He’s released two more solo records, and also scored video games. Carpenter released his first album of non-soundtrack material, Lost Themes, in 2014. He won a Saturn Award for Best Music for the film Vampires (1998). With the notable exception of The Thing (1982), Carpenter composed the music for his features. Carpenter consistently brings his alternative filmmaking attitude to the edges of the movie-going mainstream. Made for $300,000, it was the most profitable indie film of its time, and earned Carpenter the title of “New Hitchcock.” He continued to put his own spin across genres in films from the campy B ig Trouble in Little China, through the interstellar romance of Starman, to his ode to H.P. He’d recently turned his USC Cinema student film into the no-budget sci-fi classic Dark Star, and would go on to redefine horror with Halloween(1978). The only sequel Carpenter ever directed, it pulled out all the stops, and ended with a devastatingly dark conclusion.Ĭarpenter was 28 years old when wrote the screenplay for his criminally subversive 1976 film Assault on Precinct 13 in eight days. The film skewered the false promises of Reaganomics, the fake affronts of the moral majority, and the phony checks issued for collateral damage. Just when you thought Snake Plissken was dead, Escape from L.A., which also stars Stacy Keach, Bruce Campbell, and Pam Grier, pushes back against new imprisonments. Carpenter would further distort political distrust through the dark glasses of the sci-fi satire They Live! (1988). Driven by iconic tough guy actors like Ernest Borgnine and Lee Van Cleef, with Isaac Hayes as the Duke of New York, it shrouded savage social commentary in violent overkill, with devastatingly underplayed deliveries. Escape from New York (1981) was conceived during the paranoia of Watergate, and introduced Snake like a Sergio Leone-spaghetti-western-style gunslinger thrown under a city bus to rescue an unpopular president in hostile territory. Riots, mudslides, fires, and earthquakes splintered the valley from the hills, and the only person who knows his way around town is “Map to The Stars Eddie,” played by Steve Buscemi.Ĭarpenter’s best films reflect their time in shattered glass. His first executive action is to deport the morally guilty – atheists, teenage runaways, drug dealers, abortion doctors, and other offenders – to the newly isolated island of Los Angeles. government nationalized Christianity into a theocracy called the New Moral America, and elected Cliff Robertson’s President Adam as Chief Executive Officer for life. Made for $50 million in the year Jurassic Park was budgeted at $65 million, the cult epic follow-up turned up the volume, action, FX, and nihilistic cynicism of its predecessor for an over-the-top high-tide hang glide.Įscape from L.A. Luckily, Paramount Home Entertainment will have the sequel to John Carpenter’s Escape from New York available on 4K Ultra HD before he can punch the 666-access code into the keypad. (1996), Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken fingers a device which can shut down all technology across the planet.
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