John Carpenter has made many films. I have seen some of them. Of the ones I have seen, which ones would I recommend? I think my most whole-hearted recommendation would be for Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), which sees a small disparate group (a cop, a prison officer, some secretaries, and a death-row prisoner, all played brilliantly by relative unknowns) trapped in a decommissioned Los Angeles police station and besieged by a heavily armed gang of implacable homicidal hoodlums. I think it was inspired by both Night of the Living Dead and Westerns like Rio Bravo, while also reminding me of Zulu. It is engagingly relentless and features one of the greatest theme tunes ever (written and played by Carpenter himself).
The other Carpenter film I would most unreservedly recommend is Prince of Darkness (1987), in which ancient evil bubbles up on the streets of Los Angeles, partly in the form of Alice Cooper. It manages to evoke an air of terrible and unnameable dread. And it also features a great Carpenter soundtrack.
I'm more ambivalent about other Carpenter films I've seen: many of them have a good basic setup but are let down by failings in plot or other elements. The Thing (1982) is well-regarded by many and has a lot going for it, but it fails one of my horror constraints: for horror to work, the non-horror elements have to be credible, but in The Thing we have the credibility-straining setup of a purely scientific base in the Antarctic that seems to be awash with firearms. They Live (1988) has a great build-up but then runs out of plot ideas once we reach the point where the hero puts on the sunglasses and sees the world as it really is (I think this might be one reason why the film has this interminable and largely pointless fight scene between two guys arguing over whether one of them is going to put on the glasses or not: Carpenter had to fill up the film's length somehow and had no other ideas). Escape from New York and Escape from LA are enjoyable schlock but I'm not sure they're actually good in any real sense, particularly the latter. That might be all the ones I've seen, though I suspect Dark Star (not seen by me) is also worth your time.
Of the other John Carpenter films, what ones would you recommend? And am I wrong about the ones I have seen?
image source:
Spanish Assault on Precinct 13 poster (VHS Revival: "Racial Equality & Blood Brotherhood: John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13")
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