Review of John Carpenter Live at the Troxy, London – 31st October 2016

I’m a huge John Carpenter fan. I’ve got a books, CDs, posters and DVD collection of every film he’s ever been involved with from Dark Star to The Ward with everything – and I mean everything – he’s even tangentially been involved in (Vampires: Los Muertos (urgh), Black Moon Rising (okay), El Diablo (still need to see)). 

I was a little hesitant when it was announced a few years back that Carpenter was going to release new music but thankfully when I got round to listening to them I thought Lost Themes 1 & 2 were both very good synth albums whose only problem was that there wasn't a kickass movie to accompany them and firmly place the songs in your brain.

When I found out he was touring to the UK playing the themes from his films and recent albums Lost Themes 1 & 2, I knew I had to get tickets. After all, he was playing on October 31^st and what better way to spend Halloween than listening to the director of Halloween playing the theme from Halloween. With it being Oct 31^st the venue suggested fancy dress so I decided to go as a combination of three Kurt Russell characters – Jack Burton, Snake Plissken and RJ Macready (see photo – I’m on the right).

The venue was the Troxy in London – a large old fashioned theatre with a seated upper circle and standing room on the ground floor. Me and my friend Mitch got there around 8 but still managed to get comfortably close to the front. There were a few good cosplay entries from people that put in more time and effort than me – a few Jack Burtons (easy – just need the vest), a couple of Michael Myers, a handful of Snake Plisskens, and some guys wearing full on They Live masks (true dedication given the hot and sweaty atmosphere in the venue).

Around 8.30 the band came on. John dressed completely black, thick framed glasses, his long white hair tied back in a ponytail. He seemed in very high spirits, bopping over to his keyboard in the centre of the stage. Throughout the show he'd continue bopping along in the same 'don't give a shit' attitude of his anti-authoritian characters. As to be expected he was a man of few words, never saying more than a one brief sentence to introduce each song, but he seemed very comfortable and happy to be on stage. 

The band consisted of 3 guitarists, 1 drummer, John on keyboard and his son Cody on dual keyboard to the side. They kicked off with the theme from Escape from New York which I loved – it’s my favourite track he’s ever done – but I was a bit disappointed that he’d began with his high point rather than built up to it. Still the rest of the concert was good and the band flitted back and forth between film themes and Lost Themes.

The backdrop to the stage was a huge white screen which projected clips from the films he was playing. It was a good idea and the crowd lapped it up. There were whoops and hollers when certain people and scenes showed up. The first shot of Kurt Russell as Snake got a cheer which was to be expected but so did the first shot of Adrienne Barbeau in The Fog which I thought was a little odd but nice. The whole band put on sunglasses for the theme to They Live which was a fun touch and got a laugh from the audience.

Obviously with Carpenter being accompanied by a full rock band the movie themes were a little rockier and edgier than the original versions but I was happy with their fidelity.

The only thing I wished he had played but didn't was the song 'Big Trouble in Little China' – that would have brought the house down – but I guess he considers it a Coup De Villes song maybe. It seemed a much more obvious choice for an encore than Christine.

The tracks from Lost Themes slotted in fairly well. Unfortunately they didn’t have any clips to play for them which slightly diminished the theatricality when they played them (could they not have used clips from the music videos they did?). I think 'Night' was the only one that struggled to work because it’s such a minimalist song and basically the band sat back while lead guitarist Daniel Davies had to solo the whole song. 4 minutes is an awful long time for anyone (other than Pete Townshend) to do a guitar solo. 

Still all in all, it was a great show and I’m glad I went. If nothing else I'll never forget looking over the crowd when 'Halloween' was playing and seeing Michael Myers nodding along to it. It was like a surreal meta moment worthy of In the Mouth of Madness. I have a feeling Carpenter may have found a second career and I’m willing to bet he’ll come round again when Lost Themes III comes out.

Set list:
1. Escape From New York: Main Title
2. Assault on Precinct 13: Main Title
3. Vortex (from Lost Themes)
4. Mystery (from Lost Themes)
5. The Fog: Main Title Theme
6. They Live: Coming to L.A.
7. The Thing: Main Theme – Desolation (Ennio Morricone cover)
8. Distant Dream (from Lost Themes II)
9. Big Trouble in Little China: Pork Chop Express
10. Wraith (from Lost Themes)
11. Night (from Lost Themes)
12. Halloween Theme – Main Title
13. In the Mouth of Madness: In the Mouth of Madness
Encore:
14. Prince of Darkness: Darkness Begins
15. Virtual Survivor (from Lost Themes II)
16. Purgatory (from Lost Themes)
17. Christine: Christine Attacks (Plymouth Fury)

John Carpenter's TV work: Elvis (1979)

I'll openly admit I'm not really a fan of movie biopics. I find most of them over-romanticise and over-simplify their subjects. There's no way you can condense a person's life into 120 minutes and still tell a coherent and meaningful story so why bother trying? Real-life just isn't the same as fiction. It's messy and disjointed. The best biopics I've seen are probably Steven Soderbergh's two-part Che films which took the novel idea of just presenting two contrasting revolutions that Che Guevara participated in. Two small time periods rather than a whole life. I'll also admit that I've never been a fan of Elvis as a musician (however I do appreciate the enormous impact he had on rock n roll). So sitting down to watch Elvis I wasn't sure I was going to like it but it did have two things going for it. My favourite director John Carpenter behind the camera and Kurt Russell in front of the camera.

