A Brief Treatise On: John Carpenter

John Carpenter is a prolific and complicated filmmaker. He has undisputed classics and utter failures. In this post we're going to talk a little bit about both. For more words and some meta-words about John Carpenter, see Full-Size Baffle's post on the original Halloween, released in 1978.

I was a kid when In The Mouth of Madness came out 13 years ago. The commercials made it look like the coolest thing in the world. I'm very sorry to say I saw it. I'm very sorry to say I saw it this past spring. It reminded me of every shitty movie I watched on a Saturday afternoon on the USA Network (and as it turns out, a lot of these were directed by Carpenter too, which makes heaps of sense). Nostalgia ruined!

Hopefully the following video clip will entice you to view the rest of the post, where I talk about how John Carpenter used to be awesome -- capable of directing insane shit like this:


Compared to 1982's The Thing, In The Mouth of Madness isn't shit. Maybe it looked good on storyboards, but it is terrible. The Thing, on the other hand, probably looked incredible on storyboards and it is awesome. Did you already forget about the video you saw earlier in this post? Jesus Christ.



The type of insanity and horror that characterizes The Thing is paid homage to in the monster design seen in the classic game Resident Evil 4, and if the trailers are to be believed, Resident Evil 5, which is due out some time next year.

The type of insanity and horror that characterizes In The Mouth of Madness isn't actually entertaining outside of the director's mind and hasn't been relevant or popular since H.P. Lovecraft wrote the same fucking story over and over again back in 1930.

I conclude with the following videos to help explain the differences between 1980s Carpenter and 1990s Carpenter. In these clips, the audio soundtracks were made identical to remove any bias that might be created therein.

The Thing (1982):


In The Mouth of Madness (1995):


So, who has seen Ghosts of Mars?