The Porkchop Express

As I stated last entry, Carpenter’s The Thing failed, both with audiences and critics, at the time of its release, but eventually developed into a cult classic film, especially in the sci-fi horror genre. In the realms of that genre, it’s one of the heads on their Mount Rushmore, up there with Alien and The Terminator.

Luckily for fans of The Thing, there hasn’t been as many forays into sequels that have debatably chipped away at the original films’ legacy.

But there was one. A prequel, cleverly titled The Thing, in 2011. It too was maligned, but this time, by fans of Carpenter’s original work. The filmmakers promised the fans of Bottin’s effects that the 2011 film would again feature practical effects. They broke that promise, effectively neutering the creature effects.

Not only that, the film was unnecessary. The fans, (read: the audience) didn’t need to know what happened at the Norwegian camp. It was lore that we, the audience, didn’t need. All the audience needed to know was the Norwegian camp suffered the same fate that Outpost 31 eventually did.

Worse yet, the 2011 film didn’t add anything new to the story of The Thing, instead trending over the exact same ground that Carpenters work did. Carpenter’s character writing is also not matched, with the only memorable character being Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s, and she is only memorable because the author of this blog developed a minor crush on her.

The moral of the story is if you’re going to remake a movie, do it like Carpenter.
I’d rate Carpenter’s The Thing a flawless 5/5. As promised, I’ll put Carpenter’s works that I discussed for this blog in order:

The Thing

Halloween

Assault on Precinct 13

Christine

Halloween 2 (by a hair)

Thank you for reading, and I hope that this work has inspired you to review, re-watch, re-think, or watch these films for the first time in a long time, or perhaps even just the first time.

Again, as I said before – I’m not qualified to write about the significance of The Thing. It’s one of my personal favorite movies of all time – to the point where I got the theatrical release poster art tattooed on me. It’s one of Carpenter’s best work (I’d argue his best, honestly), and it ticks many of the boxes that we’ve discussed in this blog – strong characters, a penchant for penny pinching (how’s that for alliteration), a bleak ending and fantastic effects. Aside from this, it’s one of Carpenter’s most interesting works to talk about, as its critical and audience reception shocks many people to this day. How did this movie fail? Did it deserve to?

No. It didn’t.

Carpenter’s bleak sci-fi horror remake (Reimagining Howard Hawkes’ ‘The Thing From Another World’) somehow failed at the box office – but has been redeemed in recent years, becoming an iconic cult classic, and what I would say defines Carpenter’s work as a director.

We cannot discount Rob Bottin’s practical special effects work, which is one of the films strongest attributes – the creatures in The Thing, while obviously other worldly, move in such a manner that is (thankfully), unlike anything else on Earth. It’s similar to the jerky movements of stop motion helping James Cameron’s Terminator move so terrifyingly – it’s weakness is it’s strength. Bottin was in his early 20’s when he worked on The Thing – as if I needed to feel worse about my accomplishments at 29.

Bottin’s work is only part of the puzzle – it’s how Carpenter chooses to show Bottin’s creations. Carpenter knows less is more – that it’s what the mind doesn’t see that terrifies it the most. Carpenter’s choice to shoot many of the scenes in the dark, adding a film noir look to it, heightens the anxiety that the film causes.

As I said before, The Thing was a critical and commercial flop, and led Carpenter to become disillusioned with The Hollywood System – which i believe shows in his output and especially in his next movie, They Live – possibly his bleakest overall.

This movie has absolutely no right being as decent as it is.

The premise is wholly Stephen King: a haunted car wreaks havoc on a high school senior and those around him (in Maine, probably). It’s execution, however, is wholly Carpenter. Something I mentioned while discussing Halloween was how great that opening credits scroll is: it’s just unnerving. Well, I’m back again to extol the virtue of Christine’s opening credits.

Gone are is the feeling of unease created by the slowest zoom into a pumpkin ever put to film, gone is the slick, cool synth sounds of Carpenter himself. What we get this time is just as effective, a revving engine, presumably the titular Christine.

Carpenter elevates what by all rights should be an insanely difficult watch for anyone older than the third grade turns into an enjoyable, if average, outing. Casting relative unknowns helps this film (and certainly kept the budget down).