The film begins with Kurt Russell playing a 34 year old Elvis sitting in a Las Vegas hotel room watching the news. He's just about to go on stage for a comeback gig and the news anchor on TV is questioning whether Elvis is still relevant. In frustration Elvis shoots the TV with a gun and then asks his bodyguards to leave him alone for a while. He sits in the dark and reminisces about his life up to that point. Beginning as a bullied boy in Mississippi, living in a log cabin. Then following him through life as a shy high schooler, an aspiring singer, an international sensation, a GI, and finally as a rich but melancholic millionaire. The film focuses particularly on his strong relationship with his mother Gladys (Shelley Winters) and his infatuation with Priscilla Beaulieu (Season Hubley) who he later married.

Despite my concerns about biopics I did enjoy Elvis. I think that it was mostly down to Russell's spot on performance. Elvis Presley is a tricky character to play because he was very much a larger than life figure himself - full of eccentric ticks and quirks. It would be very easy for a lesser actor to slip into parody but Russell never lets that happen. He's always in control of 'The King's' voice and mannerisms. Visually he's a dead ringer too. This was his first major adult acting role after doing a bunch films as a kid with Disney such as The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and Now You See Him, Now You Don't. Carpenter was taking a big risk casting him but it worked out great. I think it probably helped that Russell's own father Bing plays the role of Elvis' father Vernon. They had a naturally rapport with each other.

The production values are pretty high for a TV movie and period detail is great. It feels very authentic and credible. The film was obviously authorised by the Elvis estate so don't expect the film to have any controversial elements to it. It's U rated through and through even when it coasts near controversy such as Elvis falling in love with Priscilla when she's just 14. I think it was a mistake to try and cram so much of Elvis' life into the film. Even watching the 180 minute "uncut" version it's quite disjointed in places. There's very little set-up as to where the characters are and what's going on when the film jumps forward a few years (as it does many times). But I guess this is better than having character talk about what's going on otherwise there's be no time to get to know them as people. I feel Elvis was really made for die-hard fans who already knew most of his life story. Newcomers like me might get a little lost now and then.

I will say if you've seen Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story it might be a struggle to take Elvis seriously. There's a lot of ideas that Jake Kasdan's pitch-perfect parody stole from this flick. Not least, the opening scenes of a wooden child actor awkwardly segwaying into Russell trying to pass himself off as a 16 year old high schooler. Like I said earlier, the problem with biopics is that they have to force a character arc or thematic resonances on to real people's lives. This film tries to do this a little bit with Elvis talking occasionally to his shadow pretending it's his dead twin brother Jesse but they didn't really go very far with the idea.

All in all, Elvis is a decent if overlong biopic and has a great performance from Russell. It's a decent portrayal of Elvis' life but there's no revelations really. There's little Carpenter touches here and there (and an early cameo if you can spot it) but it's mostly an anonymous work. Carpenter obviously has a lot of affection for 'The King' Just check out Carpenter's own music (somewhat Elvis sounding) from his little known album 'Waiting out the Eighties' by The Coup DeVilles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnE2DfKbqGU

And, as a bonus, check out a young Kurt Russell kicking Elvis Presley in It Happened at the World's Fair http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhD5IhVYSxQ

GRADE: B+

John Carpenter's TV work: Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns (2005)/Pro-Life (2006)

Masters of Horror was an anthology series that aired for two seasons on Showtime from 2005 to 2007. It was created by Mick Garris, a horror director who had worked on a number of Stephen King TV movies, and the idea behind it was that each episode would be directed by a famous horror director and they would have carte blanche to do wanted story they wanted no matter how graphic or twisted. Some were original stories while other were adaptations of classic writers like HP Lovecraft and Richard Matheson. In a lot of ways it was a great idea because a lot of the famous horror directors of the 80s and 90s were struggling to get work on theatrical films at the time. A few of them like John McNaughton and Ernest Dickerson had already moved over into directing television shows anyway and horror cinema, at the time, was dominated by the Saw series and foreign imports. 

