While many keep the debate strong about how Halloween is a copycat of the horror movie, Black Christmas, Halloween still out classes Black Christmas. And it does this with the help of John Carpenter. Carpenter, who at the time in 1978 was a no name in Hollywood, penned a script with Debra Hill called "The Babysitter Murders". Time went on and eventually the script turned into the movie, HALLOWEEN.

    The following is a special article about the man who created Halloween.

    John Carpenter was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky on January 16th 1948. He was inspired to become a director after seeing such films as It Came From Outer Space, Forbidden Planet, and Creature From The Black Lagoon. He was educated at Western Kentucky University and University Of Southern California, where he studied film. As part of a college project he started a low budget film with fellow classmate Dan O'Bannon. The film was titled Dark Star (1974). After graduation this was expanded into feature length on a low budget of $60,000. As a student Carpenter made a few short films, one of which The Resurrection Of Bronco Billy, won an academy award for Best Short Live Action Film in 1970.
At this early stage of his career Carpenter wrote two film scripts, The Eyes Of Laura Mars (1978), a pretty decent and successful Faye Dunaway film, and Zuma Beach (1978). Zuma Beach was about a rock star of sorts (played by Suzanne Sommers of "Three's Company" fame) who is down on her luck and decides to spend a day away from the hassles of work and heads to the beach to relax. The beach is filled with swimmers, mostly of the teenage variety, surfers, volleyballers, etc. Some of them recognize her, some do not. Some strike up conversations with her, etc. There is a large cast of recognizable people (or at least people who were to go on to become recognizable). Timothy Hutton, Perry Lang (star of the short-lived TV show "Riptide"), Delta Burke (star of the TV show "Designing Women"), Tanya Roberts (from "Charlie's Angels"), Rosanna Arquette, Parker Stevenson, and P.J. Soles. It was made for TV in 1978.

Carpenter has also had some other scripts of his made into movies, check out Black Moon Rising (1986), El Diablo (1990), and Blood River (1991). These films are all TV movies. El Diablo is an above average western starring Louis Gosset Jr.

Carpenter's second full length feature was Assault On Precinct 13 (1976). This is his own tribute to Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, one of his favorite directors' movies. Though not particularly successful in America it wowed the audience in the London Film Festival and went on to become a cult hit. The film brought him to the attention of Irwin Yablans, a producer looking for someone to direct his story idea. The story involved a babysitter being terrorized by a homicidal maniac on the scariest night of the year. Halloween (1978) was a huge commercial success, it was the most successful independent film ever made for a number of years. The unrelenting terror and superb pacing marked Carpenters arrival into the mainstream of Hollywood directors. In the same year Carpenter also wrote and directed the TV movie Someone's Watching Me (1978), a Rear Window inspired thriller. This was released theatrically in Europe under the title High Rise. A year later he directed another TV movie, Elvis (1979) a biopic of the legendary rock'n'roll singer. Kurt Russell put in a fantastic performance in the lead role, the start of a long association with Carpenter. Elvis was a labor of love for Carpenter and was a huge success in the ratings. 1979 was definitely a boom year. The Los Angeles Film Critics anointed Carpenter with the 1979 New Generation Award for Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13 and Halloween.

The Halloween series continued - Carpenter stayed on as producer and writer for number II and the rather different number III. With III Carpenter was trying to break free from the slasher mold, but the audiences wanted none of it.

Carpenters next theatrical project after Halloween was The Fog (1980), a very creepy ghost story set in a coastal town. This was also a big hit and confirmed his reputation as Hollywood's premier master of horror. For his next project Carpenter took a different direction with the big action movie Escape From New York (1981), a script written during the early 70's. Kurt Russell starred as a wise cracking macho hero, totally over the top. Great fun and another great success. Flush with his string of hits Carpenter then went on to possibly his greatest achievement.

Inspired to direct by The Thing From Another World, he decided to remake it by returning to the original source, the short story Who Goes There by John W. Campbell. This involved the use of some of the most impressive (and disgusting) special effects to date, provided by FX genius Rob Bottin. The Thing (1982) was another success but was poorly received by the critics, it was felt that the special FX overpowered the story. The haunting score was provided by Ennio Morricone, a premier soundtrack composer. This was also unusual, Carpenter had provided the marvelous soundtracks to each of his movies to date. However, some of the Morricone compositions do sound very similar to Carpenters usual electronic nightmares.

