John Carpenter

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DarkImbecile
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Re: John Carpenter

#26 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu May 16, 2019 1:06 pm

John Carpenter hints at possible future TV and feature directing projects, while also just being generally amusing in Cannes:
THR wrote:The director also had a laissez faire attitude towards remakes of his past films like the upcoming Escape From New York, saying he wouldn't want a say in Leigh Whannell's new version. But he added he enjoys the executive producer role.

“Based on something I've written, in that case I sit on my couch and put my hand out and a check arrives and I do nothing for it," he said. "That's the kind of remake I'm talking about."
...

He also added he's not upset by the similarities between Metal Gear Solid and the lead character from Escape from New York. “The director tried to buy me off, sent a free copy and said 'You're such an inspiration,' and I thought: why don't you send money?"
...

He is being honored with the Director's Fortnight Golden Coach award during the festival, which went to Martin Scorsese last year, and joked: “My getting this award was a huge mistake.”

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Re: John Carpenter

#27 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Jul 11, 2019 5:11 pm

It was interesting whilst watching the Red Letter Media piece on In The Mouth of Madness to wonder if Christophe Gans may have been influenced a bit by this film for the structure of the Silent Hill film, which similarly has characters going into a town, pinballs them between a few key locations and then has them escape it only for the horror to have stayed with the characters instead of dissipating. Though of course the Silent Hill games themselves perhaps could have influenced Carpenter! And Gans was a part of that 1993 Necronomicon anthology film (and directed the most evocative segment of it, The Drowned), so maybe he was just on the same kind of thought process as Carpenter! And that adds to the sense that Lovecraft was in the air around 1993-94!

Also during their discussion of late (or rather 90s) John Carpenter, they bring up Ghosts of Mars (which I think works really well, just not as an action film), Memoirs of an Invisible Man (which does not quite work because its comedy and thriller elements keep clashing, especially the need to keep Chevy Chase on screen even when he's invisible. Weirdly it has almost exactly the same tonal problems as that Chevy Chase Benji movie Oh! Heavenly Dog, in that you cannot generate actual tension with a star like Chevy Chase being on screen, but you need him to be on screen to be the audience draw for the film!), Escape From L.A. (which I generally agree with their opinion of, though the replacement of Donald Pleasance's wishy-washy British(?) US President from New York with the extreme right wing pro-death penalty evangelical preacher President being held hostage by his naive liberal Stockholm Syndromed rebel daughter is a neat new premise. And of course the roving band of insane plastic surgeons led by Bruce Campbell is a fun touch, though like much else in the film a bit too satirically goofy to inspire any particular feelings of fear), and Vampires (which I really don't like the tone of, especially in the treatment of the innocent caught in between the vampires and the vampire hunters and being brutalised by both sides. Though I concede maybe that is meant to be the point), but I really wish they had talked a little about Carpenter's remake of Village of the Damned which is a surprisingly successful, though gorier, remake of the rather genteel original film. That's really the only problem with that film, in that lovers of the original might be rather repulsed by some of the goings on in the remake, but I think its worth bracketing together with Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers film in terms of 90s horror remakes with highly interesting aspects to them, even if they might not entirely work. It also has that astonishing gender-politiced, abortion rights inflected exit for Kirstie Alley's character...
Spoiler for the fate of the Kirstie Alley characterShow
, as the overly masculinised clinically detached doctor, and the only woman who can see the threat posed by the children from the very beginning (and who has been hiding and experimenting on various 'still born' foetuses), which is suggested to be because she is infertile and therefore beyond their 'influence'. So the kids band together in revenge to forced her to perform a similar self autopsy (or a kind of ironic hysterectomy?) to the ones that she 'inflicted' on their bretheren.
(Also to keep with the British horror interest that Carpenter appears to have, along with writing scripts under the "Martin Quatermass" pseudonym and the remake of Village of the Damned, I think that post-apocalyptic quiet scene in the ruined bar in In The Mouth of Madness that gets discussed in that video above might just be Carpenter's homage to that similar quiet moment of reflection between a couple of characters that occurs just before the climax of Quatermass and the Pit)