John Carpenter's episode Cigarette Burns appeared midway through the first season and was heralded by most critics as one of the best of the series. The episode sees Norman Reedus (The Boondock Saints, The Walking Dead) play Kirby, the young owner of a struggling independent cinema. Due to his financial situation he takes on a job from a mysterious businessman, Mr Bellinger (Udo Kier), to track down a copy of a seemingly "lost" film, La Fin Absolue du Monde (French for The Absolute End of the World) that was only shown one time thirty years ago. So he flies around the world interviewing various people who were at the original screening and finds that almost everyone that saw it either died or went mad. Throughout his journey he suffers blackouts which are signaled to audience by a "cigarette burn" appearing on screen just before it happens. What was on the film? And who is the albino man with scars on his back who is locked up in Bellinger's house? All will be revealed.

In a lot of ways this film felt quite similar to Carpenter's 1994 film In the Mouth of Madness. Both had protagonists who were tasked on tracking something down and both were playful commentaries on the obsession of watching films and telling stories. I've got to say, despite the similarities, I didn't really enjoy this much but I think that's mostly down to the script rather than the directing or acting. The set-up is great but I was expecting the 'search' for the film would be really complicated but essentially it's very easy. At the end of the episode Kirby is more or less given the film by the director's widow. Secondly, I thought the story felt way too similar to The Dumas Club, a book by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (which was filmed in 1999 as The Ninth Gate) about a man who is tasked with tracking down a rare demonic book.

The tone of the episode was a bit all over the place too. It wasn't scary enough to give you chills and it wasn't campy enough to be enjoyable. It fell somewhere in the middle. The actual shots of La Fin Absolue du Monde are only shown in a little snippets but they mostly look like something out of cheesy 90s Nine Inch Nails music video. I think Carpenter should have stuck to his guns and not shown any of the film so that it could retain its mystique. There's a great film that just came out called Berberian Sound Studio that's all about how much more important sound is to horror films than the visuals. Still Carpenter did manage to give me at least one mental image that I'll never forget - that of a man feeding his own intestines into a projector - that was some twisted and crazy stuff. 

GRADE: B-

Pro-Life (Carpenter's contribution for the second season), by contrast, was almost universally hated at the time but I actually quite liked it. The episode sees Caitlin Wachs play Angelique, a young women who visits an abortion clinic to end her pregnancy. She claims the baby is a product of a demonic rape however, just as the doctors start their procedure, her redneck father Dwayne (Ron Perlman) shows up with her brothers intent on making sure the baby survives. Even if it means killing most of the staff in horrific ways.

The script was written by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan (who also wrote Cigarette Burns) and it has a lot of parallels with a couple of Carpenter's earlier works. In the first half you've got the siege atmosphere of Assault on Precinct 13 and Prince of Darkness and then in the second half, when the baby is born, you get the gory horror of The Thing. The only problem with doing this is that it keeps reminding you of better stuff that Carpenter has done. As much as I liked the episode the writing was sloppy and the dialogue pretty hokey. The only actors who give decent performances are Perlman and Wachs. The rest of the cast was very weak.

I think the main thing I liked about episode was the first half. The build-up was pretty riveting for the first half hour but once the 'father' of Angelique's child shows up the whole episode descends into a mess of poorly shot effects work. I'm talking guys in rubber suits and CGI babies. It really killed the atmosphere. I guess this was mostly down to the fact it was a TV show so they didn't have the time or budget to nail the effects. Still that first half hour was, for me, much better than the whole of Cigarette Burns. 

I think overall Masters of Horror was an interesting foray for John Carpenter but neither episode can be described as an overwhelming success. I think after Ghosts of Mars Carpenter was really burnt out on film-making and having watched these two episodes you get the sense that he could still show up in body but not in spirit.

GRADE: C+

John Carpenter's TV work: Body Bags (1993)

After the commercial and critical flop of Memoirs of An Invisible Man in 1992 (see The Flops of Chevy Chase) John Carpenter signed a deal with US TV network Showtime to produce a horror anthology series. It was quite a cynical idea on the part of Showtime and they were clearly hoping to replicate (and maybe even overtake) the success that, rival network, HBO were having with their show "Tales from the Crypt". So Carpenter set out and directed the first two episodes and roped in Tobe Hooper (Texas Chain Saw Massacre) to direct the third. However during shooting Showtime got cold feet about committing to a full series and put the show into turn around before any episodes had aired. The decision was made to salvage the footage by editing them into one 90 TV movie called Body Bags.

So the first installment is called 'The Gas Station' which tells the story of Anne (Alex Datcher), a college student who takes a job as a night shift cashier at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Locked in her glass booth she thinks she's safe but as the night drags on things get creepy and customer start turning up dead. The second episode is called 'Hair' which sees Stacy Keach play a businessman who is obsessively worried about his receding hair line. He goes to see a doctor (played by David Warner) who offers him a new and experimental treatment which at first seems like a success but soon becomes deadly! And the final segment is called 'Eye' which sees Mark Hamill play a baseball player who is injured in a car accident and has to have an eye transplant. Not long after he starts getting murderous urges and is forced to look into who the eye originally belonged to. Each segment is bookended by an appearance by John Carpenter who plays a ghoulish morgue attendant who enjoys cutting up dead bodies.

