John Carpenter

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Prince of Darkness (1987)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2019) If it took me a while before catching Prince of Darkness on TV, it’s not for lack of trying.  But it’s is not considered among director John Carpenter’s best movies, and watching it only confirms why. I’ll be the first to admit that there is something intriguing in the concept of the film and a good chunk of its execution: The uneasy mixture of science, religion and impending apocalypse is always something that gets me interested, and there’s some interest in the film’s idea of ancient evil bootstrapping itself in the world through modern technology. On a purely visual level, there is also some really interesting stuff here, up to Carpenter’s prime-era standards: the man-of-insects, the liquid mirrors, gravity running in reverse and other spooky stuff works well in isolation. Finally, there’s some interesting character work throughout the film: Despite Jameson Parker’s unfortunate mustache, Donald Pleasance acts as a cornerstone of the film, with some assistance from Victor Wong. Alas, Prince of Darkness, for all of its potential, eventually falls into the spooky-stuff-in-a-blender school of horror filmmaking, in which various strong images are strung together with no apparent discipline or meaning. Anything and everything can happen, making moot any attempt to make sense of it all. This impression is made worse by the film’s frequent and blatant jumps from a patina of scientific justification to pseudoscientific nonsense without rigour or reason. Even the music is a bit too much at times. Finally, and perhaps more damagingly, Carpenter misses the mark when it comes to creating empathy for his characters. The lead couple is dull and uninvolving (the male lead initially behaving like a creep doesn’t help at all), there are too many supporting characters, and few of them end up being sympathetic, except for supernatural fodder when the film has to kill or possess someone. The result is still worth a look, like most of Carpenter’s movies, but there’s a palpable sense that Prince of Darkness, with all of its genuine eeriness and good ideas, could have been much, much more.

They Live (1988)

They Live (1988)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, August 2019) It’s a shame that writer-director John Carpenter never got to carry his extraordinary peak of creativity beyond the mid-1990s—At a time when genre cinema became wilder and more prevalent, it seems a waste that he never truly enjoyed the infinite capabilities of digital filmmaking or the far more genre-literate audience. Still, he can be proud of having produced something like eight genre masterpieces in the twenty-year period between 1975 and 1995, and They Live is clearly one of his best. Even today, there’s a biting ferociousness to the film’s social criticism, recasting a rigged economic system in a metaphor of alien invasion and exploitation. The metaphor of reading secret alien messages (“Consume!”) with the right viewing equipment is so simple and yet still incredibly effective. Of course, there’s more than just a consumerism critique here: the film works because it features an everyday man (a great casting choice in ex-wrestler Roddy Piper) fighting back against the oppressors. The film probably peaks during the lengthy fight between Piper and Keith David—the third act seems overly familiar, and actually quite conventional when compared to some of the incendiary material that preceded it—I mean, the bank shootout sequence can be incredibly disturbing if it wasn’t for greedy aliens being involved. Great one-liners and a straightforward delivery of satirical material still work well today. They Live is still a classic, and its critique of neoliberal Reaganomics hasn’t been invalidated in the slightest by thirty plus years of perspective. Carpenter could retire on a mere handful of his movies, and They Live makes quite a claim at being among his essentials.

The Fog (1980)

The Fog (1980)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, September 2018) Appropriately enough, The Fog is very atmospheric—the portrayal of a small coastal town being besieged by a supernatural fog carrying ghostly avengers is very well made, and count for much when the script struggles to make sense. After Halloween’s success, director John Carpenter was still trying out the breathing room allowed by slightly bigger budgets and the added scale of The Fog does count for much. It’s always a pleasure to see prime-era Adrienne Barbeau on-screen, and she does have a fascinating role here as a local radio DJ able to keep watch on the town but being unable to do much about what she sees—there’s some genuine suspense fuelled by her inability to be there to protect her son as she sees the fog engulf the town late in the film. Otherwise, the script does fall a bit apart when you look at it closely—and there’s an inevitable let-down when the mysterious fog gives way to more ordinary murderous undead pirates. (Wow, it sounds so unfair when I say it like that…) Still, The Fog is a better-than-average film for its era, exploring something slightly different and indulging in the possibilities offered by its blend of premise and location. It’s memorable for the right reasons.

