Movie Review: "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976)

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Movie: "Assault on Precinct 13"

Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1976
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes

A street gang unleashes a deadly assault on a police station that is in the process of closing for good. The minimal staff on hand must team up with some prisoners to fight for survival.

TOP 10 BEST JOHN CARPENTER MOVIES!

It's John Carpenter's birthday this week, so we thought we would take a closer look at the work of the director of the original "Halloween" himself! Carpenter has never been a huge box office draw with average box office earnings at just under $20 million ($53 million when adjusted for inflation), yet he has become an icon of the horror genre as most of his movies have reached cult status and have become loved long after their initial release. We have watched all of his theatrically released features, so here is our list of the TOP 10 BEST JOHN CARPENTER MOVIES! Do you agree with our list? Let us know!

Movie Review: "Prince of Darkness" (1987)

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Movie: "Prince of Darkness"

Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1987
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

A group of grad students is asked to study the scientific properties of an ancient relic held by the Catholic Church that is said to contain pure evil.

Movie Review: "Escape from New York" (1981)

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Movie: "Escape from New York"

Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1981
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 39 minutes

New York has been turned into a mega prison that lets the inmates run free within its walls. When the President's plane crashes in Manhattan, a convict named Snake Plissken is asked to infiltrate the prison and rescue the POTUS in exchange for a full pardon.

Movie Review: "Starman" (1984)

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Movie: "Starman"

Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1984
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 55 minutes

An extraterrestrial comes to earth and takes the form of a widow's deceased husband and asks for a ride to Arizona so he can return home.

Movie Review: "Ghosts of Mars" (2001)

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Movie: "Ghosts of Mars"

Director: John Carpenter
Year: 2001
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 38 minutes

Mars police officers are sent to a mining colony to transport a dangerous criminal back to the city. When they arrive, they are faced with unexpected dangers far more deadly than the criminal they came to collect.

Movie Review: "Village of the Damned" (1995)

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Movie: "Village of the Damned"

Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1995
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 39 minutes

One day, in the small town of Midwich, a strange phenomenon causes all the people within its community to pass out without warning. When they wake up hours later, most of the women of childbearing age are pregnant. When their children are born, it's clear they aren't fully human as they have special powers that threaten all the people of Midwich...and possibly even the world.

Movie Review: "In the Mouth of Madness" (1994)

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Movie: "In the Mouth of Madness"

Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1994
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes

An insurance investigator is tasked with finding a missing horror author for the publishing agency his company insures. As he searches for this author, he gets pulled deeper and deeper into his bizarre world.

Movie Review: "The Fog" (1980)

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Movie: "The Fog"

Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1980
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 29 minutes

A mysterious fog containing vengeful ghosts envelopes a coastal California town.

Movie Review: "Dark Star" (1974)

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Movie: "Dark Star"

Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1974
Rating: G
Running Time: 1 hour, 23 minutes

An oddball crew of astronauts is forced to deal with a malfunctioning ship, a rambunctious alien, and a stubborn artificially intelligent bomb.

Movie Review: "They Live" (1988)

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Movie: "They Live"
Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1988
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

A homeless roamer comes to Los Angeles looking for work. After the homeless camp he is staying at is raided by police, he stumbles upon a pair of sunglasses that open his eyes and free his mind to the truth of what is really going on in the world.

"They Live" is a sci-fi action thriller written and directed by famed director John Carpenter. It is based on the short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson. This lower budget B-movie stars professional wrestler 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper as Nada, a homeless drifter recently laid off from his job in Colorado who has come to Los Angeles looking for work. Joining him is the ever fabulous Keith David, who plays Frank, a man in a similar situation who had to leave his wife and kids back in Detroit to come out west to look for good, honest blue collar work. Nada seems to be the more optimistic of the two and thinks things will work out just fine, whereas Frank sees the world as a place where the odds are stacked in favor of the privileged and wealthy. It isn't until Nada finds a pair of sunglasses that his eyes open to the truth: that we are actually being controlled by capitalist aliens who use subliminal messaging to keep us in a hypnotic state, blind to their existence and are exploiting humans for their financial gain. These aliens move from planet to planet plundering them of their natural resources, not through violence, but through mindless assimilation of the masses. Now, Nada, Frank, and the rest of the alien resistance must try to open up the eyes of the world before the alien capitalist completely take over earth.

