of the equation any way it can. Christine is a great car movie with a soundtrack that blends Carpenter’s usual synth work with some ’50s rock n’ roll classics. It may not be his best, but the film is fun and certainly worth a look.
8. The Fog
Low-budget effects are used well in The Fog. When the residents of a small coastal town are preparing for the place’s centenary, little do they know that unearthly horrors are about to overwhelm them. Carpenter builds the tension effectively, making a simple premise into a believable little movie.
7. Halloween
“The blackest eyes… the Devil’s eyes.”
One of Carpenter’s best-known films and a true horror classic, Halloween was among the highest-grossing independent films ever made when it premiered in 1978. With all of Carpenter’s trademarks—a low budget and building tension—the audience is worried about what might be lurking behind each shadow or in the backseat of each car. Michael Myers is a disturbed young man. He has lived in a psychiatric hospital for most of his life after murdering his sister on Halloween in 1963. Fifteen years later, he escapes from the institution and returns to Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night to wreak havoc on the good citizens. Donald Pleasance offers an excellent portrayal of Loomis, the psychiatrist who knows Myers best.
6. Dark Star
Dark Star is one of Carpenter’s earliest efforts. Made on a budget of almost nothing, the film charts the odyssey of a crew of overworked, under-stimulated space bums on their mission to destroy a bunch of unstable planets that might threaten humanity’s future colonization. It may feature an alien that looks suspiciously like a painted beach ball, but what Dark Star achieves is a testament to how hard Carpenter worked on it. The unravelling situation culminates when a super-intelligent smart bomb decides to have an existential crisis and must be persuaded not to blow up the ship. Very funny in places, Dark Star is worth a watch.
5. Big Trouble in Little China
Carpenter had always stated his desire to make a martial arts film, and in 1986, he got his chance. Turning again to Kurt Russell to take the lead, the result was Big Trouble in Little China. Kurt plays all-American hero Jack Burton, a trucker who fears nothing. He gets sucked into a semi-fantasy world underneath the streets of Chinatown where he must faceoff against a host of enemies. The whole film is very tongue in cheek and nothing is meant to be taken seriously. With some great action set pieces and Kurt clearly enjoying every moment, Big Trouble in Little China makes five on this list.
4. They Live
“I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass…and I’m all out of bubble gum.” Roderick George Toombs, better known as professional wrestling star “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, was an unusual choice for the leading man in 1988’s They Live. Fortunately, the risk paid off, and he brought a brilliant working-class rebel attitude to the film.
Many of Carpenter’s previous films feature political overtones, but They Live is his most anti-establishment outing. When Nada discovers some strange glasses that let him see who really controls society, he goes on a one-man mission to straighten things out. The brilliantly choreographed fight scene between Piper and fellow actor Keith David has to be one of the longest punch-ups in any action film.
3. Assault on Precinct 13
“It’s a siege! It’s a goddamned siege!”
Remade in 2005, there’s no outdoing Carpenter’s original from 1976.
Precinct 13 is an abandoned station in an urban jungle rife with crime. Ethan Bishop is the police officer sent to look after the building on its final night of operation. When a strange man bursts in, Bishop and a rag-tag crew must defend him against a legion of murderous thugs. Carpenter brought an other-worldly quality to the street gang out for blood. They are unfeeling, relentless zombies who will stop at nothing to kill everyone in Precinct 13. Stylish and violent, Assault on Precinct 13 has some epic lines and one of the greatest endings of any of Carpenter’s films. If only they’d known about the Cholo.
2. Escape From New York
“Breaking out is impossible. Breaking in is insane.”
In the not-too-distant future, America’s crime epidemic has exploded. All of Manhattan Island has been turned into a maximum-security prison where the nation’s undesirables are left as a law unto themselves. When the President (Donald Pleasance) is flying over the island, his plane is shot down, and he is quickly captured by the prisoners.
Enter Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), ex-special forces hero turned criminal, who is called upon on to rescue the president. Instead of rushing to save the commander in chief, Snake is lukewarm about the whole thing. When he is told about the kidnapping, he replies, “That’s too bad. Got a smoke?” What follows is a series of tense, set-piece action sequences that make Escape From New York number two on this list.
1. The Thing
Just about everything went right with The Thing, which was a remake of 1951’s The Thing From Another World. Without a doubt Carpenter’s scariest film, it starts off unsettling and builds to a terrifying crescendo. An arctic research base is slowly infested by one of the most terrifying creatures in horror movie history—something that can mimic any living thing it touches. The tension and the stakes build until the very future of humanity is under grave threat. Every actor shines throughout, and we get a real sense of the stress these men are going through. The manic blood test scene has got to be one of the greatest in all of horror cinema.
A perfect ending leaves open the question of the monster’s survival. With only Kurt Russell’s MacReady and Keith David’s Childs as the last survivors, the audience is left to wonder if one of them is the creature. “Guess we’ll just…see what happens.”
