John Carpenter

July 29, 1996

One of the many masters of horror, John Carpenter was born on January 16, 1948 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Many of his movies are from the Science fiction-horror genre, and were influenced by the countless B-movies of the 50's, which Carpenter grew up on. He is also a screenwriter, producer and the score artist for many of his films. After graduating from USC, he made the short film The Resurrection of Bronco Billy (1970), which won an academy award. After several short films, his first feature-length one was the Sci-fi comedy, Dark Star (1974). Shot on a $60,000 budget, it was considered by film buffs to be the dark side of 2001.

His next film, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), offers a brilliant mix of Howard Hawks and George Romero. This film established Carpenter with the cult-art house cercuit. In 1978, the success of Carpenter's low-budget horror film Halloween, catapulted him into the mainstream market. Many of his movies since then have failed to regain the critical success as his earliest features, though they've done wonders financially. He tried to reproduce the cult success of Assault with Escape From New York (1981), a futuristic action thriller featuring Carpenter's frequent star Kurt Russell. It did OK box office, but the critics greeted it with rather nasty ennui and critiques. Carpenter's remake of The Thing (1982), though true to the original short story on which it was based, was overshadowed by extremely gory special effects. Chris tine, an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, didn't do so well either.

Carpenter bounced back in 1984, with the romantic fantasy Starman. This became one of his most popular films during the 80's, and helped regain his reputation in the film world. In the 1990's however, it seems that he's going to have to try REAL hard to hang on to that rep. Let's hope that his new Escape From LA (1996), the sequel to Escape From NY, does better than some of his recent bombs. Can you remember Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)?!!

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