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Re: John Carpenter

#28 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Aug 25, 2020 2:55 am

thirtyframesasecond wrote:
Mon Aug 24, 2020 2:16 pm
I love They Live and can quote 'formaldehyde face 'til I get bored, but I wonder whether it's now got a hardcore fanbase of anti-vaxxers/anti-Gates-Soros/anti-New World Order loons.
I am just going to copy this comment about They Live! over into the dedicated John Carpenter thread from the "Upcoming Films on UK TV" one and develop it a bit, because it might inspire some further discussion:

I understand thirtyframesasecond's comment and at this moment in time it really feels like it does anticipate the blue collar classes (or even underclasses without any work at all, or casual contract work) taking matters into their own hands in the face of empty, even fraudulent promises from the media and even the church which are meaningless in the face of the reality on the ground, which are certainly a bit uncomfortable in the current climate where Trump's whole agenda is based on telling people not to trust any member of the elites (whilst being the ultimate elitist himself, which is part of his paradoxical nature). But then even back when They Live was new it was always a bit uncomfortable seeing just how quickly the lead turns to gun-toting vigilanteism too (holding up a bank no less as his first act!), suggesting that our 'hero' is not really anything of the sort! It also anticipated reality TV too in that wonderful scene of our vagabond lead spying through a window on someone watching television with a woman talking ecstatically about never growing old on TV (frames within frames of viewers and the viewed going on there). I seem to remember hearing that it was in line for a remake a while ago but luckily that went by the wayside, because I could see any remake being far too blunt in its message, however blunt it might be felt the original film was itself! However that has not stopped me from imagining my own dream remake, and I have always thought it would be necessary to use the Gorillaz track Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach over the opening credits of wandering into L.A., through the streets and parks, looking at all of the advertising hoardings before fading out to the job centre scene! Whilst White Flag would be perfect for the final explosive climax of domestic terrorism and montage scene of the aftereffects rippling out through the society (mediated by the media of course!) before cutting to the credits with the beginning of the lyrics!

They Live is kind of a dangerous film because it is superficially offering (and revelling in) the 'easy catharsis' of safe revolution and the promise that all of the injustices can be boiled down to the privileged classes not just being horrible uncaring people but not even human beings, so there are immediately apparently no moral qualms at all about going around killing whoever your pair of sunglasses tells you to! It takes 'dehumanising the other' to the ultimate extreme and at least at first seems to suggest all those spree killers going on rampages may have had a point to their insanely violent actions and who they choose to target. Though whilst it follows its main character's antics I'm not entirely sure that the film is fully endorsing him (Especially because the final section of the film starts complicating things by bringing in the aspect of human collaborators beyond just the easily defined conflict between humans and aliens. Even before the final kicker shot that caps off the whole film as being ultimately a very black comedy about the fears of miscegenation!), just as I am not sure we were entirely sympathetic to Snake Plissken single mindedly pursuing his mercenary goals in the face of all of the supporting characters dying off around him in the final scenes of Escape From New York. I mourned more for Adrienne Barbeau or Ernest Borgnine's characters in Escape From New York than particularly worried about Snake Plissken; and in They Live Keith David is playing the far more sympathetic and relatable figure, similarly brutally tossed away in the final moments. I think Carpenter sympathises with the 'working man's plight' but also may be realistic about their ability to achieve any sort of change on anything more than the blunt weapon-based level that doesn't solve anything and perhaps just makes things worse (that's a theme that even carries through up to the final moments of Ghosts of Mars, which only doubles down on showing that the particularly American solution to any conflict is to reach for a bigger gun than the opponent!)