Starman (1984)

Starman (1984)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2017) I usually like Kurt Russell and I usually like John Carpenter and I usually like Science-Fiction movies and it bothers me to no end that I don’t like Starman despite how it combines those three things. The problem with Starman isn’t as much that it’s made out to be a sentimental science-fiction movie, but the way in which it’s presented: Blunt, crude and incoherent. It uses the tropes of a science-fictional thriller without committing to them or trying to make them subtler, can’t be bothered about plot holes and remains unapologetically predictable. Whatever Big Moments it has can be seen coming far in advance, with an execution that can’t really patch over the ennui with charm. Carpenter may be part of the problem in presenting a love story using the tools he knows best—helicopter chases, government conspiracies and roadside violence. Russell is generally blank in a role that asks him to play perhaps the most overused cliché in SF: the extraterrestrial grand naïf gawking at the world and trying to figure out human customs. It goes exactly as expected. While I didn’t exactly dislike Starman, I didn’t find much to like either.

Escape from New York (1981)

Escape from New York (1981)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, August 2017) I may have made a mistake in watching Escape from L.A. a few weeks ago, before seeing the original Escape from New York. Both films do run against very similar lines, after all: juvenile bad guys sent under duress in a forbidden zone to get someone back, but so anti-authority that they end up rebelling at some point. Escape from L.A. apes the first film almost plot point per point, down to the lunacy of some sequences. But while you would think that watching the first one so soon after the second would lower my appreciation of the first one, the reverse ended up happening: it only made me dislike the second one even more. I recognize that you can’t really blame the first for the excesses of the second. But more to the point, the first one is simply better-executed in the constraints of its formula. Never mind that the premise of turning Manhattan Island in a prison is nonsensical: the point here is putting up a backdrop for dystopian action. Peak-era Adrienne Barbeau is always welcome, but Kurt Russell is most remarkable as Snake Plissken, first in a series of likable rogues that he’d get to play for the rest of his career. The entire film has an edge of writer/director John Carpenter’s inspired lunacy to it, from strange set pieces to audacious set design to unconventional characters to sometimes-shocking moments (such as the president going full-crazy near the climax). Escape from New York does have its annoyances, and those do mirror those of its sequel: the oh-so-cool protagonist with an attitude that mostly appeals to teenagers; the nihilistic conclusion; the moronic elements of its premise; the tiring nature of its post-apocalyptic chic. But seeing Escape from New York at a time when (say) The Walking Dead is practically mainstream TV must be very different from seeing Escape from New York in 1981. It may not be fresh by today’s standards, but it’s easy to respect its place as a film that influenced many others. I still won’t forgive the sequel, though.

Escape from L.A. (1996)

Escape from L.A. (1996)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2017) I’m normally a forgiving viewer when it comes to over-the-top comic action movies like Escape from L.A. Throw in an enjoyable action set-piece and I will normally forgive most of the nonsense required to get there. For the first half-hour of the movie, I was certainly willing to play along: It was almost a relief to see Kurt Russell back in character as Snake Plissken, all attitude and tough-guy moves. Even the dodgy CGI work required to do justice to the script on a relatively modest budget didn’t bother me too much. But even as the good cameos unfolded (Bruce Campbell as a plasticized surgeon, Pam Grier as a transsexual, Peter Fonda as a surfer!), the film lost its flavour and became bitter. At some point, the adolescent thrills of relentless post-apocalyptic nihilism became tiresome. Plissken’s posturing became hollow, and a reminder that there’s only so far to go when fuelled by cynicism and anti-heroic amorality. When the anarchic ending came, I was more annoyed at the wanton destruction than overjoyed at seeing authoritarianism being kicked over along with much of civilization. I guess I’m not a brooding sixteen-year-old anymore. While writer/director John Carpenter clearly had fun poking at Los Angeles’s pretensions with Escape from L.A., the result is curiously dark and meaningless … and I’m the one not having fun with the result.

Christine (1983)

Christine (1983)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Second viewing, Crackle Streaming, May 2017) I’m not sure anyone else will make the analogy, but having re-watched the original The Karate Kid shortly before Christine has put me in a frame of mind to call this John Carpenter horror movie the dark pendant of the kind of high-school comedy exemplified by The Karate Kid. At their heart, they are both teenage power fantasies about fitting in and gaining some kind of power over one’s social environment. The Karate Kid goes light in showing the way discipline, training and kindness can win over the worst bullies. But Christine … oh boy. Here, the path to power is destructive, based on an unholy romance with dark forces as exemplified by an evil car. Bullies are not gently beaten in submission as they are run over, dismembered or set aflame by a malevolent supernatural entity. It’s strong stuff (tying into deep American associations between cars and teenage rites of passage into adulthood), and it’s significant that Christine is focused not on the teenage nerd who falls in love with an automotive demon, but his best friend watching the consequent carnage. I remember liking the original Stephen King novel quite a bit, but director John Carpenter truly nails the filmed execution. From the self-assured prologue showing the origins of evil to the “Bad to the Bone” echoing stinger, Christine is a thrill ride. As befitting such an extreme premise (evil car?!?), it never settles for subtlety when over-the-top will do: Why not hit viewers over the head with a great on-the-nose soundtrack? Why settle for running over a bully when the car can escape from an exploding gas station and set its teenage target ablaze? Why settle for keying a car when the group of antagonists can smash it to pieces with sledgehammers? And why soft-play the disturbingly aggressive final sequence of a masculine bulldozer climbing atop a car strongly gendered as female? Christine doesn’t mess around when it comes to shocking the viewer, and it’s exactly that kind of go-for-broke audacity that sets apart ordinary B-grade horror movies from the great ones. My memories of seeing Christine in the mid-nineties weren’t spectacular, but this second look reveals a much better movie than I remembered. It’s playfully aggressive, well-crafted and has a few hidden depths once you start poking at it. After a steady diet of upbeat depictions of high-school life, Christine is just dark and just good enough to be a welcome antidote.

