October 26th 2001

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March 16th

A look at some 'might-have-been' JC projects.

A while ago I received a huge list of projects that JC was attached to at one point or another from the great Mighty McT. I have finally got around to processing them and thought it would be interesting to give people the chance to read them on the news pages, so here they are.

Here are some titles to add to your "Unfinished Symphonies" section: AMERICAN PSYCHO, CONGO, SANJURO (remake of the Kurosawa movie), SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES;

Wow! I love Bradbury, JC adapting this amazingly poetic and creepy book would have been something to see! Can't imagine his American Psycho, though I bet it woud have been full of black, black humour.

SO HELP ME GOD (november 1992 : television series inspired by THE FOG, with the collaboration of Larry Cohen, announced to be "very gory");

Cohen directed horror classics like 'It's Alive', 'Q' and 'The Stuff' - a FOG series is a cool enough idea, but with Cohen? Could have been fantastic.

LIGHTNING (after THE EYES OF LAURA MARS, Universal proposed Carpenter writing this project of screenplay, with an option on the directing)...

Also, from the French magazine L'ECRAN FANTASTIQUE (october 1982 issue) : "Universal recently announced that the shooting of FIRESTARTER, which was due to begin this month in Tennessee, helmed by John Carpenter, was postponed to an undetermined date. It seems that the studio worried too much about the size of the budget ($18 000 000) and didn't want to take any more financial risks right after the failure of THE THING. Carpenter's projects are now reduced to two low-budget movies, to be produced by his wife, Adrienne Barbeau, and him, under the aegis of their small company 'Hye White Bread' : DARE THE DEVIL, an adventure movie with romance, from an original idea by Carpenter, and MALL RATS, a comedy."

We knew about the Firestarter problems but I have never heard of this DARE THE DEVIL. By the way, the MALLRATS is NOT the one that Kevin Smith later did.

In another issue (august 1985) of the same magazine, I read "ARMED AND DANGEROUS, which was slated to be directed by John Carpenter for Columbia, is being abandoned as a result of the resignation of both the director and his two stars, John Candy and Dan Aykroyd."

Phew, lucky escape for JC I think there. He didn't get mixed up with the SNL crew until Memoirs... and look what happened there!

In the french book "Mythes et Masques : les fantômes de John Carpenter" (Myths and Masks : the Ghosts of John Carpenter), from Luc Lagier and Jean-Baptiste Thoret, among the unfinished projects are listed :

- BLOOD RIVER (a western, played by John WWayne and Elvis Prestley! Abandoned because of the bad health of Wayne. Directed in 1991 by Mel Damski for CBS, from an original screenplay by Carpenter);

Not a bad TV movie if you are ever lucky enough to see it.

- THE BEAST (Carpenter wanted to do it after VILLAGEOF THE DAMNED);

- TOP GUN (!);

- BRAM STOCKER'S DRACULA (finally directed by Coppola).

Top Gun! I cannot even begin to imagine that. I also glad JC didn't do Dracula - he is too unconventional for a straight Vampire story - that's why Vampires is such a great film.

The book also list in Carpenter's film credits BETTER LATE THAN NEVER (aka NEVER TOO YOUNG, aka DARN YOU, HARRY LANDERS), a TV movie directed by Richard Crenna, from a screenplay by John Crapenter and Greg Strangis.

In the book, Carpenter has this to say (in an interview with the two authors) about THE NINJA : "It was a great book, sliced in three distinct acts. At the beginning, I was involved in the project with Zanuck and Brown, the two producers of JAWS. We intended to make it for Twentieth Century Fox but the studio executives finally get afraid and never wanted to hear about it again."

About SOMEONE'S WATCHING ME, you may be interested to know that it occasionally appears on french TV under the title "Meurtre au 43eme etage" (Murder on the43rd floor).

... translated, from another issue of the French magazine "L'Ecran Fantastique" (April 1989): John Carpenter is now thinking about his next feature project. Allowed to make one film outside his contract at Alive Films, he is being offered two prestige big-budget productions. The first one is SHADOW COMPANY, to be produced by Walter Hill for Universal Pictures, from an already finished screenplay by Fred Dekker and Shane Black, a subject combining military actions and horror, in the vein of ALIENS (the dead bodies of some mercenaries, killed during Vietnam in 1972, are found nowadays and brought back to US in order to be buried. For mysterious reasons, the dead leave their graves and decide to follow their last orders). The second project is actually a sequel, the inevitable EXORCIST III (aka THE EXORCIST: 1990), written by William Peter Blatty, in development at the new Weintraub Entertainment Group. "It's a very good script", Carpenter told us. "Blatty is an excellent writer. He has a gift for geting you into the story. The new film will start right when the last one ended: the Devil has taken father Karras, the character played by Jason Miller, but, in this script, he doesn't die. I'm very interested in this project, but I don't know for sure whether I will make it or not. But I am honored they thought about me."