Any anthology movie is tough to review because you're always going to get varying quality between all the segments. Even the best examples of the genre like Creepshow have weak parts. It certainly doesn't help that Body Bags also falls in between being a TV show and a movie. As a TV show it's slightly above average but as a movie it's pretty cheap looking and not very satisfying. I'd probably say that the first installment - 'The Gas Station' - is the best of the bunch. I think what makes it work is that it's a simple story all told in one location and Carpenter throws in a ton of red herrings and misdirection to keep your interest held throughout. You know from the moment that a radio newscaster mentions an escaped mental patient is on the loose that one of the gas patrons is going to turn out to be him but you never know if it's going to be the obvious hobo-looking guy or the unassuming businessman.

 'Hair' isn't too bad but it suffers from the fact that it's played mostly for laughs. The only real horror comes in the last two minutes of the episode when Keach realises what exactly the hair treatment entails and even then it's pretty silly. Keach gives a really good performance though as the balding businessman. You really feel his frustration and impotence. 'Eye' is probably the least of the three. The problem is the story is really weak. It's obvious from the outset that Hamill's replacement eye is (spoiler) going to turn out to have been donated by a convicted murderer. So it's kinda of dull waiting 30 minutes for the lead character to come to this conclusion too. That said Hamill does do a good job when his character turns psycho. People forget he's actually a very versatile actor.

The real reason you should watch this is for Carpenter's segments inbetween each episode where he plays the morgue attendant. These are a really fun and playful. Carpenter's performance reminded me a lot of Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice. It's got that same live-wire atmosphere. The attendant is a really twisted guy and there's good 'reveal' about him at the very end of the film that I didn't see coming. Also, it's quite fun to catch all the famous cameos and in-jokes dotted around the episodes - Sam Raimi, Wes Craven, Twiggy, Debbie Harry, Tom Arnold all pop up in tiny roles. Another strong point is the gore used in the films. It's not frequent but when people do die it goes way over-the-top. In one bit a guy gets crushed by a car and rivers of blood come pouring out. It's insane!

Overall, Body Bags isn't a great TV movie but it's a fun way of wasting an hour and half. The major problem is that it's too focused on setting up a last minute twist to all its stories that it forgets to actually be scary. I'm glad Carpenter got back to doing theatrical films after this because TV (especially a 30 minute TV show) really doesn't suit his style. If you're going to track it down make sure you avoid the region 1 DVD from Artisan. They cut a lot of the gore which makes the film far less enjoyable. The VHS in the UK is completely uncut.

GRADE: B-

John Carpenter's TV work: Someone's Watching Me (1978)

As a fan of director John Carpenter it's frustrating how much he has slowed his output in recent years. He's only made two films in the last decade and seems in no hurry to make any more. As a result, in order to satiate my appetite, I've had to dig a little deeper into his back catalogue and catch up with his (semi-)forgotten TV movies. So over the next month I'm going to be doing reviews all his small screen work. First up is Someone's Watching Me, a TV movie that he wrote and directed in 1978, the same year that he made Halloween. Reportedly, he wrote the script for the cinema but ended up retooling it for TV when NBC offered to finance it. It was shot in 10 days just before he went into pre-production on Halloween. Like all Carpenter's films it has a pretty clever hook. It's more or less a reversal of the classic Hitchcock film Rear Window - so instead of having the protagonist spy on a killer, in this movie the killer is the one spying on the protagonist!

The plot revolves around the character of Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton), a young woman who has just moved to LA to work for a TV station. She buys an apartment in a high rise building and before long she starts getting weird phone calls, mysterious presents and bogus letters. She slowly deduces that someone in one of the adjacent high rise buildings is watching her every move through a telescope! But who is it and why are they targeting her? She goes to the police for help but they refuse to get involved so she decides to take matters into her own hands and enlists the help of her colleague Sophie and her boyfriend Paul. Together they discover that this Peeping Tom may be more deadly than he appears, he may in fact be a killer who uses his telescope to pick out lonely women to murder! Will they be able to stop him before he gets to Leigh?

Someone's Watching Me is actually a pretty good film all things considered. Carpenter definitely had to make some compromises converting it to a TV movie. For instance, although the film generates some decent suspenseful sequences it's obvious that Carpenter has had to leave quite a few spaces for the commercial breaks. As a result, the film seems to stop and start a lot. It's a shame because one of the great things about Halloween was how well he kept ratcheting up the tension throughout. The film also feels in a need of a little 'edge'. I don't know whether some gore would have 'improved' it per se but it would have probably made it feel a little tougher and more cinematic.

