John Carpenter’s original Halloween film splattered screens forty years ago, and I just got out of a preview screening for the new film with the same name.

Carpenter’s original found the him co-writing the script, directing the picture, and writing and performing its iconic synthesizer score. In 1978, Halloween seemed wholly original with its fighting female heroine played by Jamie Lee Curtis in a now-classic performance, its music, the look of the masked maniac Michael Myers, and especially Carpenter’s use of handheld camera and point of view shots that put the audience in the killer’s shoes and established a new genre of horror cinema: the slasher film.

Carpenter is on music duty in this new film, but it’s helmed by David Gordon Green. Green is best known for comedies and character-driven dramas and he brings lots of unexpected – but welcome – laughs here along with the kind of intricate character building that most horror films won’t take the time for. This new Halloween film takes place here and now, exactly 40 years after the events of the first movie. Curtis and other actors from the original are back this time around, and this new chapter does a good job of revisiting the original Michael Meyers massacre while building the plot toward a showdown between Curtis’ Laurie Strode and the killer. The idea is that they’ve both spent the last four decades dwelling on their unfinished business, and when Meyers manages to get free of his confines at a mental institution the pair embark on a collision course.

This movie could be super dumb. Strode might have had some macho one liners to spew while she’s busy strutting around tough as nails. In short, she might have been written as a typical male action hero as a cypher for a “strong female lead.” This happens all the time in lesser movies and it’s probably one of the worst things about contemporary cinema. This film is better than that, and even though Curtis is armed to the teeth and full on gunning — literally — to take Myers out, I believed it because I also saw her slugging alcohol to calm her nerves and coming unhinged at a family outing. She’s paranoid, and damaged, and maybe even kind of dangerous to be around, but she’s also relentlessly driven to fight her monster and finish him.

Halloween can’t be a groundbreaking classic this time around, and its not. But it’s a super entertaining film that revives the chills of the original while also offering a worthy second chapter to Strode and Meyers’ saga. It also honors the feminist tones of the first film in a breathless, unhinged climax of murderous catharsis that feels strikingly in tune with these strange spooky times.

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So last week I posted about John Carpenter’s 70th birthday and his films like They Live and The Thing. Carpenter’s Halloween isn’t 70, but the film is celebrating its 40th birthday and the slash-terpiece will get re-booted by David Fincher this October. Despite sequels/prequels and remakes/reimaginings, nobody has been able to rekindle the magic of Carpenter’s original which is the keystone of the slasher genre.

That said, Fincher is one of my favorite contemporary directors, and he might be the other director that’s currently challenging Paul Thomas Anderson for the title of best American director of the 21st century. By my score, Anderson’s films — especially There Will Be Blood &mash; make him the best of his generation. That said, Fincher’s Zodiac is intense cinema, Fight Club is a movie pop classic alongside Pulp Fiction, and I still can’t believe that I love a movie about Facebook.

But, here’s the thing: David Fincher isn’t directing the new film, David Gordon Green is. I just wanted to imagine if Fincher did so I could write a bit about him and PTA. David Gordon Green isn’t in the running for best director of the 20th century, but he’s proved to be a real actor’s director working with Nicolas Cage, Al Pacino, Michael Shannon, Zooey Deschanel and James Franco. Green’s made lots of small, intense dramas, but he’s also done comedies and I could actually see all those experiences and the director’s facility with capturing strong performances serving his Halloween very, scary well.

We’ll have to wait until October to find out. Here’s a deep-dive documentary into Halloween…

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Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935. Here’s Kurt Russell as The King in John Carpenter’s 1979 made-for-TV-movie, Elvis. As I remember, this is the end of the opening scene, before we flashback to Elvis’ childhood in Mississippi. Celebrate the birth of rock ‘n’ roll by watching TV Elvis shoot a hotel television…

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On Halloween night I was watching the original Halloween film — John Carpenter’s first masterpiece pioneered the slasher genre, provided us with an unforgettable score, and introduced the world to Jamie Lee Curtis. The flick is a classic of course even if it’s still controversial in some circles.

Given the season I’m assuming that interested readers might have already re-watched the film recently so I wanted to offer-up one last spooky surprise for October which also features a tough heroine who’s not afraid to kick ass. This is the first short film released by Oats Studios earlier this year. It’s directed by Neil Blomkamp and it stars Sigourney Weaver as — what else — an alien killer. Here’s the word on the first chapter of Rakka…

The Earth will be attacked by technologically far superior and highly aggressive reptilian aliens in the near future. Humanity is nearing extinction. Millions are dead or enslaved. The extraterrestrials transform the earth in favor of its living conditions. They burn down forests, destroy cities and build huge megastructures that are slowly terraforming the Earth, pumping out methane and making it harder and harder to breathe and flooding cities close to the oceans.

The story begins in 2020, from the point of view of a resistance based out of Texas – US Army and others who have banded together. The survivors live mostly in the underground or scattered among ruins, and have just enough provisions, weapons and ammunition to continue fighting, using whatever they can against the aliens’ technology – primarily some kind of nanite omnipresent in all their weaponry, as well as the aliens’ trump card, a “hack” of sorts that forces anyone who looks into their eyes under telepathic control.

