Ten Statements About....THEY LIVE (1988)

"We wear our sunglasses at night..."

“Brother, life’s a bitch...and it’s back in heat."

1) For a first time actor, Rod Piper does pretty well.  His John Nada manages to be fairly low-key and almost melancholy at times throughout the first act...until he puts on those sunglasses, at which point he keeps switching from Nada to Rowdy Roddy Piper, and those moments tend to detract from the main story.

2) Man, does this film move slowly.  There are long stretches where pretty much nothing happens, especially at the beginning and end of the film.  There’s none of that increasing speed of storytelling we see in some of Carpenter’s other films like Escape From New York  or Big Trouble In Little China.  As such, the story crawls, making it seem longer than its ninety-five minutes run time.

3) One of the many slow moments Carpenter could have cut to liven the pace?  That third act ‘tour’ of the alien’s facility.  All we really need to know about the aliens is that they are the  ultimate capitalist exploiters--they see humanity as chattel and are altering the planet to suit their industrial needs.  We don’t need to see every. single. thing. about how things work with them.

So a skinless man walks into a bar....

4) Even though her role is so wispy it could fly away with a good strong breath, Meg Foster does nothing to give any life to Holly.  She’s just not a good actress, delivering every line in a soporific monotone that, if anything, serves to reveal a major portion of her character arc way too early.

5) This films relies so much on coincidence in moving its plot that it’s ridiculous.  Even though Nada is surprisingly proactive for a Carpenter hero, he would be just sitting with his thumb up his butt if he didn’t happen to meet the right people who happen to be wandering by at the right time.

6) Hello, primitive CGI flying thingie.  If only you hadn’t flown apart so awkwardly when shot....

I've heard of simplifying articles, but this....

7) Okay, that fight scene--I really don’t think it works as a parody of wrestling (as my buddy Derrick Ferguson claims; I’ve always thought it was Carpenter’s tribute to the legendary Rod Taylor fight scene in Darker Than Amber) even if Piper does break out a couple of wrestling moves.  It doesn’t work because it stops and starts.  The killer isn’t the fight itself but the constant pausing we get throughout it.  Those pauses disrupt the flow and make us impatient to get the scene over with.  That being said....

8) It’s really refreshing to see a lead who obviously isn’t being doubled for his stunt work and fights.  This is where Piper’s experience as a wrestler works for him rather than against him.

Something for the ladies....

9) If you ask me who this film’s MVP is, it’s Keith David.  David is given a character whose arc literally changes in mid-stream, is made to work opposite an actor he really has no chemistry with, and goes out like a punk...and yet he makes this character work.  It’s a testament to his skill that Frank has any dimension at all.

10) One of the things that bugs me the most about this film is how it doesn’t so much end as stop.  Maybe Carpenter thought a sex gag (which makes no sense given how the aliens claim humans are repulsive to them, but that could just be me reading too much into a throwaway line) was a fitting capper to this story....but it, well, isn’t.

Overall...a messy, sloppy film that probably has its reputation due to a handful of--well, okay, a single--memorable line.  Its slowness and tendency to work in fits and starts blunt what could have been an effective little satirical thriller.

Ten Statements About....CHRISTINE (1983)

Just a reminder--someone drove this car while it was on fire!

"Let me tell you a little something about love, Dennis. It has a voracious appetite. It eats everything. Friendship. Family. It kills me how much it eats. But I'll tell you something else. You feed it right, and it can be a beautiful thing, and that's what we have."

1) The first thing that strikes me is how quiet this film is for a Carpenter film.  The music cues are few and far between during the first hour, and we don’t hear that signature Carpenter synth whine until that hour is almost over.

2) Good ol’ Keith Gordon.  It’s obvious that Arnie is something of a nothing role, and the script is very confused as to whether he’s meant to be a dupe of Christine or a willing co-conspirator (something we never get resolved, even up to his ultimate fate), but Gordon does everything he can with this role.  What little there is that elevates Arnie from a series of stereotypes is all Gordon.

3) This is another film which is specifically meant to be a period piece (it’s set in 1978), but is not enhanced in any way by its setting.  I suspect Carpenter does this to remain ‘true’ to the novel, but there’s nothing in the novel that demands that period be used.  And given how almost everyone is styled in the 80‘s (check out the hair on Alexandra Paul’s Leigh!), it’s a pointless exercise.

"But Mr. Kot-tah said I could beat on the nerd...."

4) You know, I would accept the seriousness of the bullies in this movie if they weren’t played by a bunch of goofballs.  William Ostrander’s portrayal of Buddy, in particular, is laughable; the man comes off as Cosplay John Travolta.  Thankfully, their presence is limited and their tickets punched before they get too annoying.

