Assault on Precinct 13

After acquiring an arsenal of automatic weapons, a street gang declares war on the LAPD, focusing specifically on the soon to be closed Precinct 13 station house whose only hope for defense is a novice commander, a few administrators, a victim of the gang's coldblooded violence seeking refuge, two prisoners on layover from a prison transport, and a short supply of weaponry. John Carpenter's Rio Bravo inspired Assault on Precinct 13 is stylized and surprisingly low key, offering well drawn characters speaking cheesy though admittedly amusing dialogue. The finale is anticlimactic but is preceded by a great escape attempt sequence.

*** out of ****

The Fog

A century after the founders of a coastal fishing village thwarted a harbor bound ship, plunging all of its leprosy plagued shipmates to their demise, a dense haze carrying the ghosts of the victims envelops the village, seeking a bloody retribution on all of the guilty's remaining descendants. John Carpenter's The Fog is a relentlessly stupid ghost story, but well made and with some genuine scares that help offset other cheesed-out elements of the production.
** 1/2 out of ****

Escape from New York

The crime rate in New York City has risen by over 400% and officials have decided to turn Manhattan into an penal colony, erecting a 50 foot wall around the island and lining it with explosives and armed policemen. Now nine years in the future, Air Force One has been hijacked en route to a peace conference, forcing the President to abandon the craft in his escape pod, leaving him to be taken hostage by the ruthless inhabitants of the colony. Now the only hope of freeing the president, and thus brokering world peace, is special forces convict Snake Plissken who's solo mission is to locate and extract the president before the conclusion of the police summit some 23 hours later. John Carpenter's "Escape from New York" beings with a compelling and promising 20-minute set-up which, as soon as Kurt Russell lands on the World Trade Center, at which point the film devolves immediately into an uninspired, vapid work where virtually nothing works and all the fun and life is sucked completely out of the film. As Plissken, Russell barely seems to be awake and sleepwalks his way through this bafflingly iconic role. Donald Pleasance is terribly miscast as the president and Ernest Borgnine is completely wasted in an underused role. Lee Van Cliff is strong as the hard edged police commissioner, but his role is quickly diminished, and I also liked Harry Dean Stanton, whose performance as a sketchy underworld leader is about the only thing element that breathes life into the final 85 minutes of this film. Carpenter is a wildly hit or miss director who has made his fair share of both veritable masterpieces and bonafide turkeys. The one has no place in being mentioned with the former.

Starman

An alien life form, sent to Earth with a message of peace, enters a woman's rural Wisconsin home, and takes on the likeness of her recently deceased husband. Now with aggressive agents in hot pursuit, he forces her to transport him to Arizona where he will meet his alien compadres who will return him home to his native land. "Starman" is recycled science fiction from director John Carpenter who opts for an amiable approach and skirts more intriguing methods in telling his story. Also, although Jeff Bridges' Oscar nominated and much praised performance is serviceable, his robotic alien character remains too odd and unable to generate the necessary emotions required of it. The great, overlooked performance is that of Karen Allen who does an excellent job of conveying the complex and confusing emotions a grieving woman in that outlandish position would be experiencing. I also enjoyed the over the top performance of Charles Martin Smith as a gung ho governmental contractor. "Starman" is enjoyable fodder that I wish had gone deeper both with its plot and its characters.

Halloween

Fifteen years after slaying his sister, Michael Myers escapes from a psychiatric institution and returns to his childhood home, where he stalks a local teenager and is being hunter by his psychiatrist who knows the true nature of his inner malice. John Carpenter's "Halloween" is a landmark in the slasher genre, an accolade that may be dubious considering the dreck that has followed which has included sequels, remakes, knockoffs, and even the "stalwart" entries including "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street". Regardless, Carpenter displays a full mastery of the genre, using music, camerawork, and earned thrills to craft an eerie, terrifying thriller. Jamie Lee Curtis, in her first role, is extremely effective as Myers' target and it is refreshing to see an intelligent character in a film of this nature, which also extends to Donald Pleasence's Dr. Loomis's whose explanatory scenes I find to be the best in the picture. "Halloween" is a grand exercise in terror, but also somewhat of a nostalgic one when we reflect on what so many of the lazy, subsequent slasher films could have been.
note: I thought it was neat how Curtis' charges watch "The Thing from Another World" before the attacks, a film Carpenter would remake a few years later.

The Ward

A young girl in hospital garbs frantically runs through a southern forest to a decrepit old house which she promptly burns to the ground. She is then picked up by the local authorities and returned to the high risk psychiatric ward where she has to deal with the unfriendly staff and patients as well as ominous ghostly visions which continually haunt her. Now with the help of a caring yet suspicious doctor, she tries to figure out the dark secret behind her institutionalization. Watching a film as inept as "The Ward", one finds it hard to believe it was directed by "master of terror" John Carpenter who has directed such revered horror outings as "Halloween" and "The Thing". This film generates no concern for its heroine, which is vital to a film like this, and employs a plot device which came as unexpected, not out of cleverness, but because it had been done before so inanely that I did not think anyone would be stupid enough to employ. it again. Hence, it comes off atrociously and this film becomes not only a miss for Carpenter but a putrid waste of 90 minutes.

The Thing

A Husky runs into an American outpost in remote Antarctica, being chased by Norwegians in a helicopter attempting to shoot it. At the chopper lands, one man accidentally drops a grenade, blowing up himself and the craft while another pursues the dog. After he wounds one of the Americans, he is shot dead and two of the Americans, a pilot and the doctor decide to check out the Norwegian's camp after the suspicious happenings. There they find a the post in ruins along with burned bodies, a frozen man with his throat slit, and an open coffin like apparatchiks. When they return to base, they discover the real reason those men were trying to kill the dog, and a battle begins between not only the men and the deadly shape shifting creature but also amongst the men themselves. John Carpenter's The Thing is based on John W. Campbell Jr.'s novel Who Goes There? which inspired the 1951 film "The Thing from Another World" and it does something interesting with the gruesome monster movie by placing it in the isolated world of the Antarctic, resulting in intense situations and plotting. Kurt Russell is effective as the pilot who becomes the leader when the thing takes over the camp and I liked Wilfred Brimley as the doctor who discovers the true nature of the beast. I found the monster itself to be too grotesque to the point that it somewhat detracts from the story, then again the story is set up very well. The snowy locales provide some nice and foreboding visuals and I liked certain touches such as the ending (spoilers) of the film which ends not in a bloody massacre but in a cold and silent standoff. The movie also seems to have inspired subsequent filmmakers and I thought of James Cameron a lot during this movie, particularly "The Abyss" and "Terminator 2: Judgement Day". As a monster movie, The Thing achieves its primary objective of being eerie, scary, and entertaining and with some effective visuals and plotting it succeeds at being something more as well.