John Carpenter Movies, Ranked

A man who scored his own movies on a synthesizer and was right about almost everything.

Entries
10
Category
Film
Updated
  1. A lighthouse radio booth with a microphone and a reel-to-reel deck, thick glowing fog pressing against the window at night.

    10. The Fog

    John Carpenter · 1980

    Glowing fog brings dead sailors back to a California town for revenge. Carpenter hated his first cut, reshot about a third, and added John Houseman telling ghost stories. Adrienne Barbeau runs a radio station from a lighthouse. Best commute in film.

  2. A gold phonograph record propped against the dashboard of a dusty pickup truck on a desert highway at night, a glowing silver sphere on the seat.

    09. Starman

    John Carpenter · 1984

    Jeff Bridges as an alien answering the invitation on the Voyager golden record, wearing the body of Karen Allen's late husband. Bridges got a Best Actor nomination, the only Oscar nod any Carpenter film has received. Nobody's head splits open. Growth.

  3. A tall glass canister of swirling green liquid in a candlelit church basement, chalkboards full of equations around it.

    08. Prince of Darkness

    John Carpenter · 1987

    Grad students and a priest study a canister of swirling green evil in a church basement while dreams arrive from 1999. Carpenter wrote it as Martin Quatermass. Alice Cooper plays a possessed vagrant. Physics has never been less reassuring.

  4. A stack of blank red paperback novels on a motel bed, one torn open, with a road map pinned to the wall and crayon lines connecting towns.

    07. In the Mouth of Madness

    John Carpenter · 1995

    Sam Neill as an insurance investigator hunting a missing horror novelist whose readers keep losing their minds. The third film in Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, after The Thing and Prince of Darkness. It barely earned back its $8 million. Check your policy.

  5. A boarded-up police station front desk at night, shell casings scattered across it and a dead rotary phone off the hook.

    06. Assault on Precinct 13

    John Carpenter · 1976

    Rio Bravo moved to a half-closed LA police station, made for about $100,000 in 20 days. Carpenter edited it as John T. Chance, John Wayne's name in Rio Bravo. US critics shrugged; the London Film Festival didn't. Britain has always liked a siege.

  6. A black eyepatch and a digital wristwatch counting down on the hood of a battered taxi, a dark ruined skyline behind it.

    05. Escape from New York

    John Carpenter · 1981

    Manhattan is a prison, the President is inside, and it's 1997. Shot mostly in East St. Louis because it already looked the part. Carpenter wrote it after Watergate; studios called it too weird. Kurt Russell suggested the eyepatch. Good note.

  7. A pair of cheap black sunglasses lying on a cardboard box in a garbage-strewn alley, a single pack of bubblegum beside them, empty.

    04. They Live

    John Carpenter · 1988

    A drifter finds sunglasses that show ads as orders and the rich as aliens. The alley fight over putting the glasses on runs about five and a half minutes and took a month to choreograph. Roddy Piper improvised the bubblegum line. Best argument ever filmed about eyewear.

  8. A big-rig truck parked in a rain-slicked Chinatown alley at night, paper lanterns overhead and green smoke curling from a sewer grate.

    03. Big Trouble in Little China

    John Carpenter · 1986

    Kurt Russell plays a truck driver who thinks he's the hero and is actually the sidekick, a joke most of 1986 missed. It started life as a Western, made about $11 million domestic, and Carpenter quit studio filmmaking over it. Jack Burton still hasn't noticed.

  9. A carved jack-o'-lantern glowing on a suburban porch step at night, a kitchen knife resting beside it and a white mask lying face-down in the leaves.

    02. Halloween

    John Carpenter · 1978

    Made for about $300,000, grossed $70 million. The mask was a $1.98 Captain Kirk mask, painted white with the eye holes widened. Carpenter wrote the score in three days, in 10/8 time. William Shatner has never been scarier.

  10. A frost-covered chessboard on a metal table in an Antarctic research hut, a flamethrower leaning against the wall and snow blowing through a broken window.

    01. The Thing

    John Carpenter · 1982

    Rob Bottin built the creatures out of things like mayonnaise and creamed corn and worked so long he got double pneumonia. Critics called it junk. Carpenter said it was the failure he took hardest. It is now the reason nobody trusts a dog in Antarctica.

Honorable mentions

  • Three rubber Halloween masks, a pumpkin, a skull and a witch, laid out on a factory conveyor belt beside a small chip of grey stone.

    Halloween III: Season of the Witch

    Tommy Lee Wallace · 1982

    Directed by the man who made the Michael Myers mask, produced and co-scored by Carpenter. No Michael Myers at all, just a novelty company with a jingle and a very bad plan for Halloween night. Audiences wanted Myers. They got a better commercial.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A rusty mining train stopped on a red dust plain under a pink sky, a dented shotgun leaning against the engine.

    Ghosts of Mars

    John Carpenter · 2001

    Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube and Jason Statham fight possessed miners on Mars. It cost $28 million, made about $14 million, and Carpenter didn't direct another feature for nine years. Ice Cube has disowned it. Ebert gave it three stars, and stood by them.

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