GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE & FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM [2006]

Going To Pieces is a noticeably low budget documentary about the history of slasher flicks, beginning with Psycho then tackling Halloween, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Scream, Saw and just about everything else in between.
It covers many eras of the genre, the impact each groundbreaking film made on the culture, it's audiences and the films that followed it, all of which usually skewered it into the ground with overkill until the next era would reinvent it.  It's actually quite a captivating crash course on the subject, once you get past the horribly filmed interviews.  It looks as if the cameraman had never filmed anything before and wanted to go for maximum creativity, resulting in overly distracting shots that take away from the spoken words quite a bit.  It's an amateurish love letter to the genre that covers the material with more passion than intelligence and that's just fine with me.

3 latex heads out of 5

Black Moon Rising (1986)

For the John Carpenter completist, BMR is another of the lesser known films that he wrote but didn't direct.
Tommy Lee Jones plays a resourceful thief who gets embroiled in a large-scale criminal operation. There’s 80s hair, a prototype car and a heist that requires crucial timing and possibly half a dozen beers to enjoy.
It won’t stay in the memory long after viewing, but nor does it bore at any stage. It’s just average and there’s no shame in being average.

2½ bruises out of 5

Escape from L.A. (1996)

Snake's back! He’s blackmailed into retrieving something from a lame criminal that resembles a boutique Che Guevara.
The political statements and satire are where you’d expect them to be, but something went very wrong with the rest of the film. It’s more comic book than before and the script is so bad that it comes off like a parody of the first film, which is something the last half hour seems to play up to. It'd be easy to pretend otherwise, but the truth is it's not a worthy sequel.

2 shitty modes of transport out of 5

Escape from New York (1981)

Snake Plisskin is one of the best roles Kurt Russell ever had. He’s a kind of inner-city version of Clint Eastwood’s no-nonsense cowboy persona but with impaired depth perception. He’s military trained but cares little for authority, so when he’s offered the opportunity to gain a little more freedom from society’s grip (and keep his ass out of prison) Snake has little choice but to say yes. What follows is an action movie in the inimitable John Carpenter style filled with great characters, shifting shadows and a pulse courtesy of a score from the Carpenter/Howarth pairing.

4 nervous passengers out of 5

Elvis (1979)

John Carpenter's first film with Kurt Russell was a biopic of the boy from Tupelo who went on to take over the music world. The casting might seem odd on paper, but Russell does a damn fine job at TCB, although he needs to work on his fake strumming because it was embarrassing.
It begins in '69, just before his Vegas comeback, and then jumps back to his musical beginnings before meeting itself again at the end.
It couldn't possibly cover all the important things, so focusses instead on Elvis' loves and losses and how they affect him on a personal level.

3½ nods to mom out of 5

Halloween II (1981)

You can’t keep a knife-wielding maniac in a painted Shat mask down for long. There are bitches to be killed, so MM rises to the occasion.
It begins the very same instant that Carpenter’s original ended. The POV shots and the heavy breathing return, and the frame often gives us two things to focus on at one time. In fact, in most respects it mimics the things that the first one did well, so why is it so very dull?
There’s no suspenseful build-up. The plot is so riddled with holes it belongs in Church. The starkness of the iconic music score is lost. The environment is empty. Loomis runs around blindly. Laurie is hardly in it, and when she is there she hardly speaks. I can’t delve into the ending in this review, but be warned, it makes little to no sense.

2 mispronunciations of Samhain out of 5

Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)

An invisible man story that doesn't play around with how much fun it would be to creep into the ladies showers. Instead, it puts emphasis on how lonely it would feel not being seen by the people you care about. It doesn't go as far down that route as it could've because it seems intent on keeping a light-hearted tone too. It’s less goofy than the kind of film Chevy Chase is better known for, and devoid of the kind of horror themes that Carpenter is known for. The entire film feels like a compromise by everyone involved.

2 suspended laws of physics out of 5

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

A slightly better than average suspense/thriller penned by Horror maestro John Carpenter but directed by Irvin Kershner. Fashion photographer Laura Mars experiences flashes of actual murders seen through the eyes of the killer and, worst luck, it’s people she knows.
Faye is believable in the Laura role one minute and the Queen of melodramatic overacting the next. Tommy Lee Jones gives support and looks weird being so young (I assumed he was born old).
It’s essentially an Argento style Italian Giallo film in English.

3 frustrated voyeur types out of 5

Dark Star (1974)

Unless you’re a hopelessly dedicated John Carpenter fan then you’ll likely want to stay far away from this one. It’s his low budget student film expanded to feature length. As a film it earns itself a PoS award. It’s terrible, really, but it’s also interesting for a number of reasons. Most notably the script was co-written with Dan O'Bannon and plays like a prototype of his later success: Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). Also, the music has that cheap and creepy Carpenter vibe. I love Carpenter's music.

2 smart-ass bombs out of 5

Someone's Watching Me! (1978)

John Carpenter made a Hitchcock film. Aficionados of the fat man will spot his trademark camera movements, framing, POV shots, the camera holding on objects and the famous zoom/dolly. It has bits from Psycho (1960), Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958), Hitch’s three best films, imo.
When it’s not being Hitch it’s being typical Carpenter, who excels in the trapped inside scenario. It’s not a very engaging film, but for fans of either director it’s kind of fun.