That's something that means that whilst I do like Zizek's promotion of They Live in the Pervert's Guide To Ideology, I think he gets too enamoured by the early section of the film and what it is saying about the seductive nature of advertising to then also go on to note that the film goes on to say that simply 'waking up' to oppression does not mean that you are immediately going to become the 'great resistance fighter ready to lead the revolution', instead perhaps that you might just end up futilely lashing out in aggressive ways upon your realisation. I think They Live! sees idealistic revolutionaries as eventually providing nothing more than an adolescent middle finger at overwhelming forces they are powerless to counteract rather than anything more coherent than that. A piece of graffiti on the wall of capitalist exploitation rather than any plan to put something better in its place.

That sense of individual issues being swept away by the 'bigger issues', whilst at the same time sort of coming back to ironically fundamentally undermine any sense of nobility to the grander (simpler, black and white, goodies and baddies, heroes and villains) narrative is the aspect that I think I like the most about Carpenter's films (at its funniest in They Live and the various pompous Presidents being undermined at the end of their respective "Escape From..." films). His films often deal with relentless, overwhelming horrors that never really get defeated (everything from Michael Myers in Halloween to the creature in The Thing), and often only become even bigger existential threats in response to any opposition, while those we are supposed to sympathise with often reveal their essential flaws or weaknesses (or their essential aspects of fallible humanity after the inhuman threats have sloughed away their defences) that make them incapable of overcoming the threat, and that is really the thing that I find the most unique about Carpenter's films. Even Vampires, which I always have trouble watching because I get so repulsed by the actions of the main 'hero' characters even more than even the vampires themselves, especially in those early scenes of hubristically celebrating the destruction of a vampire nest with debauched partying with drugs and prostitutes and only compounded by the treatment of the Sheryl Lee character after she is 'turned' by the vampire and apparently because of that is allowed to be treated as something less than human by our supposed heroes, is showing that kind of philosophy writ inescapably large. It also probably makes sense that Carpenter got drawn to Lovecraft with In The Mouth of Madness too, since those stories feature the ultimate in flawed, ineffectual protagonists losing their minds (and often unwittingly helping to spread the horror wider) in the face of unopposable revelatory horrors about the nature of the worlds they inhabit.

I also wonder if that structure of the 'big conflict' eventually being less important that the individually flawed characters and their interactions with each other because of the situation they find themselves being forced to respond to is the thing that most shows the Howard Hawks influence too.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: John Carpenter

#29 Post by DarkImbecile » Mon Jun 20, 2022 12:06 pm

40th anniversary screenings of Carpenter’s The Thing apparently cracked the top 10 at the weekend box office

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Re: John Carpenter

#30 Post by Big Ben » Mon Jun 20, 2022 12:49 pm

DarkImbecile wrote:
Mon Jun 20, 2022 12:06 pm
40th anniversary screenings of Carpenter’s The Thing apparently cracked the top 10 at the weekend box office
Fantastic news!

I wasn't alive in 1982 but the cultural reevaluation of this film has always really puzzled me. When I watched it some years ago for the first time I couldn't fathom why the film was treated with such extreme vitriol. I can certainly understand different taste of course but hearing about/reading some of the reactions from people at the time (My father included) really displays a significant opinion shift from outright cultural revulsion to reverence.

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Re: John Carpenter

#31 Post by willoneill » Mon Jun 20, 2022 4:14 pm

DarkImbecile wrote:
Mon Jun 20, 2022 12:06 pm
40th anniversary screenings of Carpenter’s The Thing apparently cracked the top 10 at the weekend box office
Apparently it wasn't the greatest presentation of the film!

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Re: John Carpenter

#32 Post by aurevoir » Mon Jun 20, 2022 6:52 pm

willoneill wrote:
Mon Jun 20, 2022 4:14 pm
DarkImbecile wrote:
Mon Jun 20, 2022 12:06 pm
40th anniversary screenings of Carpenter’s The Thing apparently cracked the top 10 at the weekend box office
Apparently it wasn't the greatest presentation of the film!
I've only ever heard awful things about Fathom Events. How in the hell is their antiquated satellite broadcasting system still acceptable? And even then, how hard would it be to get oh-so-trivial details like the aspect ratio right?

