Random Thoughts

John Carpenter. The Thing. 1982.

Carpenter’s first major studio movie. It’s very different from all his preceding films: Instead of a cheery amateurishness, we’re into Standard 80s Sci-Fi territory.

“Competent” US actors that emote in the normal American mainstream film way, and a “professional” film score that tells us how to feel at any given second.

It looks great on bluray, though.

…

Oh, I’m watching the 2011 prequel, not the 1982 Carpenter film!

*puts the right film on*

Ahem.

This is Carpenter’s first major studio movie, but it doesn’t really look that different from his previous films. You’ve got more dolly/steadycam shots, better sets, more expensive lenses, and they’ve hired Ennio Morricone to do the soundtrack, but it’s definitely a Carpenter film.

THIS TIME.

I like the monster designs. Very disgusting. Nice bluray transfer. But… It’s not really that scary or exciting. And all the drama from everybody melting down in the face of crisis isn’t very interesting.

Let me summarise the plot through monologue: “There’s a thing here that kills people and takes over their bodies! Let’s split up! This looks like a shortcut! Aieee!”

This post is part of the A Carpenter Winter series.

That’s pretty much how cell phones looked in 1997.

John Carpenter. Escape from New York. 1981.

It’s fun watching these Carpenter films chronologically. You see how Carpenter’s cast of regulars develop. Adrienne Barbeau (who first popped up in that TV horror film) reappears, and the star is, of course, Elvis.

This is another one of those films where I’ve heard snippets of the dialogue so many times through samples on various songs, like Colourbox’ Baby I Love You So.

Anyway, for the first time Carpenter has something resembling a real budget ($6M), and it really shows. Everything looks so cool, and he’s got better special effects, set designers and focus pullers.

The premise of this film is so cool (in the “dude!” “sweet!” meaning of the word) that if this had been a modern movie, it would have been a three hour epic. Instead we’re introduced to the premise at the 25 minute mark, and the film is over in an hour fourty.

It’s a film any 14-year-old boy, of any age and gender, will find entertaining.

This post is part of the A Carpenter Winter series.

That looks so much like a real house and where you would park your car!

John Carpenter. The Fog. 1980.

The explanation for the multiple beers (or “beers”): I’ve been having this weird problem the last few weeks with some ripped Blurays. Most of them play just fine, but a handful have sound that’s 10% faster than the video. Which, as you can imagine, is rather … not very good.

But! After a couple of beers I found out that the problem was the options I’m using for mplayer: “-hardframedrop -nocorrect-pts”. I think I added those for when playing over wifi, where you want the video to really catch up to the audio when you get a network problem.

Apparently that has a very weird interaction with these Bluray rips, making the audio 10% faster than the video.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway! The film! I didn’t remember that Jamie Lee Curtis and Adrienne Barbeau was in this one. Which is an old-fashioned ghost tale. Which suits me just fine.

And it’s… OK. It’s got some good jump scares, but jump scares are so easy. It periodically loses any semblance of tension, but then returns to being entertaining.

The cinematography is as pedestrian as ever. I was thinking “without any distinguishing qualities”, but that’s not quite true: Carpenter absolutely loves a shallow depth of field (i.e., only of person is in focus at a time) and uses it incessantly.

This post is part of the A Carpenter Winter series.

Apparently Fritz the Cat was huge in Tupelo in the 40s.

Elvis. 1979.

I didn’t know what to expect. John Carpenter doing a TV documentary about Elvis? Presley? Starring Kurt Russell!?

But John Carpenter is no David Cronenberg. I had somehow gotten them slightly confused in my brain: They’re both people starting in the 70s who’s done their share of horror and sci-fi films. But while Cronenberg is a Canadian film directory with a very particular style and point of view, Carpenter is an American director who just seems enthralled by the very idea of making a movie, any movie.

At least so far in this re-watch blog series.

I’m no Elvis connoisseur, but I don’t think they used Elvis’ vocals much when Kurt Russell is performing? And that’s just plain weird when it comes to a film about Elvis: No Elvis music. Didn’t they have the money to license the original recordings?

Russell is pretty fab as Elvis. I kinda doubt the historical veracity of the film, but it’s fun to watch.

It gets a bit boring around the two hour mark.

In other news, this is Priscilla Presley in 2014.

This post is part of the A Carpenter Winter series.