John Carpenter
- This article is about the director, for the composer see John Alden Carpenter.
John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film music composer. He is considered by many to be the greatest director of modern horror, although he has in fact made movies in a number of other genres.
His films are characterized by minimalist lighting and photography, static cameras, and distinctive synthesized scores (often self-composed). He describes himself as having been influenced by Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and The Twilight Zone.
Biography
Born in Carthage, New York and raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky, he attended Western Kentucky University (where his father was director of the music department) and later the University of Southern California, where he won an Academy Award for his student film The Resurrection Of Broncho Billy.
Directing
His early career was extremely succcessful: Assault on Precinct 13 was a very popular low-budget thriller regarded as one of the best exploitation films of the 1970s, Halloween was a smash hit on release and is considered to be the father of the "slasher" genre, and sci-fi adventure Escape From New York has an equally wide following.
The Thing, unfortunately released at the same time as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, did not perform well commercially, and marked the end of his purple patch at the box-office, although the film itself is often considered his best. Following the box office failure of his big budget action comedy Big Trouble in Little China he has struggled to get films financed. His recent career is characterized by a number of notable misfires: Escape From L.A. and Ghosts of Mars were both critically mauled.
Reputation
Nevertheless his reputation remains strong, his earlier films are considered classics and (as they have continued to perform well on home video) several are due to be subjects of big budget remakes. Many horror/sci-fi/indie filmmakers have expressed admiration for Carpenter's work, from Robert Rodriguez to Guillermo Del Toro to Quentin Tarantino to even the critically-praised Paul Thomas Anderson of Boogie Nights and Magnolia fame.
Trivia
Some of the films that John Carpenter was attached to at one point but eventually left were Fatal Attraction, The Golden Child, No Way Out, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Deal of the Century, Armed & Dangerous, Firestarter and The Philadelphia Experiment.
Filmography as director
- The Resurrection of Broncho Billy (1970)
- Dark Star (1974)
- Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
- Halloween (1978)
- Elvis (1979, TV)
- The Fog (1980)
- Escape from New York (1981)
- The Thing (1982), remake of The Thing From Another World
- Christine (1983)
- Starman (1984)
- Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
- Prince of Darkness (1987)
- They Live (1988)
- Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)
- In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
- Village of the Damned (1995)
- Escape From L.A. (1996)
- Vampires (1998)
- Ghosts of Mars (2001)