One of the best aspects of the movie is the main character Leigh. As a way of getting around the fact that she spends much of the film on her own, Carpenter makes her a quirky offbeat character who talks to herself a lot. This character trait sounds annoying on paper but actress Lauren Hutton really makes it work. She also does a great job of conveying the character's emotions, starting off carefree and naive before becoming increasingly paranoid and frightened. She's ably supported by Adrienne Barbeau who plays her work colleague Sophie. One of the film more unusual aspects is that Carpenter makes Sophie openly lesbian but then never develops it as a plot point which I thought was quite progressive thinking for a TV movie from the 70s.

The camera work is pretty good - again, taking into account how dull and dry most TV shows looked at the time. Despite the 4:3 framing you can still recognise that it's been made by Carpenter's hand. Like Halloween, he uses a fair bit of smooth steadicam work and several POV shots from the killer's perspective. In a lot of ways, this film feels like a sort of dry-run for Halloween. Both are obviously heavily indebted to the work of Dario Argento and Bob Clark's Black Christmas, but this film feels a bit more Hitchcock-esque with its red herrings and underlying tension. One thing is for sure Carpenter definitely rings the maximum potential out of the film's quite narrow scope; taking his time to set-up and then unravel the mystery.

Overall Someone's Watching Me is a very watchable thriller that stands head and shoulders over 99% TV movies. It's no Duel but it's a consummate piece of work that slots in very nicely to Carpenter's back catalogue. If you're a Carpenter completist like me you should definitely think about picking it up. For a long time it was really hard to get hold of but a few years ago Warner released under the banner of 'The Twisted Terror Collection' along with a few other unrelated horror films. You should be able to find it pretty cheap on Amazon or Ebay and it's also available on Netflix. Check it out.

GRADE: B+

The flops of Chevy Chase part 3: Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)

So here we are with the last look at where Chevy Chase’s career went off the rails and actually it’s probably the most interesting of the three films I’ve looked at. As well as being a rare semi-serious role for Chase it’s also directed John Carpenter, who had taken a long break from filmmaking after the commercial disappointments of Prince of Darkness and They Live. The film was very much a passion project for Chase, who had secured the rights to the book by H.F. Saint after it was published in 1987 and he clearly had a strong vision for the film.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man sees Chase play Nick Halloway, a stock analyst who gets caught in an explosion at a scientific research building that renders him completely invisible. CIA Agent David Jenkins (Sam Neill) is tasked with tracking him down with a view to turning him into the ultimate assassin. However Nick wants nothing to be left alone so he enlists the help of Alice Monroe (Daryl Hannah), a woman he was beginning a relationship with just prior to the accident, to help him escape to safety.

As I said this was very much Chase’s vanity project. The script was originally written much more as a comedy, with Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) set to direct but Chase insisted on it being a more serious film so he brought in John Carpenter, who had little enthusiasm but was happy to do it as a “work-for-hire”. After the film was released he explained he hadn’t titled it “John Carpenter’s” as he did his other movies because he knew Warner Brothers was more “in the business of making audience-friendly, non-challenging movies.” 

It’s a shame that Carpenter dismisses the film so much because there’s actually a lot to enjoy about it. Firstly, the special effects, though not spectacular, show a lot of creative thinking. The approach of having Chase mostly be seen by the audience but invisible to everyone else on screen is a very clever idea and adds to the comedy of situations. Seeing assault teams break into his apartment while he just walks past them is very entertaining. 

The film has some very clever ideas about the realities of being invisible. For instance Chase can’t see him own hands so he finds it hard to eat food. He also can’t eat otherwise people will just see the floating contents of his stomach. And there’s a fantastic bit where he needs to travel so he punches a drunk guy and gets him to flag down a taxi. Also, Sam Neill is highly entertaining as the bad guy. He brings some of the same menace he showed in Dead Calm to the role of Jenkins. It’s a shame he and Chase don’t get more scenes together because they make great adversaries. There’s a particularly tense scene where he traps Chase in his own office that shows the potential of what a more serious take on the subject matter could have achieved.

Despite it’s good points the film does have couple of faults. One of them is that the majority of it all is told in flashback with Chase narrating his adventures. I’ve got to say rarely like films that do this, it kind of kills the excitement and suspense. Also, as much as I enjoy the film I do recognise that it’s quite low-key. What the film really needed was someone like Steven Spielberg to bring out the sense of wonder and boost the film’s set pieces. But then again maybe what I like about the film is that it doesn't go down the traditional route. Chase doesn't go on an exciting globe trotting adventure. He just hides out in a friend's holiday home and eats junk food.

Carpenter’s direction is solid but it’s a shame his heart isn’t in it. There’s some nice homages to James Whales’ original The Invisible Man film from 1933. And he’s clearly enjoying aping Hitchcock’s thrillers such as North By Northwest and The 39 Steps. If I’m honest though I love both him and Chase they shouldn’t have been involved in the same project. Their sensibilities are too different. Doing this film was a mistake for Carpenter, he was already disillusioned by working for major studios after Big Trouble in Little China and he should have come back to Hollywood with a more personal project.