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(TubiTV Streaming, May 2017) The seventies in general were a good time for low-budget breakout features, and so there’s something exceptionally compelling in Assault on Precinct 13 despite its obvious limitations, excesses and diversions. It does capture a period atmosphere in which the inner city had become the new wild frontier, and transposing plenty of western tropes in an urban environment must have been far more shocking then than it is now. Not that the film is entirely normalized now—the “ice cream” scene is still viscerally transgressive today, and does much to establish that anything can happen in the film. The rest pits cops and criminals and gang members against each other, with unusual alliances emerging on their own. It works pretty well, largely due to director John Carpenter’s gift for staging action and creating suspense. The score also helps viewers feel put off by the proceedings, which is the point of the film—Assault on Precinct 13 is about how even the familiar streets can become a war zone. There’s a limit to how much you can like a film like that, but it’s not that hard to be impressed by the effectiveness of its gloomy intentions.

Halloween (1978)

Halloween (1978)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, October 2016) I have no affection and only little academic interest in the slasher genre. It’s not a kind of film that I enjoy (although I’m not opposed to other supernatural horror genres), but in trying to build a coherent picture of the horror genre over the past few decades, it’s often necessary to watch some reprehensible films along the way. Halloween remains a reference largely due to its influence on the horror genre in the following decade, in which an explosion of similar films dominated the lower rungs of the B-movie ecosystem. (I was five in 1980 and ten in 1985, so you can imagine the nostalgic memories of discovering VHS stores at the time and their terrifying cassette box art.) Knowing this, the biggest surprise in watching Halloween is how restrained it is: While there is disturbing violence, it rarely revels in the gore and terror of the victims. While there is teenage hanky-panky, there is no nudity. While the film sustains an atmosphere of dread and suspense, it feels far less exploitative than many of the films it influences. There’s a fair case to be made that Halloween is closer to a thriller than to horror and while I don’t entirely agree, this is a film now most notable for the tropes it does not use. Director John Carpenter is at the top of his game here, and the direction of the film remains remarkable even today. (The opening point-of-view sequence is still upsetting even at an age of found-footage films.) It’s also difficult to avoid mentioning the iconic soundtrack of the film, which set an example that would dominate a slew of eighties films. A very young Jamie Lee Curtis is fantastic in the lead role. While the film remains a slasher, it’s a competently executed one even today (and especially considering its low budget). It’s striking, however, how much of Halloween’s impact is now dictated by the movies it influenced than by itself.

The Thing (1982)

The Thing (1982)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, July 1999) This suffers considerably from nearly twenty years of inspired derivatives, multiple homages and endless plain rip-offs. Stories of alien possession and isolated humans threatened by monsters have proliferated since 1982, and the grand-daddy of the genre, while still pretty good, simply doesn’t seems so fresh. Unfortunately for this Special-Effects-based horror film, the effects haven’t aged well either. Finally, the muddy-black cinematography and hesitant direction don’t flow as well as they should, and The Thing is, all things considered, more of a disappointment than still an enjoyable film. Not bad, actually, but not as good as it probably once was.

(Second Viewing, On UHD/4K, September 2024) What was I thinking in the above review? Sure, some special effects are a bit dodgy now; sure, The Thing has been imitated countless times. But it’s still a heck of a thriller — absorbing, tense, crazy when it hits the high notes. Great performance from Kurt Russell; an even better turn by John Carpenter as the director. It’s not perfect, but it holds up very well against the 1954 version, and it’s certainly better than the 2011 one. It looks superb in UHD/4K, and the lengthy making-of documentary answers more questions than I had.