5) You wanna know why I love practical effects?  Because there’s an immediacy to these set pieces you just can’t get with CGI.  When you realize that at one point in this movie an actual human being drove a car that was set entirely on fire after another human being blew up an actual gas station, you appreciate what you’re seeing all the more.

6) I really liked Robert Proskey’s Darnell.  While he comes off as very antagonistic, it’s obvious that he’s not.  This makes his death after Christine’s killing spree an indicator of how evil ‘she’ is, as he’s drawing his shotgun to get at the perceived thief, not the car itself.

"Stupid movie...I'll become a director and show everyone how
to direct with style....stupid movie...." 

7) Some people just have old faces...right, Harry Dean Stanton?

8) I find it fascinating how Carpenter has Gordon visually go through different levels of classic 50‘s rebellious teen.  He goes from typical geek to the windbreaker of James Dean to the leather of Marlon Brando the deeper into his mania he gets.  It’s like Arnie becomes symbiotically linked with Christine and is pulled backwards in time psychologically by her.

9)  I’m not sure if Carpenter resisted the urge for Alexandra Paul’s Leigh and John Stockwell’s Dennis to grow romantically close in the third act (it’s been years since I read King’s novel, but my gut says he did pull the trigger on this)...but it never quite works out.  Now granted, this might be because of Paul’s rather stilted performance, but there’s still a whiff of ‘it’s in the script’ to this development.

10) I think that the film benefits from Christine being established as evil right on the assembly line, as it throws out all the ambiguity of the book’s reasoning for her becoming this steel-and-glass ghost.  By just letting us know that Christine is a malevolent entity right from the start, she becomes a motorized version of Michael Meyers, and we accept that its malevolence just exists.

Overall...not the greatest of Carpenter’s films, and arguably the beginning of his decline, it still has some merit thanks to the practical stunt work and the performance by Gordon.

Ten Statements About....ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981)

Yep...most naturalistic finishing blow eeeeever....

"Remember, once you're inside you're on your own."
"Oh, you mean I can't count on you?"
"No."
"Good!

1) Boy, is this script lean. The only guy who's really verbose is Lee Van Cleef's Hauk, and even he's terse and to the point. Carpenter apparently knows we're not here to watch exposition, so he's more than happy to move along and get us to the fights, the car chases and the nastiness.

2) Even for Carpenter, who's noteworthy for populating his films with characters that break away from being stereotypes, this is a film full of vivid characters. Even those characters with scant face time, like Frank Doubleday's sawtoothed Romero, or Charles Cyphers' Secretary of State, have their moments in the sun. As such, it's very hard to choose stand outs....

3) ...however, I will cite a couple, beginning with Van Cleef's Hauk. I particularly like how Hauk has a weird sort of respect that he never out and out admits to Russell's Plissken. He seems to admit it to others--defending his choice, running interference for him and continuing to buy him time--but the closest he comes to admitting how much he values Snake is when he offers him a job at the end. Van Cleef's confidence and body language says more than enough about his thoughts.

4) And then there's the tag team of Harry Dean Stanton's Brain and Adrienne Barbeau's Maggie. I love how we're never quite sure where these two are standing in regards to Snake and the situation with the President. Even though we only get their backstory in a line or two of dialogue, Stanton and Russell makes this relationship's veracity through their physicality toward each other. And the beauty of this is how these two do unpleasant things, but in no way become evil in our eyes because this is the world they've been living in for the last nine years and duplicity is the only way they can survive.

5) I can overlook that the majority of this film is shot not in New York, but in East St. Louis---if the script didn't have such a cavalier attitude towards New York City's geography, starting with their stubborn insistence that there is a '69th Street Bridge.' There is literally no way that Snake's progress through this city makes any sort of sense. It's as if the entire lower half of Manhattan was squooshed together into one square mile. I know this prolly wouldn't bother most people, but for me it nags and nags...

"Of course you should let me in...I'm the most New York thing
in this film!"

6) You'll notice I haven't mentioned much about Russell's Snake Plissken at all...and that's because the genius of Russell's performance is how the film doesn't so much happen because of him but in spite of him. The majority of Plissken's success is due to luck and circumstance--he only directly affects the story a scant handful of time. But because the character Russell creates is so well-structured and charismatic, we continue to assume he is the hero and not just our P.O.V. It's a trick Russell and Carpenter pull off again in Big Trouble In Little China, and it's a thing of beauty.