And so to Chase, the star. He perhaps wasn’t the right choice for the role but I still enjoy what he did with it. As you watch the film you can’t help but wonder if the film would have been better if it committed to either be a straight thriller or straight comedy. The mix of the two is uneven at times. I think audience’s expectations of Chase put them off the film when it was originally released. He’d spent the entire previous decade playing nothing but comedies and he’d pigeon-holed himself. No one wanted to see him in something that wasn’t a straight forward comedy.

He was trying to broaden his acting range but he’d left it too late. Chase should have stretched his wings and tried something like this earlier in his career rather than relying on comedies for the whole previous decade. Several other 80s comedy actors had a similar dilemma in the early 90s. Martin Short, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin. Of all of them only Bill Murray managed to break free and start a successful second career as a serio-comic actor (for which he mostly owes Wes Anderson).

Memoirs of an Invisible Man is a pretty fun flick that didn’t deserve to be such a flop. It earned only half it’s budget back and was really the last major film to be released by Chase. The following year he tried to start a chat show that was a huge ratings flop. And in 1994 he acted in Cops and Robbersons, a particularly poor comedy film by Michael Ritchie.

For the next decade and a half he had a very dry run. It was only when he was cast in the TV show Community in 2009 that he started to make something of a comeback. It remains to be seen where his career will go from here. Rumours are that he’ll likely come back for a reboot of the Vacation series which would be a nice way to cap his career I think.

Happy Birthday John Carpenter

I don't usually do posts about famous people's birthdays but firstly I haven't had chance to re-watch this week's film (Mute Witness) and secondly I'll take just about any excuse to wax lyrical about my favourite director.

He's 64 years old today – I know, he looks at least double that. Anyway, here's a few facts you may or may not know about John Carpenter.

- Everyone says all his films are westerns in disguise. In fact he did co-write a fairly straight-forward western – El Diablo – which was made into a HBO TV movie in 1990 starring Anthony Edwards and Lou Gossett Jr, directed by Peter Markel. The film sees Edwards play an school teacher who is forced to learn how to become a gunfighter in order to track down a cowboy who has kidnapped one of his pupils.

- It's a well known fact that John Carpenter has a band called The Coupe DeVilles who recorded the title track for Big Trouble in Little China. But they also recorded an album that was never commercially released called Waiting Out the Eighties. It's actually very good and recommended for anyone who's a fan of his scores. You can quite easily find it by searching on google.

- The Coupe DeVilles other members were Nick Castle (director of The Last Starfighter and Michael Myers in the original Halloween) and Tommy Lee Wallace (director of Halloween III and Fright Night Part II). They appear as the band in Nick Castle's The Boy Who Could Fly.

- The anthology TV Movie Body Bags he directed in 1993 was intended to be the first three episodes of a Tales From the Crypt-esque show. In it Carpenter's plays an undead mortician who introduces the stories in much the same manner as The Crypt-Keeper.

- Carpenter took on the job of directing Christine because the financial failure of The Thing had left him needing to take any gig that was offered (he did Starman for the same reasons). Also, at the time they started filming, the book hadn't been released or finished by Stephen King.

- The studio really didn't want Kurt Russell to play Snake Plissken in Escape From New York because at the time he was mostly associated with the Disney films like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. They were pushing Carpenter to choose Charles Bronson instead.

- Carpenter's musical skills are entirely self taught. To this day he cannot read music. For many of his films he collaborates with composer Alan Howarth.

- The original director of Memoirs of an Invisible Man was Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Twins). However the star, Chevy Chase, was looking to avoid doing comedies so asked for John Carpenter to come in and make it more dramatic. This ended up backfiring when audiences went to the film expecting the next Chevy Chase comedy and found a comedy drama.

- Big Trouble in Little China was John Carpenter's love letter to his favourite kung fu film Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain by Tsui Hark.

- Carpenter is also a fan of the Godzilla movies. He made a lot of what would today be considered fan films, with names like Gorgo Versus Godzilla and Sorceror from Outer Space.

- In 1970, John Carpenter edited and co-wrote an Academy Award winning short The Resurrection of Bronco Billy, a story about a teenager who keeps slipping through time to the wild west.

- Carpenter's first idea to continue the Halloween franchise after Halloween II was to make each entry a separate story, as seen in Halloween III: Season of the Witch. When franchise producer Moustapha Akkad asked him for ideas for Halloween IV, John Carpenter suggested that they bring Myers back as a ghost who is slowly brought back to life as the residents of Haddonfield struggle to suppress the tragic events of a decade earlier (similar to A Nightmare on Elm Street). Akkad however insisted that Myers be flesh and blood so Carpenter sold his remains rights in the franchise.