These are the only opportunities much of the country gets to see classic films in theaters! It's depressing.

EDIT: This Twitter thread goes into detail about how Fathom works.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: John Carpenter

#33 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Jun 21, 2022 8:27 am

Big Ben wrote:
Mon Jun 20, 2022 12:49 pm
DarkImbecile wrote:
Mon Jun 20, 2022 12:06 pm
40th anniversary screenings of Carpenter’s The Thing apparently cracked the top 10 at the weekend box office
Fantastic news!

I wasn't alive in 1982 but the cultural reevaluation of this film has always really puzzled me. When I watched it some years ago for the first time I couldn't fathom why the film was treated with such extreme vitriol. I can certainly understand different taste of course but hearing about/reading some of the reactions from people at the time (My father included) really displays a significant opinion shift from outright cultural revulsion to reverence.
Admittedly, I haven't spent a whole lot of time seeking out reviews or comments, but what supposedly caused the "extreme vitriol" reaction to this film in the past? I saw it opening weekend in 1982 and found it a fun update on the original with terrific practical effects. I got the impression audiences at the time felt more or less the same. While it was still very much a Carpenter film (meaning a certain B-movie looseness), it was clearly an improvement on the 1951 film (being able to realize the original short story's concept of a shape-shifting alien made all the difference).

I'm not sure how much reverence Carpenter's The Thing should be held in these days, but it's only other real competition is Cronenberg's The Fly (1986) in taking a 50s sci-fi staple and making something much more worthwhile out of it. I'd consider including Kaufman's excellent remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) in the same category if Siegel's original wasn't so good (right now, I'd place both versions as being about equal).

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Re: John Carpenter

#34 Post by OldBobbyPeru » Tue Jun 21, 2022 1:44 pm

aurevoir wrote:
Mon Jun 20, 2022 6:52 pm
willoneill wrote:
Mon Jun 20, 2022 4:14 pm
DarkImbecile wrote:
Mon Jun 20, 2022 12:06 pm
40th anniversary screenings of Carpenter’s The Thing apparently cracked the top 10 at the weekend box office
Apparently it wasn't the greatest presentation of the film!
I've only ever heard awful things about Fathom Events. How in the hell is their antiquated satellite broadcasting system still acceptable? And even then, how hard would it be to get oh-so-trivial details like the aspect ratio right?

These are the only opportunities much of the country gets to see classic films in theaters! It's depressing.

EDIT: This Twitter thread goes into detail about how Fathom works.
Fathom is absolutely useless and horrible. I won't go to any of their events--I've been burned too many times. I wish TCM would ditch them for their Big Screen Classics series. As you say, it's the only way people outside of LA and NY get to experience classic films. I heard they showed It's a Wonderful Life and Wizard of Oz cropped for 1.85. Disgusting and inexcusable.

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Re: John Carpenter

#35 Post by pistolwink » Wed Jun 22, 2022 12:54 pm

I know you were probably being deliberately hyperbolic, but there are revival theaters and theaters that show revivals (other than this Fathom business) in plenty of American cities other than NY and LA! Practically in every major city (and many minor ones).

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Re: John Carpenter

#36 Post by dadaistnun » Wed Jun 22, 2022 2:03 pm

Is there anyway to know whether a fathom screening is DCP or not? I'm wondering specifically about the Ghibli titles. The only one my kids have been able to see projected is Totoro (on 35mm!) and I'd love for them to be able to see the others on the big screen.

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Re: John Carpenter

#37 Post by cdnchris » Wed Jun 22, 2022 2:21 pm

I'm pretty sure all Fathom events are "streamed" in. I went to one for Citizen Kane and I might as well have watched it on something like Netflix.

