I also love Carpenter, one of my favorite directors. So far I’ve seen 11 of his films and really enjoyed 10 of them.
So my favorite filsm of his, listed in order of preference would currently look like this (the first 5 being personal favorites and all “masterpiece” material, imo):
Assault on Precinct 13
Halloween
The Fog
Escape from New York
The Thing
They Live
Escape from L.A.
Ghosts of Mars
Starman
In the Mouth of Madness
The only one I didn’t like was Dark Star. That film did nothing for me.
PS: If someone put a gun to my head I’d probably even say I prefer Assault to Rio Bravo (which I also love dearly), so in a way Carpenter has outdone his favorite film, at least for me. 8)
Dark Star is one of the ones I haven’t watched yet. I doubt I’ll like it but you never know. Memoirs of an Invisible Man looks kind of lame. I only got about 20min into Starman before I got bored of it. Will have to give it another chance maybe. I love Ghosts of Mars (especially the soundtrack) and it would’ve been #11 on my list. The latest one I watched was Body Bags which was made for TV and is done like the old anthology horror movies (such as Dr Terror’s House of Horrors) back in the 60s and 70s with 3 separate stories, 2 of which are directed by Carpenter. It’s available as a blu ray/dvd combo pack I believe.
I might give Dark Star another chance in ten years. But I guess its humor is not my humor.
Yeah, Ghosts of Mars often seems to get little love, but I believe it’s one of those filsm that grow on you.
I actually ordered Memoirs of an invisible Man on DVD a few days ago, as I somehow stumbled over it on the internet, and for the first time felt drawn to it. Before I always got bored when I thought about watching it. Maybe now is the right time for me to see it in order to appreciate it!
I still have some other Carpenter films at home which I haven’t seen. I just hope he continues to make films in the future.
Assault on Precinct 13 is my favourite Carpenter film. Love the story where Carpenter was told to remove the shooting of the young girl at the ice cream van by the MPAA, but left the scene in anyway.
Dark Star was decent for what it was, a glorified student film. And O’Bannon later wrote Alien, inspired in part by his desire to make a “scary Dark Star”, which is pretty cool.
1986, Black Moon Rising… Carpenter at his storytelling peak, with Tommy Lee Jones and Linda Hamilton. The ‘Black Moon’ is a futuristic car, completing test-runs in the desert around Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Jones is breaking-into a casino’s management-complex, as a Government-contractor on-assignment by the FBI. The car’s design-team, headed by Richard Jaeckel, crosses paths with a now on-the-run Jones at a desert gas-station… who hides the casino’s financial-records in the Black Moon. -Which is stolen when everybody reaches Los Angeles, by professional car-thieves led by Hamilton. Her bosses, Robert Vaughn, Nick Cassavetes, and their corporate-army supply most of the bodies as everybody chases everybody. The film is a free-wheeling romp, which only the ending feels bit compressed, taking-place inside a stylish parking-garage. -Or two, thanks to one of cinema’s first high-speed building-jumps. Lalo Schifrin provides the score, in an obvious tribute to Carpenter. Great fun all-around.