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Just opened up YouTube wondering out loud what kind of spooky, Halloween horror I should post for today’s blog before I saw the very first recommended video. Here’s the making of John Carpenter’s The Thing…

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I’m back on my October horror kick today with this great panel discussion about the history of scary cinema with three of my favorite auteurs of the awful: John Landis, John Carpenter, and David Cronenberg. Landis is the director of the best werewolf film of all time, American Werewolf in London. Carpenter’s Halloween is the cornerstone of the slasher genre, and Cronenberg’s gory sexistentialism is in a category by itself — and it’s worth watching this video just to see the Canadian director’s insane glasses. Truly chilling. Here’s Fear on Film…

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After spending nearly a week lounging in the Gulf of Mexico I spent Sunday afternoon lounging on the rocks in the water at Dale Hollow reservoir. All this warm weather resting has reminded me what a sun worshiper I’ve always been — I think most summer babies are. I brought two songs back from the trip and I’m hoping to get my demo situation figured out soon. I recently moved out of an apartment where I had a studio space and I’m sort of in-between recording wise. It’s actually a great time to check out what other people have happening in their recording spaces so if you have a set-up and you’re itching to cut something be in touch.

In the meantime I came across a fun article about John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 the other day. The movie is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and this piece at the A.V. Club is the latest chapter in Tom Breihan’s must-read “A History of Violence” horror movie project…

A scraggly group of ordinary people are thrown into a room and forced to work together. Outside that room, bloodthirsty forces are massing, looking for any opportunity to break in and kill whoever’s inside. The people in the room might not know each other and might not like each other. They might disagree over whether to hole up in the room or to make a break for it. They absolutely will not all survive. But if they’re brave and inventive and quick thinking enough, a few of them might live to see the morning.

That’s a classic movie setup, especially for low-budget films, situations where the producers can only afford one set or location. It extends outside the world of action movies; the original Dawn Of The Dead might be the best siege movie ever made. And the scenario still works now; the new punks-fighting-skinheads indie thriller Green Room is easily the best new movie I’ve seen in 2016. For a lot of these movies, there’s a clear model at work: John Carpenter’s 1976 film Assault On Precinct 13, a low-budget landmark and the first great work from one of the best action-movie directors ever to do it.

Read the whole piece at the A.V. Club site and check out this great interview featuring Carpenter talking about that “first great work” on it’s 20th anniversary 20 years ago…

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I’m not a big horror movie fan, but that’s mainly because so many of the sub-genres and trends tend to be so limiting: shocking for shock’s sake, gore for gore’s sake. I also think its because I was spoiled as a Generation X kid who grew up during horror’s most recent golden age when directors like Sam Raimi, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg and John Landis were regularly unleashing masterful films that included hilarious gags, sizzling dialog, intelligent acting and groundbreaking concepts. Add to this list the director that probably hits that sweet spot between fun and scary more often than most — John Carpenter.

For this spooky October post I’m pointing at this interview in the Post Mortem series of chats with horrormeisters. Here, Carpenter discusses growing up in Bowling Green, Kentucky; going to film school; making his breakthrough movies like Assault on Precinct 13 and Halloween; television versus film; independent versus studio filmmaking; ambiguous endings; and the difference between shock and suspense.

Here’s the video…

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John Carpenter’s They Live (1988) doesn’t sound like a classic movie: A drifter wanders into Nowheresville USA — a Los Angeles neighborhood devastated by an economic recession. After witnessing some suspicious activity surrounding a strange church, the man discovers a box of special sunglasses which reveal that the reality he’s come to take for granted is anything but what is seems. Add a starring role for professional wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and one would assume They Live was potboiler sci-fi with a clever gimmick and a B-list “star.”

The problem with this assessment is that it forgets that this is a movie made by a man who practically created slasher films with Halloween and whose ability to infuse cliche-filled genres with deep, emotional and subversive content made him a legend.

They Live is a conspiracy-laden masterpiece of popcorn paranoia that manages to be as entertaining as it is startling. A class war battering ram of a movie, the flick makes the moneyed into monsters while elevating its blue collar lead to the status of a revolutionary hero.

No spoilers here. If you haven’t seen the flick, do! Whether you have or not, enjoy this take by Carpenter himself, talking about his inspirations for They Live in celebration of the film’s 25th birthday. The LA Times has the skinny:

Carpenter discussed his motivation in making “They Live,” a campy but subversive sci-fi flick that starred professional wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper as the film’s blue-collar hero Nada, who discovers an alien conspiracy to mind-control the people of Earth using invisible messages. Carpenter called “They Live” his most political film and said it was his response to consumerism and class disparity in the 1980s.

“By the end of the ’70s there was a backlash against everything in the ’60s, and that’s what the ’80s were, and Ronald Reagan became president, and Reagonomics came in,” Carpenter told the sold-out theater at the Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. “So a lot of the ideals that I grew up with were under assault, and something called a yuppie came into existence, and they just wanted money. And so by the late ’80s, I’d had enough, and I decided I had to make a statement, as stupid and banal as it is, but I made one, and that’s ‘They Live.’ … I just love that it was giving the finger to Reagan when nobody else would.”

Here’s the trailer:

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