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Re: John Carpenter

#38 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Wed Jun 22, 2022 3:26 pm

They do DCPs, it's just a minority of their screenings (and some films that screen on DCP might be streamed on a subsequent showing). There's a thread on The Other Forum where people discuss which presentations are DCP and which are streamed. They've sent out 4K DCPs of The Thing in the correct AR that will be used instead of the satellite feed.

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Re: John Carpenter

#39 Post by Maltic » Wed Jun 22, 2022 4:41 pm

Roger Ryan wrote:
Tue Jun 21, 2022 8:27 am

Admittedly, I haven't spent a whole lot of time seeking out reviews or comments, but what supposedly caused the "extreme vitriol" reaction to this film in the past? I saw it opening weekend in 1982 and found it a fun update on the original with terrific practical effects. I got the impression audiences at the time felt more or less the same. While it was still very much a Carpenter film (meaning a certain B-movie looseness), it was clearly an improvement on the 1951 film (being able to realize the original short story's concept of a shape-shifting alien made all the difference).

I'm not sure how much reverence Carpenter's The Thing should be held in these days, but it's only other real competition is Cronenberg's The Fly (1986) intaking a 50s sci-fi staple and making something much more worthwhile out of it. I'd consider including Kaufman's excellent remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) in the same category if Siegel's original wasn't so good (right now, I'd place both versions as being about equal).
Image

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Re: John Carpenter

#40 Post by Big Ben » Wed Jun 22, 2022 7:24 pm

Roger Ryan wrote:
Tue Jun 21, 2022 8:27 am
Admittedly, I haven't spent a whole lot of time seeking out reviews or comments, but what supposedly caused the "extreme vitriol" reaction to this film in the past? I saw it opening weekend in 1982 and found it a fun update on the original with terrific practical effects. I got the impression audiences at the time felt more or less the same. While it was still very much a Carpenter film (meaning a certain B-movie looseness), it was clearly an improvement on the 1951 film (being able to realize the original short story's concept of a shape-shifting alien made all the difference).

I'm not sure how much reverence Carpenter's The Thing should be held in these days, but it's only other real competition is Cronenberg's The Fly (1986) in taking a 50s sci-fi staple and making something much more worthwhile out of it. I'd consider including Kaufman's excellent remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) in the same category if Siegel's original wasn't so good (right now, I'd place both versions as being about equal).
I am under the impression that the practical effects were seen as too graphic for the time and were sticking point for some people. To quote my old man. "It's nihilistic and grotesque!" The film's Wikipedia page goes more in depth on all of this. I love The Thing and I certainly believe that Carpenter has made lesser films but he took the initial failure of The Thing even harder than films like Ghosts of Mars.
John Carpenter wrote:I take every failure hard. The one I took the hardest was The Thing. My career would have been different if that had been a big hit ... The movie was hated. Even by science-fiction fans. They thought that I had betrayed some kind of trust, and the piling on was insane. Even the original movie's director, Christian Nyby, was dissing me.

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Re: John Carpenter

#41 Post by knives » Wed Jun 22, 2022 8:18 pm

He’s since called down a bit. I remember the Bog Trouble commentary mentioning as a joke how people desired an ET at the time and not horror. Star Man was apparently made at least in part in reaction from the same commentary.

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Re: John Carpenter

#42 Post by Roger Ryan » Thu Jun 23, 2022 8:48 am

I guess I wasn't paying much attention to the national reviews at the time, but while I can see the point of some of the complaints about Carpenter's and screenwriter Bill Lancaster's handling of the characterization, finding fault with the effects because they're too vivid or grotesque feels like the critics were not viewing the film in the proper context. 1982 was an excellent year for science fiction and horror, but comparing Carpenter's The Thing with E.T., Poltergeist, or Blade Runner seems as fruitless as comparing Annihilation with Avengers: Infinity War (both 2018 releases). Carpenter's film was, and is, an R-rated horror film with science-fiction trappings and it successfully delivered those gory shocks. If one considers it to be nihilistic, then that tone is a holdover from the 70s when feel-bad films with downbeat endings seemed to be released every other month.

