A John Carpenter Poll

Watched the Fog remake over the holidays, and it wasn't too terrible - it was less boring but also less scary. You need to be able to stretch out a bit to feel scared, so as noted the boring is necessary.

The Fog tries in a way to split the difference between an old-fashioned atmospheric ghost story and a King-style monsters vs. small town horror show, landing, predictably for Carpenter, much harder on the latter, with occasional longueurs that suggest rather than realize ghost story effects. I would love a version with an extra hour of gratuitous moody shots of foggy landscapes, creepily sustained slow builds, and a more traumatic ending.

I don't ever get scared by horror movies anymore, so "less scary" is a non-entity for judging. But, yes, it's especially not very scary.

also the original Fog is loaded up with great character actors!

maybe ILX likes it because we also secretly want to be DJs at that badass radio station on the water

The Fog was interesting I thought. Big Trouble in Little China only had remote charms for me

! Big Trouble is all charms! That's the best thing it has going for it! Then again, maybe you had to see it first at 13 or something.

I really can't understand watching Big Trouble in Little China and not just instantly loving it.

I first watched it as an adult and it took a few times to get really into it, love it now.

The comic series was surprisingly fun.

there have been multiple new comic series of BTiLC as of late btw
https://www.boom-studios.com/wordpress/series/bigtrouble/

I'm an enormous fan of BTiLC, so when the comic was announced I was very excited. I just remember picking up the first issue and it didn't really gel with me. I think it was that the artwork was too cartoony or something? Maybe I'll have to dig it out of storage and give it another try.

i can't really speak to the quality of them but there's been quite a few runs!

looking for a free way to watch The Fog remake so I can hate it

The artwork is very cartoony, but surely BTiLC is a very cartoony film?

The Snake Plisskin series they started at the same time was a snooze tho.

Big Trouble is a film that revels in physicality, I can see light 2D-styled drawing not connecting with someone trying to evoke the film in their reading (the text on that page said Eric Powell, but the image clearly wasn't Powell).

fyi Boom is one of the most outrageously exploitative publishers in the field, reading their output from your municipal library is a better option if you have it.

That's a bummer - I've really been enjoying Something is Killing the Children. How outrageously exploitative are they?

They pay $35 a page for scripts, $100 a page for writing & drawing. Make t-shirts and merch of artists' work without compensation. Underpay invoices, pay months late, sometimes ghost artists altogether. Recruitment model is largely to give young artists their first jobs so it's easier to rip them off. "Some shady stuff in their contracts, and sometimes tries to secretly annul contracts by slipping extra clauses into the fine print of their payment vouchers," per one former worker.

(I assume Tynion is treated better, likewise John Allison - but I have also assumed that Allison stopped drawing Giant Days himself when it went to Boom bcz their rates weren't worth it.)

Ugh, that sucks. Thanks for the tip.

Watched Big Trouble in Little China, which I don't think I'd seen in maybe 25 years. So much fun and went way further than I remembered in terms of being utterly batshit. I think the wildman monster that kidnaps Gracie and leaves on Russell's truck at the end might be one of my favourite screen monsters of ever.

https://monsterlegacy.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/bigtroublewildmanyehe.jpg?w=768&h=508

Its a masterpiece

I saw that at the cinema when I was a kid. It's ok but I wouldn't go that far!

Give it another crack, its the biggest, funnest pisspull of a movie, great performances and effects

I will do cos I just re-watched The Fog recently and that was fun.

RLM did a three-parter on Carpenter films: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSuKs44w_vI

Big Trouble in Little China was imo a better 'best' John Carpenter film than The Thing

Halloween was the best, though

Blank Check is doing Carpenter too. Quality varies according to guests but it's pretty joyful and man, what a streak that guy had.

I'm in a weird place because I love Carpenter a lot but am a giant coward when it comes to horror, can't really do anything more extreme than like 60's Hammer. So I don't think I'll ever watch Halloween but I'll admit The Fog and Prince Of Darkness have been calling out to me.

(I did see The Thing, it's great but that scene w/ the dogs means I'll probably never revisit)

The Fog has some jump scares and overall quite chilling, I love it.

Prince of Darkness I haven't seen for years so I'm struggling to recall the scares, unless you count seeing Alice Cooper in yer back yard, still a great film though.