Exorcist III was eventually directed by Blatty himself and turned out to be a pretty good film. I think JC did the devil thing best with Prince of Darkness anyway.

I found a Spanish article at this URL http://www.pasadizo.com/articulos/inexistentes.shtml about "movies that will never be". Among others, some Carpenter's unproduced projects are listed, including the remake of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, FIRESTARTER (screenplay by Bill Lancaster), THE THING 2, THE FOG 2, a THE FOG television series, adaptations of Ramsey Campbell's THE HUNGRY MOON and Alfred Bester's THE STARS MY DESTINATION and a remake of QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. The article also lists FATAL ATTRACTION, BRAM'S STOKER DRACULA, THE EXORCIST III, FLASHDANCE (!!!), THE UNTOUCHABLES, THE MUMMY, ROBOCOP and TOP GUN as films that Carpenter could have directed.

Now we are seeing mad things - Flashdance? Robocop could have been oh so good, same black humour but I bet JC would have been a lot more creepy with it than Verhoeven (though Verhoeven's is a great film).

PS : And about that remake of Kurosawa's YOJIMBO Carpenter was attached to direct, I found that it finally became Walter Hill's LAST MAN STANDING with Bruce Willis.

And that about wraps up that. Thanks again to the Mighty McT for that brilliant list. It will get onto the Unfinished Symphonies page eventually!

Halloween TV Version

I apologize if you already received this information, but I don't see it anywhere else on your site. According to Anchor Bay Entertainment's upcoming titles page, they will be releasing the TV version of Halloween in Mid 2001. The page doesn't specify if it will be a DVD or VHS release. http://www.anchorbayentertainment.com/future/ - Brian Krummerich.

The Halloween version is already on DVD as part of Anchor Bay's amazing Halloween Special Ed DVD so I guess they are going to release it soon as a separate disc.

GOM Magazines

I saw the US film magazine Wicked, which had a short article on GOM. Except for the picture with the spiked heads, there were 2 other photos: one was a group shot of the main actors, and more interestingly, a dusty view on the Mars base. Can the readers of your site submit scans? The article contained no extra info, except maybe that it will have the feel of a war movie. Oh, and JC wrote the foreword for Fangoria #200. Maybe someone wants to scan it for your site. It's a short piece on the state of horror - Tom

AICN visit GOM

An interesting, if rather sophomoric 2-part article about a visit to the GOMset is posted at: http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=8327 - Tom

Special Edition of EFNY on DVD!

Hi Marc,Last night my jaw dropped at the Home Theatre Forum - MGM chat, They mentioned Escape from New York will get a new SE release on R1 dvd nextyear, the transfer will be remastered, a new 5:1 sound & extras!.Now all we need to do is get MGM to get the LD extras for The Fog.Regards, Simon Caleb.

Wow, sounds brilliant (even if I did buy the oridinary R2 version before Christmas).

March 13th

Anthrax to score GOM with JC

Thanks to all the people who pointed out that www.anthrax.com reports that they are to assist JC with scoring GOM. I have mixed feelings on this one - I'm not a huge metal fan but I can imagine it would really fit the tone of the film. I was excited by recent reports of JC scoring it by himself on his keyboard - a return to classic days of The Fog, Prince of Darkness, etc. I just hope it is a great score as we all know half of JCs movies are his music. Cheers to Pepioth, Adam Bodnar, Forrest Gabitsch and Chris Cordoca for that news.

Fog European DVD

Holger gives us a tantalising glimpse of this disc:

Hallo my Name is Holger, i'm from Germany. In my local Videostore i rent the dvd of "The Fog". The disc are only in German but he had Outtakes, Trailers and an interview with John Capenter about The Fog and other Movie. The Picture of the DVD is fantastic i never seen it in this quality.

I am trying to find out more info on this disc, specifically does it have an English audio track?

March 6th

First look at BTILC DVD

It's only a look at the cover, but I am excited about this disk and I think quite a few of you are as well, cheers to Dedrick for point it out.

March 5th

New, Fantastic GOM Pictures

Tom Alaerts has really come up trumps for us here, a great look at some amazing looking scenes from GOM, I'll let him enlighten us in his own words:

Here is your faithful reporter again. I know it can seem quite sad for the innocent bystander, but I bought the March issue of the French mag Cinélive specially for the GOM preview article...