2½ burly man and slick man out of 5

Starman (1984)

Jeff Bridges leaves his alien planet (and presumably his record player) behind in order to answer a decades-old invitation to come to Earth. Whilst there, he acts as a mirror to our baser instincts. Along the way he learns practicalities and in return helps a widowed woman experience what it is to feel alive again, all to the sounds of a pleasing electronic score by Jack Nitzsche.
It's a sweet film that becomes more endearing after repeated viewings because there's a genuine sincerity to many of the players and the decisions they make (and Karen Allen has a voice that I could fall in love with).
I also like that I can squeeze it into my Dir. Carpenter theory (something inside trying to get out, etc), albeit in a less straightforward fashion.

3 magic fingers of 5

HALLOWEEN [1978]

One of the most significant films of it's kind, John Carpenter's Halloween is hailed as a slasher flick masterpiece.
Independently produced on a very low budget, John Carpenter showed audiences everywhere that you can make a film without extreme violence and gore and still make it scary as hell. Using a simple story line, simple haunting music with deafening stings and interesting camera techniques, Carpenter turned a suburban neighborhood into a living nightmare.
Aside from some really shoddy acting from some of the teenage co-stars, Halloween holds up to this very day as a classic slasher flick and without a doubt on nearly every top 10 list out there.

4½ Shapes out of 5

Ghosts of Mars (2001)

Taken as a whole, GoM isn't very good. The illuminated nights make everything look set-bound even though all exteriors were shot on location. Stath’s single-note action hero style doesn't fit well in the Carpenter world, and Ice Cube lacks any kind of menace. The SFX budget was small and it really shows. The generic, metal chugga-chug guitar stuff is awful.

Conversly, the ambient music is good, Pam Grier is cool and Natasha Henstridge is a perfect fit. There’s a strange, recurring use of a flashback within a flashback, having one character tell the tale of a different character.

The real saving grace is the commentary; I love a Carpenter commentary.

2 bottled teeth out of 5

Village of the Damned (1995)

If I ever wake up and find myself married, there's something wrong. If I ever wake up and find myself pregnant, there's something VERY wrong. It happens in Midwich. When the women wake they discover they've been mysteriously inseminated with weird babies. The kids all have white hair, glowing eyes and a problem with authority.
The late Christopher Reeve starts shaky, but his character improves as the tale unfolds. Kirstie Alley again makes me wonder how she ever finds work. Linda Kozlowski saves the day for the ladies. Not Carpenter’s best work. It feels like a TV movie.

3 cuckoos out of 5

Christine (1983)

Counting down the best Stephen King adaptations: Carrie, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Misery, Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption…and the three that I’ll be reviewing tonight (I originally planned to watch all of these, but time marches on…)

Geeky Arnie Cunningham is driven towards a used 1958 Plymouth Fury…and she’s a cruel, vindictive bitch. Their bond becomes further cemented as he becomes darker, more confident and popular with the ladies, all the while losing touch with reality as people continue to mysteriously die within her grasp. I identify with the plight of the “anti-hero” and understand the sad obsession, which makes this movie all the more personal to me. The twisted love story between man and machine is almost Frankensteinian in nature...but it’s a different kind of beast altogether.

4 Shitters out of 5

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) has a wardrobe full of action jeans and hero vests; with jeans tightly buttoned he drives his truck into Chinatown and ends up helping a friend rescue a girl from a trio of Mortal Kombat-esque outcasts and a two-thousand-year-old evil sorcerer. Cue lightning, green flame, mythical beasts and an old man that stands seven-foot tall.
Oddly, Russell plays it mostly straight while all around him is a smorgasbord of awesome, and it works. Big Trouble in Little China is without a doubt the most successful and entertaining Chinese style action comedy made in the West that I've ever seen. (If you're interested, Carpenter was inspired by Tsui Harks Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)).

5 problems with your face out of 5

Body Bags (1993)

An anthology of three horror shorts; two shot by John Carpenter and one by Tobe Hooper. Hooper's was so badly cast I couldn't get to the end of it; Mark Hamill (great as The Joker, and Majima Gorō, but sucks at everything else), Twiggy (utterly useless in everything ever) and Sheena Easton (don't even start me on her) fail at everything asked of them. The only notable actor is David Warner.
Introduced by Carpenter, with cameos from some genre greats including Wes Craven, Sam Raimi and Roger Corman it’ll pass an hour and a half of your life without making you want to kill all involved; or if you're like me, about 70 minutes of your life before the square button comes into play.

2 necrofiling cabinets and comb over fails out of 5

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

An extended introduction slowly cranks the anticipation to maximum level and keeps the viewer glued to the screen. The pay-off is delivered, the Cholo shit hits the police fan and the film finds its stride.
What follows is a classic siege movie set in South Central, Los Angeles, but respectful to the Westerns of a bygone era. Fans of the genre will spot many nods in that direction. Carpenter admitted that it’s essentially a version of Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo (1959) transposed to an urban environment.

4 ice-cream trucks and cigarettes out of 5

They Live (1988)

Obey. Consume. Marry and Reproduce. Sound familiar?

Roddy Piper is the everyman who, with the help of some special glasses, stumbles onto a dark secret about the world we live in.

Carpenter made a scathing, social commentary wrapped up in an action movie bun long before Verhoven did. It's a classic B Movie that's so good I'm going to call it a B+ Movie. They Live is perfect weekend entertainment with the added bonus of being food for thought.

4 fuglies out of 5

John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)

James Woods kills vamps for the Vatican but he's just as happy kicking the shit out of a padre if the occasion calls for it. He and his team hunt neck-freaks in another Howard Hawks homage in Carpenter's usual style, this time with a little Sergio Leone thrown in for good times.

I don't know why this is disliked by Carpenter fans; it's the kind of Western he's been toying with since Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). If you accept it for what it is then it’s another great addition to the genre, replete with James Woods ad-libbing like a boss.

4 sunburnt crispy critters out of 5