And, yes, my previous post was probably too dismissive of the Hawks/Nyby original. I revisited the 1951 film just a few weeks ago and still struggled with, what I perceive, as a lack of tension in the pacing. There are some great moments (such as the shocking appearance of the alien behind the door), but I feel the overall film isn't taking full advantage of its scenario. It's better to say that Carpenter's film along with Cronenberg's version of The Fly (and Kaufman's Body Snatchers) are among the very few remakes that successfully expand on the original premise to become their own unique films.
Last edited by Roger Ryan on Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: John Carpenter

#43 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:41 am

It's not one of my favorites, but I've always enjoyed Carpenter's The Thing. I was surprised by the reports that it do so poorly because it's as well-made as anything he's done, and virtually everyone I know who has seen it really liked it. I do like the Nyby/Hawks film too, but I never thought of pitting one against the other in some sort of competitive fashion. I just think it was funny how Carpenter was made out to be the next Howard Hawks and then he does a film that in spirit feels like the opposite of Hawks, though he was simply being more faithful to the original source material rather than Nyby and Hawks's film adaptation, was he not? I want to say I enjoy the experience of watching the older film more, but it's Carpenter's film that leaves a stronger and more unnerving impression.

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Re: John Carpenter

#44 Post by Maltic » Thu Jun 23, 2022 3:56 pm

As many have noted, it's funny Carpenter's one actual Hawks remake is one of his least Hawksian films.

To pit the 1950s films against the remakes:

The Fly - Cronenberg, definitely
Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Siegel, marginally
The Thing - Nyby, marginally, though I haven't seen the Carpenter film in years
War of the Worlds - parity

So you see it's all even between the 50s and the modern era

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Re: John Carpenter

#45 Post by black&huge » Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:06 pm

The Thing imo has the best creature design and effects of all time. If anyone thinks otherwise please post other films as I am really trying to think if anything comes close to it and let's not sat Jurassic Park, please.

That being said didn't Rob Bottin do most of the work himself from making the props to doing the actual animatronics? I seem to remember it was absolutely insane and exhausting the work he put into it possibly more than anyone else in the production

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Re: John Carpenter

#46 Post by swo17 » Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:31 pm

I give The Thing the edge but Society and American Werewolf in London are also up there

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Re: John Carpenter

#47 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jun 23, 2022 4:44 pm

Regardless of the merits of the film, American Werewolf’s practical effects are the ne plus ultra of this kind of thing

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Re: John Carpenter

#48 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Jun 23, 2022 7:14 pm

Although arguably you could not have had American Werewolf In London without the groundwork laid down by Bottin's work in the transformation sequence in The Howling.

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Re: John Carpenter

#49 Post by Monterey Jack » Thu Jun 23, 2022 9:10 pm

One of the very few effusively positive reviews of The Thing in the summer of '82 was Owen Glieberman's write-up in The Boston Phoenix.

https://archive.org/details/sim_boston- ... ew=theater

Most critics HATED it at the time, probably because it was A.) a remake of a 50's film many view as a classic (count me in), B.) utilized a lot of disgusting gore, at a time when mainstream critics were coming down hard on the "slasher" cinema of the era (as Leonard Maltin groused, "Nonstop parade of slimy, repulsive special effects turn this into a freakshow and drown out most of the suspense"), and C.) being released so soon on the heels of Steven Spielberg's far more friendly alien invader, E.T.. It wasn't until it hit the aftermarket of cable broadcasts and VHS rentals that it slowly became the cult classic it's now viewed as.

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Re: John Carpenter

#50 Post by Maltic » Fri Jun 24, 2022 7:57 am

B) is undoubtedly true. What's weird is, the Fangoria crowd seem to have disliked it too.

Incredibly, 1982 was also the summer of Poltergeist, TRON, Blade Runner, Rocky III, The Wrath of Khan, Friday the 13th pt III, Mad Max 2, The Secret of Nimh, Conan the Barbarian, Firefox, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

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