John Carpenter doesn’t usually do fuzzy, warm and tender. But after The Thing got trounced by E.T. at the box office in ’82, maybe JC wanted to make peace with the idea of a benevolent alien jesus. Starman (1984) is his take on that cosmic messiah archetype – a sci-fi road movie where Jeff Bridges, … Read more
“This is K.A.B. Antonio Bay…” The Fog rolled into stores as a priced-to-own title in October of 1985 with this awesome Embassy Home Entertainment promotional deco. The John Carpenter classic would set you back a cool forty bucks in 80’s money, but it was absolutely worth it. And to say something controversial – out of … Read more
It was never meant to be the odd one out. John Carpenter and Debra Hill had a plan – turn Halloween into an anthology series, telling a different kind of horror story with each new film. But audiences at the time weren’t having it. They wanted “The Shape” coming home yet again to stalk the … Read more
File under: Great directors chaperoning someone else’s vanity project. Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) wasn’t Carpenter’s film (he’ll tell you that himself) he was supposedly brought in to replace Ivan Reitman after the tone fell apart. Chevy Chase wanted a sci-fi thriller that would make people take him seriously, while Warner Bros wanted effects … Read more