So what do we have: - A picture of our heroes including masterr criminal Desolation Williams (Ice Cube). A real baaad guy: bank robbery, drug traffic, contract killer, blackmail... in short a typical "Carpenterian" hero...

-JC's silhouette on the set of GOM. I believe that in the back you can see the train which will be quite important in the story.

- A battle scene on the surface, next to the base, which looks suitably futuristic.

- The bad guys, armed with nasty looking weapons, chanting

- Our good old friend Daddy Mars throwing a nice smile

- Heroine cop Melanie Ballard (played by Natasha Henstridge) in extreme terror...

For the rabid JC fans that we all are, the article didn't contain much news, however here a few nice quotations (I had to translate them from French to English, so they probably won't be JC's exact words, but you'll get the idea):

- JC seems not really concerned by the flops of the 2 previous Mars movies since his one is totally different: "While it is true that the three films take place on Mars, mine has nothing to do with the previous ones. First because there are no astronauts discovering an unknown planet. There will be no scenes like the landing of a capsule. On the Mars in my film, you can breathe the air - the planet has been 'terraformed'. ... GOM is closer to a ghost movie than a classic SF movie. It's more like a western on a different planet (note from me: this is no surprise, most of JC's movies are westerns in disguise) ... Mars is a myth, a mystery, an enigma in our collective subconscious. Mars is also the ancient Greek GOD of war. And Mars is also close to earth, so we can well imagine it being colonised. Three good reasons to plase our scenario there, even if other recent movies also too place on Mars."

- "GOM refers especially to the Hollywood Western. OK, there are a few SF B movies that I saw as a kid, such as Angry Red planet, but my inspirations comes mainly from the Far West plains."

- about Forbidden Planet: "I love that movie. It's even one of my favourites. I saw it when I was barely 8 years old. It is true that in a sense, GOM is a remake; but I didn't think about it till now"

- about Natasha Henstridge replacing Courtney Love: "She's an actress that I like a lot, and who almost never has been used to full potential. She also has a real physical presence, a kind of natural authority. Well, I am really happy with how things turned out."

- about the delay before filming started: "What was a problem at first became an advantage in the end. Larry Sulkis and me have benefit from the preproduction delays so we could improve the scenario. From a linear script that didn't really work, we've come to a story that switches between immediate action and flashbacks. It gives GOM a little experimental side."

- About the fact that women have more important roles than in his previous movies (except for Halloween, a long time ago): "Afraid of actresses? No! But it's true that I directed rather few actresses and most of them in secondary roles ... The important presence of women in my new film is because the Mars society is matriarchal - A society governed by women.". The article then mentions that on JC's Mars, 50% of women are bisexual, 30% purely lesbian and the 2 categories visit brothels where they can pay for services by partners of the two genders... (note from me: It wouldn't surprise me that when the movie will be released in the prude America of G. Bush jr; this element can cause some commotion...).

- about JC's Mars: 'While GOM is firmly planted in the fantasy genre, I wanted a certain scientific correctnes in our concept of the planet. We studied NASA pictures for a long time. Instead of working in the studion, using filters, we chose to film in New Mexico, in a place that was already very red to start with, because it's a gypsum mine, a mineral that gives a perfect illusion of a Martian surface." - about filming something else than SF/horrror: "When Wes Craven films a melodrama like 'Music of My heart', good luck to him. But I don't see why I would do something else. I am rather happy where I am. I don't think I would stray far from what I have doing if I would ever have the chance to try something else. But I keep always an open mind to that possibility!".

Feb 23rd

Big Trouble In Little China DVD On Pre-Order

This fantastic sound disk (alternate ending, new commentary, outtakes, etc. - put together by the team that did the amazing Fight Club disk) is now available to pre-order from Amazon -

Greetings from Amazon.com! You've previously signed up to be notified when "Big Trouble in Little China (Special Edition)" (DVD) became available, and we're happy to inform you that it is now available to pre-order! If you would like to pre-order this item now, just follow the link below: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005A3KU/ref=t_th_em_po

I can't wait for that one, but please note I am not advocating using Amazon to buy it, just pointing out that it is there. Always check out the JC DVD Page News Section for a nice roundup on JC DVD news.

Feb 21st

JC Scoring GOM and GOM Trailer on the Horizon

In the first great bit of news Tom Alaerts points out the following article - http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=8208 where Harry Knowles relates his experiences of watching JC scoring a scene in GOM. Great to hear about JC just jamming along to film, trying to find the right mood. And sounds like we could be in for a classic JC-synth score which I know will please a lot of people. In related news www.darkhorizons.com reports that Sony are mailing studio theatres asking them to make space for new trailers, with GOM on the list of up and comers.