It seemed like a surefire winner. The master of horror fiction meets the master of horror cinema. John Carpenter's next project as a director was Christine (1983), the Stephen King novel about a possessed car, teenage angst and rock'n'roll. King admits he was disappointed with the finished project, saying it seemed lifeless and flat. Carpenter has stated that the problem with the film was that the car was just too nice to be scary.

One of Carpenters most critically acclaimed films is Starman (1984), for which Jeff Bridges earned an Oscar nomination in the title role. The film is really scathing in its portrayal of man's fear in the face of the unknown, a marvelous and uplifting movie. Two years later sees the release of the big budget flop Big Trouble In Little China (1986), a Chinese ghost story set in Chinatown, starring Kurt Russell. The flamboyant and boisterous action of the film takes precedence over any horror. An interesting attempt at an action-ghost movie, but not very successful critically or commercially. In 1984 he was also a producer on the enjoyable sci-fi film The Philadelphia Experiment (1984).

After the big budget failure of Big Trouble... Carpenter returned to smaller budget films where he had more control. He intended to make a trio of these low budget films, starting with Prince Of Darkness (1987), which was the first of the multi-picture deal with Universal and Carolco. An ambitious film that successfully and chillingly explores the metaphysical aspects of pure evil. Alice Cooper had a small role as a sadistic tramp. Next up was They Live (1988). This is a great science fiction film starring the inimitable Roddy Piper, the WWF wrestling star. The third low budget film never appeared. Next up was Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (1992), a Chevy Chase vehicle. This was originally intended as a serious piece, but the big bucks lure of funny man Chase was too much for the studio to resist.

After this disaster Carpenter decided to go smaller again, returning to TV to direct two segments of Bodybags (1993), a trilogy of tales in the Creepshow tradition. Carpenter also appeared in the film as the morgue attendant in the 'wraparound' story, introducing each tale with some ghoulish puns. Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) directed the last segment, the end result was a good quality TV movie. Back to the cinema screen again and Village Of The Damned (1995) was a remake of another of his favorite films, originally filmed in B&W in the sixties. This was not particularly well received. Universal Pictures apologized for moving its release date forward to fill the time slot which was vacated by To Wong Foo.., which was not yet ready for release. It had an unfortunate timing in the United States, opening the week after the Oklahoma bombing in which many children were killed.

In The Mouth Of Madness(1995) was made the year before Village of the Damned, even though in the US it was released only two months before Village. Mouth of Madness received the some of the best reviews of John's career, opened the Fantastica Festival in Gerardmer and was nominated for Best Horror Picture at the Saturn Awards. It is a superb Lovecraftian tale starring Sam Neill and Jurgen Prochnow. A world famous horror author has gone missing while his books are having strange influences on people. Pure terror and pacing in the best Carpenter style, a moderate success both critically and financially.

In 1996 Carpenter got back together with Debra Hill (producer) and his old mate Kurt Russell to bring one of cinema's greatest anti-heroes back to life. Snake Plissken was back for a sequel to Escape From New York, Escape From LA (1996). Kurt Russell reprised his role and Carpenter directed again, all three principals collaborated on the story. It was released to mixed reviews and box office. It is more of a remake than a sequel, a decision made based on the fact that market research showed that Joe Public had never even heard of Escape From New York. While not exactly setting the box office alight, it is on course for a successful world gross.

Towards the end of 1996 JC was reported to be working on a futuristic sci-fi actioner Mutant Chronicles, based on a popular roleplaying game. After a few months JC is rumored to have fallen out with the producers, arguing the film needed a much bigger budget to be pulled of successfully. After this a few rumors circulated about a possible Western/Sci-fi film, but no real evidence appeared.

JC's recent project VAMPIRES was an adaptation of a fantastic, action packed novel by John Steakley. It follows a band of vampire hunters who are employed by the Vatican to rid America of some of the meanest blood suckers to ever appear in print. Carpenter is currently rewriting the screenplay with Don Jakoby, veteran of The Philadelphia Experiment and Arachnaphobia.

Carpenter is a consistently successful director, while some of his films are more well received than others, none of his films have ever lost money for the studio (a pretty big achievement). He often works with the same familiar cast and crew (Kurt Russell, Debra Hill, Donald Pleasence, Tommy Wallace, Jamie Lee Curtis,... the list goes on). His awesome talent for portraying the fantastic on the screen puts him in a league of his own.

Written by Marc Bright,
Courtesy The John Carpenter Homepage