- Jamie Lee Curtis did push for Carpenter to direct Halloween: H20 but remaining bad blood with the producers and scheduling conflicts meant he couldn't contribute.

- Other films he had been approached to direct include Firestarter (1984), The Golden Child (1986), Top Gun (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987).

Forgotten John Carpenter Double Bill: Eyes of Laura Mars & Black Moon Rising

Now there's actually a double link with these two films; not only were they scripted (or at least co-scripted) by John Carpenter but both star Tommy Lee Jones before he became very famous. I've got to say I've never been wildly interested in Tommy Lee Jones in the past. He's a good actor for sure (see: Academy Award for The Fugitive) but he never really plays the hero in anything. John Carpenter on the other hand is probably my favourite director and I've picked up almost every film he's even been tangentially involved.

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

Eyes of Laura Mars was written by a young Carpenter and sold just prior to the success of Halloween. Faye Dunaway stars as the titular character, a controversial photographer noted for current series of photos, all of which involve lurid scenes of staged murder and female nudity. In a classic whodunnit storyline, people closely associated with Laura start being murdered by having their eyes stabbed. Mars would likely be a suspect were it not for the fact she witnessed all the murders. You see she has a psychic connection with the killer and when the murders are taking place, she sees through their eyes.

Tommy Lee Jones plays John Neville the investigating homicide detective assigned to her case. He begins the film not believing her but as the evidence builds that she is getting psychic visions they start working together to uncover the mystery. The suspects include her overbearing but somewhat camp manager Donald (Rene Auberjonois), her streetwise driver Tommy who harbours a criminal past (Brad Dourif), and her abusive ex-husband Michael (Raúl Juliá).

Despite the fact this isn't directed by Carpenter – it's directed by Irvin Kershner – it still very much feels like his work. Carpenter's scripts are all quite minimalist and efficient pieces and so is this. Much like Halloween, the film borrows heavily on the style of Italian giallo thrillers. The idea of seeing through the murderer's eyes but not revealing the identity was perhaps slightly more effective in Halloween.

The acting was pretty good. Other reviewers have noted that Dunaway plays the role quite one-noted. I can't say I've seen her in a lot of stuff before but I thought she played the role of a woman on the verge of mental breakdown pretty well. Considering they nearly cast Barbra Streisand in the lead I think we dodged a bullet. That said Streisand does sing the theme tune that goes over the opening and ending credits but you can fast forward through those.

It's interesting to see a younger less grizzled Tommy Lee Jones. Even at an early age he's perfectly suited to playing detective – over the years he's never been that versitile an actor but as soon as he starts talking in that Texan drawl you sit up an pay attention. The other standout is Brad Dourif in an early role as the shifty driver Tommy who imbues with character with a lot of pathos. Kershner's directing is slow and methodical but it gives the somewhat sillier moments of the film more weight than they deserve.

The ending is something of a love it or hate it affair. I'm not going to give it away but the killer's identity does get revealed along with a slightly iffy reason for their killings. Carpenter has gone on record to say that this wasn't in his original script, he deliberately wanted to keep the killer's identity mysterious (much like Michael Myers) in order to make them more scary.

For me, I was okay with the ending. I've seen worse but it made some sense I guess and didn't ruin the rest of the film. For anyone who enjoyed Halloween this is a decent (but obviously inferior) 70s thriller.

Black Moon Rising (1986)

Black Moon Rising is a similar situation to Eyes, even though it's only based on a John Carpenter story but still very much feels like his film. Tommy Lee Jones plays Quint, a professional thief hired by the FBI to retrieve some politically sensitive tape (god, remember cassette tapes!). He finds it but is then forced to hide the tape, somewhat improbably, in a prototype supercar called the Black Moon (think Knight Rider but more fiberglass). When the Black Moon gets stolen by Nina (Linda Hamilton) she takes it to her boss Robert Vaughn who makes a living from stealing cars. With the car and the tape locked away in his giant office black, the FBI gives Quint 72 hours to find a way in and retrieve them both.

It's said that a lot of Carpenter's films are Westerns in disguise. Assault on Precinct 13 is a version of Rio Bravo with gang members instead of indians, Escape from New York's Snake Plissken is like Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, the original script for Big Trouble in Little China was even set in the wild west with Jack Burton having to retrieve his horse rather than his truck! Black Moon Rising is no different, Jones' Quint character is very much your classic anti-hero gun-for-hire assigned to retrieve an object from a seemingly impenetrable fortress.

Unlike Eyes which was a big budget film this was made on the cheap by New World Pictures (a company that seems to keep popping up in these reviews a lot). The directing by Harlan Cokeliss is adequate, the film's a little sluggish early on but the final half hour in which Quint uses an elaborate plan to break in is worth the wait. Considering the film's 100 minutes this really could have done with 10 shaving off somewhere.