In many ways, "They Live" is a cheesy B-style sci-fi movie about an alien invasion and nothing more. In many other ways, however, it's a satirical indictment of Reganomics and the 80's yuppy culture. Oddly enough, the issues explored in this film are just as relevant today, possibly even more so than they were back then. With an ever increasing wage gap and an increasing lack of high paying blue collar jobs, it's as if nothing has changed. Hey, can we get a pair of shades, please? The acting isn't what you'd call "good" (after all, what do you expect from a professional wrestler leading the choir?), and the dialogue is not top notch, but its serviceable and gets the message across just fine. We don't say this to disrespect Roddy Piper, because even though he was not an actor first, he manages to be charismatic and charming in his dry, dopey delivery. Keith David was a little more seasoned at the time, though he tends to stick to the same kind of authoritative badass role in every film.

The premise of "They Live" is sufficiently creepy, as is the display of the subliminal messaging that is enough to make one at least a little paranoid. Hell, we're sure there's a section of the population that really believes pod people or aliens or whoever from above are really controlling us via subliminal messages. You listening, Illuminati? Once a person is wearing their sunglasses, the design of these aliens comes into full effect and is rather brilliant. In many ways, they look like decaying human corpses, a very intentional metaphor according to director John Carpenter. Of course, the climax is loaded with action as humans take on their alien overlords with repeated and frequent close-ups of muzzle fire and plenty of blood squibs to satisfy the audience.

Though it's really sort of silly, overall, "They Live" is a very fun movie, one that remains relevant even today. Rest in peace, 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper.

My Rating: 7.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 9/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 83%
Do we recommend this movie: Yes!
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One year ago, we were being scared by: "Deadheads"

Two years ago, we were being scared by: "Hell's Ground"

Three years ago, we were being scared by: "The Changeling"

Movie Review: "Escape from L.A." (1996)

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Movie: "Escape from L.A."
Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1996
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 41 minutes

A giant earthquake devastates Los Angeles in the year 2000, turning the city into an island. The man who predicted the earthquake is declared president of the United States for life and turns it into a religious theocracy. They wall off the island of L.A. from the rest of the country and deport all criminals there. It's now 2013 and the president's own daughter, Utopia (AJ Langer), steals a doomsday prototype capable of destroying the U.S. and flees to Los Angeles. The government taps the notorious criminal Snake Plisskin (Kurt Russell) to infiltrate L.A. and recover the device in exchange for a full pardon. To make sure Snake complies, they inject him with a virus that will kill him in ten hours if he doesn't complete his task. 

Can you say campy? "Escape from L.A." is just that, cheese, camp, and more cheese. It takes place in the future, which is now actually the past. It rehashes the same plot as "Escape from New York," just changing minor details and settings. It contains scenes in which Snake has to play basketball to avoid being executed, and another where he surfs after a car. Whether these things are meant to be funny or not, they are, and garner a few laughs at their absurdity. Kurt Russell grunts and grumbles his way through this very un-inventive sequel. It's lame to rehash the same movie, just in a different setting. In fact, there's nothing more not creative than that. The first movie was relatively successful and can be considered a cult classic, but for filmmakers to wait 15 years to make a sequel just screams too little, too late.

You have a practically constructed post-apocalyptic Los Angeles set that actually looks decent, surrounded by bad 90's digital effects. When we say the digital effects are bad, we mean laughably bad, like Asylum Productions bad. The surfing scene in particular reminds us of the 1950's old-school Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello surfer movies, where the scene is obviously faked on a static board that's bolted to the ground and the actors just sway back and forth erratically to simulate wave movement. How they go from decent constructed sets to horrid and absurd special effects blows our minds. All in all, stick with the original and skip the sequel.

My Rating: 4/10
BigJ's Rating: 5/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 12%
Do we recommend this movie: No.

Movie Review: "Halloween" (1978)

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Movie: "Halloween"
Director: John Carpenter
Year: 1978
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes

A young boy named Michael Myers murders his sister on Halloween night. After doing so, he is locked up in a mental institution. 15 years later, he breaks free to return to his hometown of Haddonfield on Halloween to kill again.

This is probably the original great slasher film in cinema. There's something so ridiculously scary about a man in a mask standing in broad daylight staring at you through windows or lurking in the shadows...who thought William Shatner would be so scary?

The soundtrack is so unnerving and perfect that just hearing the theme song to "Halloween" can send chills up and down your spine. It's probably the most necessary component of this film aside from Michael Myers himself: it drives the movie to be the creepy, scary, tension-filled movie that it is. Jamie Lee Curtis is great as Laurie Strode, and this movie began her reign as the "Scream Queen," and boy, can she scream!

For "Halloween" having such a low budget, it sure remains one of the best Halloween horror movies of all times. It is a must watch movie and is classic for any October marathon.

My Rating: 10/10
BigJ's Rating: 10/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 94%
Do we recommend this movie: ABSOLUTELY YES!!!