John Carpenter

Christine (1983)

I’m still catching up on sleep this week so I’m a bit tired but I’ll try to do this movie some justice. I’ll admit that nostalgia may be biasing my opinion on this one – it’s another movie I remember watching with my mom when I was younger. It’s also the first place I heard the song “Bad to the Bone.”

Halloween (1978)

There’s not much I can say about this movie that hasn’t already been said better elsewhere.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

I really wanted to like this one. I’d never seen it before, but I love John Carpenter and I like a lot of cult-favorite films! But I didn’t really like this one.

The Fog (1980)

So I apparently made a mistake watching the remake of this one before watching this one. More on that remake tomorrow, but basically I found it so boring that I never bothered to watch the original. I guess I figured there was no way that a movie from 1980 was going to be that much better than its remake.

I should have given John Carpenter the benefit of the doubt, of course. This one was pretty good. Not like The Thing good, but good. And while I think the remake suffers from taking itself too seriously, this one doesn’t have the same problem. John Carpenter knows exactly how seriously to take his movies, but no further.

The Thing (1982)

The Thing is one of the first scary movies I remember watching with my mom when I was younger (I’m pretty sure it’s mostly her fault that I love scary movies as much as I do), and I’m happy to report that 30-some years later, it’s still a great movie.

Sure, the special effects aren’t always believable and the technology is a bit outdated, but The Thing is a shining example of what the right cast can do in the hands of an amazing director like John Carpenter.

The Ward (2010)

This wasn’t what I’d consider John Carpenter’s best work, but it was pretty good. Carpenter knows how to scare without being overly gruesome or graphic, and this mostly works here. There’s a definite creep factor throughout the film, and the 1960s setting, from the outfits the girls wear to the medical treatments being used, serves to amplify this.

Plus the cast is good. Like, really good. I know I’ve mentioned I like Amber Heard before, and she was great as Kristen. The rest of the girls were also great – I’ve recently learned I like Danielle Panabaker a lot. And all of the medical staff were expertly creepy.

They Live (1988)

I decided to watch this one tonight because…well, because it seemed fitting.

Village of the Damned (1995)

I wish this movie were better. I think it might be the oldest remake I’ve watched yet? It’s old enough to be a Throwback Thursday pick itself!