Finally, I’d like to speak on the effects and editing. The effects, certainly stop motion in nature, capture the eerie feeling that the audience probably should get from watching a demon car put itself back together. I was surprised to not see Rob Botin listed amongst the special effects crew, as this seems like something he would have whipped up in about 35 minutes (and Carpenter likes to work with his friends).

From the editing standpoint, this film features some of the best soundtrack choices ever. Many of the artists featured on the 50’s rock heavy soundtrack died tragically – Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, Johnny Ace and Larry Williams who are all featured in Christine all died under tragic or mysterious circumstances, adding a certain macabre factor to the film. It also should be noted that Christine came out in an era when using George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” to introduce a character actually meant the character was, as the title suggested, bad to the bone. (Objectively, this era ended the exact moment the hard cut from Schwarzenegger’s T-800 drives off into the night on the motorcycle after putting on the sunglasses in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, as no one was ever able to look that badass to that particular song ever again.) Carpenter scores the film, adding his touch, but this is the first of his scores that really seems like an afterthought – but a score shouldn’t really be too noticeable, really.

Moving past the soundtrack, there are so many clever color palate changes. As Arnold succumbs more and more to Christine, his outfits become more fashionable and features more red. On the flip side, our protagonist Dennis is seen driving a blue car and is often featured wearing blue. The most obvious instance of this is the scene at the end showing our three surviving characters talking about what happened to them – they’re all in blue, and all in a row, talking about being heroes and whether or not they could have saved Arnold.

With a premise as laughable as this, and as tempting as it must have been to go full on campy mode, Carpenter’s decision to play it straight and shoot it in a borderline film-noir manner (seriously, most of the deaths and drama happen in the night. If the film was black and white… you get what I’m saying) outright saves the film. I’ve never read the book, but I bet you King prefers it.

Carpenter himself didn’t feel personally attached to the film, remarking that it felt more like a job and less like his work, stating that “it just wasn’t very frightening. But it was something I needed to do at that time for my career.”

While it’s watchable, and all but unmemorable, John Carpenter’s Christine (1983) is the first of his works that I wouldn’t recommend, but I also wouldn’t recommend avoiding either. Like Halloween II (1981), I give Christine 2.5/5.

While Halloween (1978) was written, directed and scored by John Carpenter to all but perfection, it’s direct sequel Halloween II (1981) is only written and produced by him. Instead, the slasher sequel was directed by new-comer Rick Rosenthal, who is apparently most known for directing Halloween II and Halloween: Resurrection (2002).

It says a lot about a director when the films they’re most known for are the second and eighth entries in a slasher series – and when you’re following John Carpenter, you’ve got big shoes to fill. While Carpenter didn’t direct this entry, he did write it, which is interesting in the sense that we get to compare and contrast the two films.

While Halloween is basically perfect, Halloween II is an adequate sequel – it isn’t any better than the original by any means, but it isn’t as shlocky as the sequels that would follow. Donald Pleasance, Jaime Lee Curtis, Charles Cyphers, and the score return, but the magic has faded away – like seeing your high school crush on your ten year reunion.

The movie, while written competently, feels all too much like what the later Halloween entries would become – specifically, there is a scene where a costumed teen is killed because he is mimicking Michael Meyers. On the same night as the first Halloween, there are already copycats. Not only that, but the teen is killed by a police car doing 90mph down a residential street into a trailer, pinning the teen between the car and the trailer, the latter of which then explodes into flames.

The score even seems off somehow, like a great cover version of Carpenter’s work, but not quite hitting the same mark. It feels too polished.

I think the faults might be leveled at Carpenter’s script – I feel like the work was almost neutered from the very beginning. The story continues on from the ending of Halloween, but sadly, feels like a loose vignette of a story that plods along until it is time for the the memorable set pieces: the aforementioned exploding Michael Meyers copy, the hospital hot tub, and the finale where Michael Meyers is killed (of course).

Gone is the feeling of intense dread following our main characters, instead replaced with the guy from The Last Starfighter (1984), (Lance Guest), and a string of characters acting like pastiches instead of humans.

I’m being hard on Halloween II, but it’s not really all that bad. It’s just not particularly great either. I give it a 2.5/5.