JC Official Website

Looks like JC has a new official website at http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/ which has loads of cool info on his movies and film scores.

Feb 11th

GOM Star Appearance

Not sure you can use this information but an upcoming convention in New Jersey has slated Joanna Cassidy as a guest. Chiller Theatre takes place on April 27 - 29 (www.chillertheatre.com). Joanna will probably have an autograph table and hopefully photos and information about Ghosts of Mars. Also Tom Atkins is scheduled to appear at Fangoria in NY City in April. Ken Parker

GOM on Sony Website

I just checked out GHOSTSOFMARS.com and indeed it does take you to the Sony website and yes there is nothing on Ghost from Mars. However... If you search for JOHN CARPENTER'S GHOST OF MARS (come on, we as fans should know that John's Name ALWAYS is included in the title) you get a brief rundown of the movie's plot and things that your website has long since reported. I'm pasting the site's info. If you already know about the site on Sony then disregard. Thanks and keep up the good work.

Some have Spielberg and others have Hitchcock, I myself learn everything I know about film making from John Carpenter and can't wait for GOM and hopefully many more to follow. RubyInk

JOHN CARPENTER'S GHOSTS OF MARS IN THEATERS AUGUST 24, 2001

CAST:

NATASHA HENSTRIDGE, ICE CUBE, JASON STATHAM, PAM GRIER AND CLEA DUVALL

GENRE: Science Fiction-Action

From the famed director of Vampires and Escape From New York, John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is a harrowing tale of rescue and escape from a colonized Mars in the year 2025.Long inhabited by human settlers, the Red Planet has become the manifest destiny of an over-populated Earth. Nearly 640,000 people now live and work all over Mars, mining the planet for its abundant natural resources. But one of those mining operations has uncovered a deadly mother lode: a long- dormant Martian civilization whose warriors are systematically taking over the bodies of human intruders.Lt. Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) of the Martian Police Force is on transport assignment to bring James 'Desolation' Williams (Ice Cube), the planet's most notorious criminal, to justice. Williams has no plans to make Ballard's job easy, and what begins as a battle of force and wits between cop and criminal soon turns into something more fundamental: a battle for human survival in the realm of the Martian warriors. It's civilization against civilization as Ballard and Williams join forces in mortal combat with the Ghosts of Mars.

SCREEN GEMS

DIRECTED BY JOHN CARPENTER
WRITTEN BY LARRY SULKIS JOHN CARPENTER

PRODUCED BY SANDY KING

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY GARY KIBBE

CREDITS NOT YET FINALLY DETERMINED

EFNY TV Series Info

Looks like this is well on the go with filming possibly in Australia -

Valentine - Aussie Director Jamie Blanks talked bout his new film "Valentine" ... His next project will likely be more in the supernatural thriller vein (ala "The Fog"), but in the meantime he may direct one or two episodes of the "Escape from New York" TV series, especially if it's shot in Sydney as has been considered. Courtesy Dark Horizons WEB SITE

Cheers to cinemafan for pointing that one out.

Jan 20th

New GOM Pictures

These cool photo's were put online by Mohammad over at The Carpenticized...

Great quality pictures I think and they have me excited. Some people have commented on their 'road warrior/mad max' vibe and I can see that and personally think that is a great thing. I am looking forward to this one.

DVD Updates - EFNY to get a decent release?

Check out the DVD Web Site for more info

Starman on The Web

Just a short message to inform you that our website, CanalChat.com, is hosting a live chat with Jeff Bridges (he has played on "Starman") on Tuesday, the 23th of January at 7 pm GMT. We hope you will take the opportunity to chat with him. Please follow the link www.canalchat.com to find out more.

A Ghost Request

In return for helping us out I would like to help Blade Runner out with the following:

hey marc, i was wondering if you could post this letter in your web site, when i was on set one of the extras from rio rancho had his wife take a picture of me in costume, but i never had a chance to get his address. again, i was wearing raggety pants, a black vest with spikes and my face was air brushed (black and red) with piercings. and a knife blade sticking out of each cheek bone. if he happens to respond. my e-mail is bladerunner_41@hotmail.com

GOM Website

From Jeff:

This may be old news but I found a bit interesting. I typed in www.ghostofmars.com and it sent me to the Sony Pictures Entertainment website (the distributor?) But I couldn't locate anything at the site on the movie Jeff