Big Trouble in Little China is very not-my-speed Carpenter.

daniel you may have been inured to halloween's scariness by forty years of slasher movie cliches. or maybe not! movie is far scarier to me now than it was when i first saw it in college

prince of darkness has three scenes that are scarier than anything in the carpenter filmography tho, fair warning

I revisited The Fog over the weekend. It's cozy, not too scary, and a bit slow. Was very distracted by Jamie Lee Curtis's character hooking up with Tom Atkins' character and then just being like "I'm going to follow you around like a puppy for the rest of this movie even though I'm a young free-spirited hitch-hiker and you're a middle-aged man and everything in your life seems to be falling dangerously apart at this precise moment..."

movie is far scarier to me now than it was when i first saw it in college

This is very true and I'm somehow surprised each time I watch it. Not a drop of '80s slasher laziness/crassness in it.

STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson) at 9:22 20 Oct 21
prince of darkness has three scenes that are scarier than anything in the carpenter filmography tho, fair warning

if tom atkins appeared in my life i would do the same thing xxp

He also hooks up with a much younger woman in Halloween III! I guess I just don't understand the Atkins effect.

the stache... the rugged masculinity... the alcoholism... swoon

not as dreamy as Nancy Loomis/Kyes

Prince of Darkness is in some ways the flipside of Big Trouble, a movie that doesn't really make a lick of sense, but this time played for mood and menace over adventure and comedy. In Big Trouble, Jack Burton is the guy that just can't process what's happening around him but barrels forward anyway, which is funny. In Prince of Darkness, it's scientists recognizing they're dealing with something over their heads, and it scares them.

Anyway, I love "The Fog," one of the few movie ghosts stories made like someone telling a ghost story (in this case, literally). And if there's something good that came out of the relatively pointless RLM three-parter it's a) recognizing how often Carpenter essentially made a zombie movie with no zombies b) how often he made a western with no horses and c) just how diverse his catalog actually is.

Blank Check is doing Carpenter too.

https://ultimateactionmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/They-Live-Roddy-Piper-Glasses.jpg

thing about Prince Of Darkness is the idea of Donald Pleasance and Victor Wong having long, cryptic dialogues slowly proving both scientifically and spiritually that we live in a fallen world sounds tailor made for me but I think that what happens when shit finally does start to go down towards the end will be too rich for my taste

Blank Check ep on They Live went into a tangent about how young kids on YouTube now put fake "sponsored content" in their videos - not as satire, they just do their best imitation of an ad read because having a sponsor is a sign of success and they're on a fake it till you make it kick

When my kids were younger and used to do goofy fake unboxings and stuff, they would always throw in a compulsory "be sure to click like and subscribe!"

I'd never seen a single Carpenter film until about a year ago, but now I've seen Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and They Live. Most of those have been because I've been remote-watching movies with friends on Friday nights, and we've gravitated toward '70s-'90s genre classics, but I also watched Halloween for the first time specifically because I wanted to listen to the Blank Check episode about it.

They Live was not good like i was led to believe it was in fact bad, very bad- ambitious and endearing but bad

this guy wore some kind of reverse sunglasses while watching it

Wow classy move making it personal

*Raises fists*

Halloween has become my new favorite upon rewatching. So economical, nothing wasted, incredibly tense. SO scary. The sound of him breathing through the mask & first person POV still messes w me even now.

The Thing is still & will always be incredible and stands outside any list or ranking as my ideal perfect movie

Big Trouble is great & so enjoyable even in its silliest, weirdest moments

I saw Prince of Darkness once 10 years ago and was furious that it was so stupid and boring. Blank check made me want to revisit so it may be a “Halloween movie night” watch this year.

They Live is cool! Rowdy Roddy Piper & Keith David rule always but the main woman always weirds me out with her scary blue eyes, and it definitely plays a lot slower than i remember. The alien robot skeletons are creepy af, i love them. it’s cool 🕶

The only upcoming ones I haven’t seen are Memoirs of Invisible Man and The Ward, and its been a long time since I’ve seen all the others in between, most of which were bummers for me at the time. But I love the guy! How can you not.

The secret formula of They Live is that it is simultaneously very bad and very good. Carpenter knew what he was doing. I mean he put Rowdy Roddy Piper in the lead, for the love of pete.

apparently the Blank Check podcast is more popular than i assumed