          I’m not at all qualified to talk about this film. I’m just not. That’s not me being hyperbolic, it’s the truth. This is a film that, despite being a genre picture, is now viewed as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically relevant” and as such is protected by the Library of Congress as of 2006. This is the slasher movie. In fact, if aliens landed tomorrow and asked me (of all people) to pick one film to show them a horror movie is, it would be Halloween (1978). It’s that good. Not only that, but this film is what made John Carpenter into JOHN CARPENTER. It’s the first of his films that I saw, and I’d be willing to bet the same of most of the readers. It didn’t stick with me when I originally watched it: sandwiched between my parents as a middle schooler. My memory is foggy, but I had more than likely already seen other ‘slasher’ movies – I had almost certainly marathoned the Friday the 13^th series (again, with my parents) on a Friday the 13^th at this point, and I was exposed to Wes Kraven’s masterpiece A Nightmare on Elm Street at a relatively young age… I might argue too young, as I remember being absolutely terrified of Freddy Kreuger.

                But that’s neither here nor there. We’re talking about Halloween. John Carpenter’s Halloween, one of the highest grossing independent films of all time. Not only did Halloween become a sequel factory (seven sequels, a retcon-ing sequel, and a remake that spawned a sequel itself), it created tropes that would become all but a checklist for future outings in the genre: the ‘final girl’ trope and the ‘premarital sex = eventual death by killer’ trope, of course. And the theme, oh the theme. This, while not my personal favorite, has to be Carpenter’s most iconic theme. Those bass notes just sound so foreboding and ominous – obviously what he was going for. There’s an absolutely amazing podcast out there – Song Exploder – where Carpenter discusses writing the theme. If you’re so inclined, click here. It’s less than 15 minutes long.

  

                With a budget of $300,000 and making $65 million initially, the film was a huge hit – owing itself largely, again, to Carpenter: even if the audience can’t place 100% of a film’s success (or its failure) on its director, we can place 100% of the efforts of the people assembled with the director. It’s a collaborative effort, and those that Carpenter collaborates with have made some truly iconic decisions – including the creation of the mask that Michael Meyers, or The Shape as he is credited, wears in each Halloween film (besides Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, which we won’t talk about because it’s not a sequel and although Carpenter produced it, he had no real part in its creation, nor is it a direct sequel to Halloween (1978) or Halloween 2 (1981), as it doesn’t make reference to Michael Meyers at all). The legend goes that the prop department, working with but a sliver of the shoestring budget that was left over (see below), found a Captain Kirk mask (yes, that Captain Kirk, of Star Trek fame) that was slightly altered and painted white, which led to the masks oddly familiar yet very unsettling look, which is a phrase I’m going to be running with – unsettling.

                The movie isn’t necessarily scary. The horror tropes that we are more than aware of in 2019 make their appearances, and as soon as a girl begins making out with her boyfriend, we as the audience are aware that their fates have been sealed. The true reason that makes Halloween so amazing is Carpenter’s ability to make us forget we’re watching a movie. At times, the film is so suspenseful that we feel like voyeurs, watching a lion stalk its prey.

Halloween (1978) Budget
Total	$300,000
Panavision cameras (so the film would have a 2.35:1 scope, per Carpenter’s request)	$150,000
Carpenter’s Direction, writing, score	$10,000 (and 10% of the films royalties)
Michael Meyers’ iconic Captain Kirk Mask	$1.98
Jamie Lee Curtis’ Wardrobe	$100 (From JC Penney)
Donald Pleasance	$20,000 (For five days of work)
Tony Moran (Unmasked Michael Meyers)	$250
Jamie Lee Curtis	$8,000
Nick Castle (The Shape, aka Michael Meyers)	$500 ; or $25 a day (shot for 20 days)
Remaining after the above (to actually make the movie)	$111,147.02

As you can see, Halloween was made on a shoestring budget, even for the time. This is a master class in working with what is around us, and what we have to work with, not just throwing money at a director and expecting them to lay the golden egg. You can put a price on talent, but that is not necessarily always how things work – some of the biggest franchises can be born from almost nothing, comparatively.

                As is little to no surprise to anyone, I rate John Carpenter’s Halloween a perfect score, although it isn’t my favorite of his works, I do believe it is his most important and relevant to this day. People who have never seen his other films have certainly seen Halloween. I rate Halloween a perfect 5/5. My ranking for all of Carpenter’s works (that I’ve seen) will appear at the end of this project.

