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Let's Watch and Discuss All of John Carpenter's Films

Issun

Issun

Chumpy
(He/Him)
Starting Next week, let's watch each and every film (not counting for television) movies that John Carpenter has directed. Next week we start watching and discussing the first film, then the next week is for watching and discussing that film, and so on. Here is the list of movies:

Dark Star (10/17-10/23)
Assault on Precinct 13 (10/24-10/30)
Halloween (10/31-11-6)
The Fog (11/7-11/13)
Escape from New York (11/14-11/20)
Christine (11/21-11/27)
The Thing (11/28-12/4)
Starman (12/5-12/11)
Big Trouble in Little China (12/12-12/18)
Prince of Darkness (12/19-12/25)
They Live (12/26-1/1/22)
Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1/2/22-1/8/22)
In the Mouths of Madness (1/9/22-1/15/22)
Village of the Damned (1/16/22-1/22/22)
Escape from L.A. (1/23/22-1/29/22)
Vampires (1/30/22-2/5/22)
Ghosts of Mars (2/6/22-2/12/22)
The Ward (2/13/22-2/19/22)

Look forward to Dark Star watch and discussion next week!
 
Issun

Issun

Chumpy
(He/Him)
Finally watched Dark Star. I'll have more to say later, but watching an astronaut try to talk down a sentient bomb was not what I expected. A lot of cool concepts in this film.
 
Purple

Purple

(She/Her)
I still need to catch up on Slayers but I was already trying to take a stab at this with someone else randomly so...

Dark Star- Really underrated. Everyone loves the bomb, but it's only one of several odd little deadpan comedy threads playing out. There's also the frozen corpse of the mostly dead captain being too lonely to have useful advice, the wonderfully low budget alien, the baffling surfing bit... good times.

Assault on Precinct 13- It's not a zombie movie but it's enough of a zombie movie that Resident Evil 2 took it as a primary source of inspiration. Little weird to have violent criminal gangs as a threat with how Carpenter's good politics tend to come out in his other movies, but it's still kind of a gold standard for siege stuff.
 
Issun

Issun

Chumpy
(He/Him)
Purple said:
Dark Star- Really underrated. Everyone loves the bomb, but it's only one of several odd little deadpan comedy threads playing out. There's also the frozen corpse of the mostly dead captain being too lonely to have useful advice, the wonderfully low budget alien, the baffling surfing bit... good times.
Click to expand...
I was definitely not expecting a dark comedy a-la Dr. Strangelove when I started watching it. Knowing Carpenter's catalogue, I was expecting the alien to eat Pinback or for him to get crushed by the elevator, rather than for that segment to turn into a Looney Tunes short. The movie did have some neat character moments, though, especially between Doolittle and Talbi. And watching the relationships between the characters deteriorate along with the condition of the ship was incredible. Special effects were awesome cheesy 70s sci-fi. When the alien just deflated I almost lost it.

I think the point of the surfing thing was that at least Doolittle got to go out doing the one thing he ever really loved.
 
Exposition Owl

Exposition Owl

more posts about buildings and food
(he/him/his)
Issun said:
Finally watched Dark Star. I'll have more to say later, but watching an astronaut try to talk down a sentient bomb was not what I expected. A lot of cool concepts in this film.
Click to expand...

Huh. I guess now I know where Starship Titanic got that idea.
 
Dracula

Dracula

Plastic Vampire
(He/His)
I've been listening to the Blank Check podcast's run-through of Carpenter movies and watching some of them here and there. I'm behind on both the podcast and the watchthrough, but I'll definitely have some stuff to say about some of these as you proceed!

I have not seen Dark Star yet. What I've heard is that Carpenter is kind of embarrassed of it, and never really wanted it to have a wide release. I believe the movie's patron saint was Dan O'Bannon, who worked with Carpenter on the movie in a number of roles. O'Bannon isn't really a household name, but he worked on Star Wars (providing the computer graphics for the Death Star trench run simulation), wrote the screenplay for Alien, and directed one of my favorite films, Return of the Living Dead.
 
Adrenaline

Adrenaline

Post Reader
(He/Him)
I listened to the commentary track for Alien and Dan O'Bannon kept complaining about how the other people who worked on the script added depth and meaning to his story about a scary alien killing people on a space ship.
 
Dracula

Dracula

Plastic Vampire
(He/His)
Adrenaline said:
I listened to the commentary track for Alien and Dan O'Bannon kept complaining about how the other people who worked on the script added depth and meaning to his story about a scary alien killing people on a space ship.
Click to expand...

This tracks with other things I've read and heard about O'Bannon. He was a weird dude. I think he's one of those types where I respect his work but I don't respect him.
 
Phantoon

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
I've used this thread as an excuse to fill in some more of my John Carpenter collection. Dark Star, Prince of Darkness and They Live arrive tomorrow. I love his stuff. I'll have to seriously jump the gun on The Fog, no way I can wait until after Hallowe'en for that
 
Issun

Issun

Chumpy
(He/Him)
Assault on Precinct 13 was gangbusters. Intense from start to finish (Carpenter is really good with having a sense of dread standing just out of the corner of every scene), and a really charismatic core cast. One thing I've noticed about Carpenter too is that, while he alsohas some problematic stuff in his films, he was really good at representation for the time. Not to mention making death row inmates just as human as anybody else.

I was really hoping for a better look at the gang's motivations, but they were supposed to be the scary unknown, so I can understand why that didn't happen.

Also, having just played RE2 2019, I can really see what @Purple was getting at in her post.

Unfortunately I probably won't be able to watch Halloween on Halloween, but hopefully as close to it as I can.
 
Phantoon

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
I'm a bit behind as I just finished Dark Star. That's a weird-ass film. I really liked the feel of a bored crew doing a possibly pointless job in a knackered spaceship (and alien space beachball was hilarious).

I'm really annoyed with myself because there was one bit I'm pretty convinced was pinched by a better known film and I can't remember what it was right now. It did inadvertently give us Red Dwarf though!
 
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