Jones really fits well as easy-going, cocksure anti-hero Quint. Reportedly he almost got the part of Snake Plissken in Escape from New York but Carpenter really pushed to get Kurt Russell. Watching this film you can really get a sense how he would have played that part. There's one particular scene where his character gets beat up for what feels like a full five minutes and apparently Jones did nearly all his own stunt work in this film. Hats off.

Linda Hamilton's part is a bit more forgettable, after played Sarah Connor it's hard to see her as anything else. Vaughn always make for a great villain and this is no exception. It's just a shame he didn't get more meaty scenes. In fact one of the most characters the imposing FBI agent played by Bubba Smith (aka Hightower from the Police Academy series) who gets what should be an iconic line “You don't f*** with the Government.”

From the screenshot above you can see the Black Moon car looks a bit ropey, in fact during the escape attempt when it's bashing into barrels and columns I thought it was going to shatter. I'm not sure what it was about the 80s that inspired suped-up vehicles – Knight Rider, Blue Thunder, Street Hawk. I think anyone who enjoyed watching those shows as a kid will get a kick out of this film. It's the kind of film I can imagine watching on a Saturday afternoon - it's definitely not a Saturday evening film.

I'd also recommend the film to anyone who's a fan of John Carpenter – it may only be based on his script but you can really sense it's written by him.

Forgotten Eighties... music videos

As a quick break from reviewing films, this week's entry is going to look at a couple of forgotten tie-in music videos for 80s movies.

Coupe DeVilles - Big Trouble in Little China

First up is the title song from Big Trouble in Little China, performed by the Coupe DeVilles. Yep, you're not mistaken that IS John Carpenter singing the lead part. Famously Carpenter has scored a great deal of his own films in the past – often using synthesisers (see Halloween) – but this was the first and only time he sang. Along with him is Tommy Lee Wallace (Guitar) – who producer Halloween II and directed part III. And Nick Castle (Keyboard), another friend of Carpenter's who played Michael Myers in the original Halloween film and directed The Last Starfighter.

I've got to say this track truly rocks and really sums up the movie as a whole - cheesy American synthesiser meets a classic Oriental sound. I love how much Carpenter threw himself into this movie even going to the point of recording a title song and video. It's no wonder that the disappointing box office and reception of the film caused Carpenter to become disillusioned with Hollywood.

Anyway the videos set in an editing room. Carpenter's cutting the movie together when weird stuff starts happening, like Lo Pan trying to escape the film and attack him and Nick Castle finding the weird eyeball monster in a film can. Carpenter was 38 when he did this video but he looks more like 50 and the whole band dress a little like school teachers. Then again, I'm judging them from a modern perspective, a lot of music acts in those days didn't need to look like unaging 20 year olds like they do today.

You just don't get stuff like this nowadays. Michael Bay would never sing a cover of “The Touch” for Transformers 3 and Gore Verbinski would never sing a sea shanty for the latest Pirates of the Caribbean. It's disappointing because I think the idea of a director BEING FORCED to sing a theme tune for the movie they've just made would make the world a more interesting place.

If you want to hear some more Coupe DeVilles – do a quick search on google for “Waiting Out the Eighties” which was the name of a full album they put out in 1987 but was never made for public consumption.

Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd - City of Crime

Now this one is a little more unknown. Unlike Big Trouble in Little China, Dragnet doesn't have a special edition DVD, so this music video only exists on youtube. I can't help but wonder what other amazing movie tie-in stuff got shown on TV a few times and has been “lost”.

This one is, again, a gem. Dan Aykroyd is a great writer and performer but occasionally he really screws up – (see Nothing But Trouble). Dragnet was one of his best films and he really benefited from the loose, brash performance of Tom Hanks. One of the worst aspects of that film though was the opening rap remix of the Dragnet TV theme tune by Art of Noise. I get that they were trying to start the film off by accentuating that this was a comedic version of the original series but it's horribly dated an otherwise reasonably timeless flick and I always fast forward it.

Now it may seem schizophrenic but I love this rap song by Hanks and Aykroyd. Like the Big Trouble music video, the City of Crime uses copious use of footage from the Dragnet movie. Hanks and Aykroyd, in character as Pep and Friday, look up at a screen depicting events from the movie in a pitch black room and you start thinking “Man, what a lazy video”. Then the lights come up and we realise we're in a police station.

Aykroyd raps the way you'd imagine your 50 something father would – but then really he's just channelling his straight laced character. Hanks on the other hand decides it's best to shout loudly rather than rap lest anyone judge his rapping abilities. Over the chorus, everyone breaks into dance with a bit of a mockery of Michael Jackson's “Thriller”. And the video goes on until Hanks and Aykroyd are dressed in tight police costumes dancing on go go podiums. You know I love Dragnet but after seeing this video I REALLY love Dragnet.

Once, again, I'm going to make a suggestion that all major movie actors have to do an accompanying rap video for every film they do. Who's with me?