1976’s Assault on Precinct 13 is not the first of John Carpenter’s works that I’ve seen (we will get to that at another time, trust me… it’s literally the entire premise of the Express), but it’s his earliest work that I’ve seen (thus far). Precinct 13, of course, being the director’s second film, sandwiched between his first film Darkstar (1974), a film that I assume needs an introduction, as all I know about it is it’s Carpenter’s first film, and the smash hit Halloween (1978), a film which certainly needs no introduction.

                As we’re only a few weeks out from Halloween (the day), one might ask why I didn’t decide to lead with Halloween (the film) – and my reasoning is as follows – I don’t believe it’s fair to look at a director’s work that means so much (but, ironically, so little at the same time) to so many people. When I first saw Halloween, I was way too young to appreciate it as a film – I didn’t give a shit about the dialogue, I didn’t give a shit about the pacing, the score, the acting, anything. I was there to get scared.

Precinct 13 was the first of Carpenter’s works that I watched strictly because I had already fallen in love with some of Carpenter’s more famous films – and because of that, the first I watched with virgin yet critical eyes.

Assault on Precinct 13, written, directed, scored and edited (!!!) by Carpenter, tells the razor thin story of a police officer who is directed to take control of the imminently closing Precinct 9, District 13 police station. The station, operating at the hands of a disinterested skeleton crew, finds itself under siege by an almost comically evil street gang – every hope that the precinct has, the gang eliminates – even going as far as removing evidence from outside the station. The rag-tag group of survivors, at this point consisting of prisoners from a prison bus that had stopped at the station because one of the inmates was sick, are forced to ban together for their survival.

                Like I said, the plot is razor thin. I have to face it, Carpenter’s scripts require a certain level of disbelief. His strength, however, is in his characters – Lieutenant Bishop and the prisoner Wilson, especially. As I wrote earlier, the LA gang is almost comically evil – one of the gang members kills a 7-year-old girl – comically evil. That said, watch the news on any given night and you’ll hear the same – or worse. There are comically evil people who would kill a 7-year-old girl. These characters are believable, and although we aren’t really given any back story to them, we don’t need backstory. The movie moves along slowly when it needs to, and suddenly explodes into action sequences that remind us what is at stakes.

                Carpenter’s writing, at least in this instance, is one of his strong suites. It takes a great writer to take such a razor thin plot and turn it into not only a competent film but one that is worthy of praise – somehow he took a movie that by all rights should be a short film (I’m well aware that the plot I described should be over and done with in ~30 minutes) and turns it into a 91 minute edge of your seat ride that treats is characters as real people.

                When I was curious and researching the topic (seeing how well the film was received), the one word I kept seeing was “tense.” This movie is tense, but the films score is even more tense, if that’s possible. Carpenter might possibly be a better musician than director. I’m not entirely sure how strongly I back that statement (my argument would be that he’s equal, somehow), but it could, at the very least, be argued – he’s more than competent musician, and this might be my favorite of his works. It’s tense, and while I know this is subjective, it makes me feel like some sort of trouble is on the way and I need to prepare myself.

                The real strength Carpenter possesses, however, (and flexes, in this film particularly,) is that he knows exactly how much character development to give us – he doesn’t give us too much useless info the way a lot of writers pretentiously do, but yet he flushes his characters out just enough that they are believable. As much as we want to believe our lives are like movies, not all of us have backstories worth telling. Some of us have had our trajectories changed by traumatic or horrific events – but not all of us. Sometimes, all we need to know about a character is that they just really want a cigarette.

I rate Assault on Precinct 13 a 4/5. My ranking of all of the selected works of Carpenter will show up at the end of this project.

This is a blog revisiting the works of writer/director/musician John Carpenter.

I’m a fan of John Carpenter’s films and his music. I’ve considered him one of my favorite directors ever since I’ve began to take notice of such things – things that, if done adequately, aren’t noticed. Things that if they are done well become the cornerstones for why we enjoy the films we enjoy.

I’m not particularly qualified – I’ve never gone to film school, although I’m hyper aware that in this project, I might come off as stereo-typically pretentious as someone who has. I’ve never made a film with a narrative, but I’ve seen my fair share of films who have dropped the ball in that respect.

I’m approaching this in the manner of a fan. I’ve loved all of the movies I’ve seen of his – although I haven’t seen some of them in years, and some I’ve only seen once. This project should be interesting – I already have thoughts on a lot of these films. Do they hold up the way I expect? What did I notice on this watch? I hope you join me on this journey.