I think most people would define a slasher movie as a killer working their way through a series of victims as the movie progresses, and by that criteria Psycho doesn’t qualify.
I don’t know, I think Psycho is definitely a proto-slasher, given the genre didn’t really exist at the time. And a lot of slasher filmmakers, like de Palma, definitely took their cues from Hitchcock. Dunno about Carpenter though.
Psycho definitely influenced generations of horror writers and directors, and googling it now I just realized it has a character called Loomis. That name seems too uncommon for a coincidence.
I think Peeping Tom is another oft-cited “proto-slasher” but Black Christmas and Bay of Blood are probably more in-line with what most people think of as “slashers” like Halloween or Friday the 13th.
Bay of Blood, by the way, is on Shudder now, and is absolutely hilarious. It’s interesting to see a couple of what most now think of as iconic Friday kills in Bay of Blood.
Torso seems like it might be the first to hit all the marks.
Torso is another good entry. I think the only thing holding it back from most citings is that all the dubs are dreadful and the film itself looks like garbage, even in restored versions.
I like Vampires with James Woods because when I saw it I didn’t know Woods was such a douche. I like movies where a badass team goes out to kill vampires. Doesn’t have to be a good movie. Just has to be a movie where a bunch of dudes go out and kill vampires.
Hey, you want to see James Woods as a super liberal. Watch True Believer where he plays a long-haired lawyer who could have defended the Chicago Seven.
One thing that’s been cool to see the past decade or so is the revaluation / discovery of Carpenter as a legit musician/composer. I could probably be convinced that Carpenter the composer > Carpenter the director without too much effort at this point, and I like several of his films and don’t normally enjoy film scores divorced from their films.
I love his Vampires score.
I’ve always been partial to this one myself -
As someone that read the book prior, Vampire$ was a big disappointment.
I expect it matters which you come to first. I saw Vampires in the theater before I knew John Steakley existed, then later read Armor and really liked it. When I discovered that Vampires was a book first and written by the Armor guy to boot? Hell yeah! But I didn’t get more than a couple chapters in. Too maudlin for my taste, although maybe someday I ought to try it again.
I did like the book version of Vampires much better than the movie, but then I hated the movie so I guess that wasn’t the highest hurdle to clear.
I watched Mouth of Madness I am saving the great Carpenter movies, to the end. Madness is a really, really chatty movie. It has a weird atmosphere, but it doesn’t have the Lovecraft feeling (to me). I just don’t feel any cosmic horror. Tentacle monsters just don’t make Lovecraft horror. Ok, it has some lurking monsters, who want to come to earth. There are some Lovecraft ingredients, but it just does not add up.
Sam Neil was great, and the repeated shot of smiling Prochnow is great. It’s a meandering tale, runnig in a circle, selfreferencing. Hobb’s End … where is this from, it sounds familiar.
Not sure what is actually real in the movie. Was everything just written by Sutter Cane? Is all just a dream? I like horror movies that are more grounded in reality. If it goes full supernatural like Prince of Darkness or Mouth of Madness, then everything is possible. I find this a bit boring. The guy on the bicycle was really creepy. And with the poker cards. That was a nice touch, detail.
Overall an ok movie and I am sure I will forget half of it and come back to it in a couple of years …
There is not nearly enough Starman in this thread and it is disappointing to me. I think it’s just as much a classic of his as Escape, The Thing and Big Trouble. Jeff Bridges is great and Karen Allen is quality as well. It’s also sci-fi that isn’t action packed, which so few even attempt to do.
As an aside, Bridges was nominated for an Academy Award for that performance.
will look into Starman, never watched it.
The monster effects in Madness were from the same people/company who did The Thing. However, when they finally come out in the tunnel, you see so little of them. I thought it was a budget issue or something. The other monsters/effects looked really good though. No CGI!
And see, that’s part of what I was talking about regarding the HPL connection. The story starts with our protagonist in an insane asylum, ranting about elder gods from outside waking up and devouring us all. Another standard trope of his is the monsters you never really get to see, and I thought that tunnel scene was an effective expression of that, etc.
It isn’t a top-tier Carpenter movie, but it comes together much better than PoD, for example (IMO, of course).
Uh, no. Sorry to be that guy, but The Thing was an early masterpiece by a guy named Rob Bottin who cut his teeth on Star Wars and went on to do a ton of other great practical effects over the years. His work in The Thing is iconic and he was NOT involved in The Mouth of Madness.
-Tom
Ah, I didn’t realize that. I’m guessing Pedro Pascal’s death?
-Tom