Random Thoughts

John Carpenter. The Ward. 2010.

This is likely to be John Carpenter’s final movie: He’s said that he has no interest in doing any more of them because he’s retired.

It would be fun to say that he went out on a major success, but, as usual, it bombed at the box office.

It’s got a pretty modest budget ($10M), but, as usual, looks much more expensive than that. It’s filmed mostly in a single location (the titular ward), though, which probably helped keep the costs down.

The actors playing the inmates are pretty good, and it’s kinda spooky, but it’s not that horrifying, so apparently all the Carpenter fants were quite disappointed with his first proper movie after a ten year hiatus.

The imdb score is 5.6 which is rather harsh. Like Ghosts of Mars (another Carpenter film led by a female collective), there may be a sexist thing going on here…

It’s OK. It’s watcheable and kinda scary, but there’s too many jump scares and too many escape attempts.

And I did not see that ending coming.

This post is part of the A Carpenter Winter series.

John Carpenter. Pro-Life. 2006.

This is the other Carpenter episode from the Masters of Horror Showtime TV series.

It’s a lot, er, more TV-ey than the Cigarette Burns episode, but it’s still way grislier than there’s any point in being. I had to skip past some of the scenes. But I’m a wimp.

The way people are reacting to the proceedings isn’t very sensible, but the some of the actors are pretty good here (especially Ron Perelman as the rabid pro-lifer and gun enthusiast).

The plot is a pre-cell phone plot, so at every point you’re kinda going “but why don’t they call the police?”

It’s still kinda exciting even if the low budget is really apparent here. The soundtrack (by Carpenter’s son?) is annoying.

I did like the ending, though.

This post is part of the A Carpenter Winter series.

John Carpenter. Cigarette Burns. 2005.

This is an episode from the Showtime TV series “Masters of Horror”, which was an anthology horror series that received quite a lot of acclaim at the time.

This episode isn’t super-Carpenterish: A lot of faffing about in Europe (with European actors) (or is it Canada?). It’s about a film that’s so evil that it turns everybody who watches it mad.

Yes.

It’s really grisly for a TV thing, but I guess that’s typical for the time.

*Really* grisly.

This post is part of the A Carpenter Winter series.

John Carpenter. Ghosts of Mars. 2001.

Somehow Carpenter got decent funding for yet another movie after so many of them not making any back (except perhaps 20 years after on DVD).

And this time it’s a sci-fi movie! Yay! And Carpenter managed to hire some pretty entertaining actors (Pam Grier, Natasha Henstridge, Clea DuVall, Joanna Cassidy) which helps a lot.

This film bombed at the box office, as usual, the critics hated it (21% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes), and people still hate it (4.9 at imdb).

But I think it’s a kinda exciting and fun movie, and it’s easily his best film since They Live.

Perhaps some of the hatred towards the film can be chalked up to sexism? Perhaps it’s the structure (everything is told through flashbacks (and there are flashbacks within the flashbaks))?

This post is part of the A Carpenter Winter series.

“My vampires are savage creatures. There isn’t a second of brooding loneliness in their existence. They’re too busy ripping and tearing humans apart.”

Right…

John Carpenter. Vampires. 1998.

Ah! A vampire film where the vampires are the bad guys! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of those…

This is the goriest Carpenter film so far. I guess there’s been a general escalation all the way from Halloween, which was really kinda not gory at all.

It’s not a very good movie or much fun to watch. It’s just so… stupid, and has plenty of moronic fan service scenes.

It goes so hard for wise guy DUDE-ness that I had to gaffa tape my eyeballs to keep them from falling out from all the eye rolling. I think they’re kinda going for Snake Plisskin, but Woods overshoots and lands up somewhere past Charles Bronson.

The wittiest line is probably when a female vampire is killed (with a stake) and one of our heroes says “How do you like your steak… bitch!” Now, that’s snappy repartee.

But this was apparently this first Carpenter film in a decade that didn’t completely bomb at the box office, so it connected with some people, I guess.

This post is part of the A Carpenter Winter series.