7) The reason I like Ernest Borgnine's Cabbie isn't because he provides comic relief in this film. It's because he makes it very clear early on that he's been driving a cab for thirty years...which means he chose to stay in New York when it was converted to a prison. In a film filled with things pretending to be New York, Cabbie is the most authentically New York thing in the place!

"Either I shoot you, or the viewers learn we're in St. Louis...
no one wins, Harry!"

8) I know Donald Pleasance worried about being a U.S. President with a British accent....but I didn't find him out of place. I assumed he was a Bostonian Brahmin--and given his role is smallish, it doesn't detract much at all. Pleasance does manage to walk that fine line of making him callous, maybe even dismissive without being a monster (unlike what we got in the sequel in Cliff Robertson).

9) And I appreciate that this is a political satire where the script doesn't spell everything out for you. We know just enough from the opening crawl to know that this is a country in decline, that things are going to fall apart a lot faster in the future, and that this is where we may be going. And I equally appreciate the fact that pay off of this film utilizes a musical, subliminal call for looking to the past to erase the disasters that could be forthcoming.

10) I gotta be honest...for a film that's supposedly action oriented, there's a lot of clunky action. The whole fight scene with Ox Baker's Slag is particularly awkwardly staged, as is the 'firefight' on the World Trade Center and, well, pretty much every fight in here. If it wasn't for the physicality of Russell, I suspect we'd look on these set pieces a lot less kindly.

Overall...a film that is pretty ungainly, but is well-redeemed by a whole raft of great characterization and a subtle script that spreads its satire lightly and not with great nasty gobs of stuff falling all over itself (unlike the sequel, which maybe I'll get to one day).

Ten Statements About....ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976)

One of the most important shots--both figurative and literal--
in a film that establishes that No One Is Safe....

"What does it mean?"
"It means they don't care. They're not afraid to die, any of them. They want to rip us apart no matter what the cost. It means...to the death."

1) You know, I've said this before, but it needs to be said again--nothing, but nothing sounds like a John Carpenter soundtrack. From the moment the martial strains of the theme starts over the black screen, you know whose territory you're in.

2) I like how Carpenter, through the way he introduces the little girl only to have her casually shot dead, makes it very clear that no one is safe--a message further reinforced when both Starker and Julie die during the course of the film.

3) Now, see....here's how you set up an intriguing anti-hero. We never learn much about Napoleon Wilson outside of maybe his crime and the fact that he's a Real Big Figure when it comes to law enforcement. But then...we don't need to know much. Thanks to Darwin Josten's performance, we know everything we need to know--that he's got a code of honor, that he's level headed, that he respects people who give him respect. And that makes us willing to root for him when the siege happens.

4) I know that this is an unofficial remake of Rio Bravo--something Carpenter does variations on several times throughout his career--but I have to also wonder if Carpenter was influenced mightily by George Romero. There are a number of moments that mirror Night of The Living Dead, and the way the marauding bands are shot sort of slipping in and out of shadows makes them seem like zombies.

These three people have been through Hell...and only
John Carpenter knows their full backstory....

5) I give much respect to Carpenter for being able to recognize when the film benefits from being quiet. There are long stretches of this film that occur in total or near silence, and those stretches help to increase the tension, while allowing him to continue building up his characters and getting us to give them our sympathy.

6) However, something I do think muddles the waters is the opening battle between the cops and the Street Thunder Gang. An argument could be made that the film could be streamlined a bit, making the death of the little girl collateral damage in a drive-by or similar crime and sidestepping that battle completely. That would also make the situation a little more 'personal,' as the choice to give aid to the girl's father would prompt the gang to focus on this place.

7) The whole idea of establishing that this is a precinct that's being closed down, that will have its utilities cut in the morning, is very clever on a number of levels. For one, it gives us a reason why most of the action takes place in near darkness--which allows Carpenter to save on special effects at points. For another, it gives the exterior an air of normalacy that the mostly faceless, silent throng can use to their advantage. And it also emphasizes the isolation of our heroes--while also gleefully shoring up the horror movie ambiance that this film has. It's no wonder Irwin Yalbans saw this and realized Carpenter would be perfect for his Babysitter Murders project.

They may be convicts heading for Death's Row...but they
are heroes in one sense or another....

8) Some words should be said about Laurie Zimmer's Leigh. What impresses me about her is how she's competent, but in no ways a super woman--and the fact that she has a chemistry with both Josten and Austin Stoker's Bishop shores up her own character. And the fact that romantic interest is implied by never paid off on...well, there are some directors who can learn from Carpenter's handling of this.

9) And I'm going to make it clear--I respect that the moments of comic relief (the two cops searching for all this carnage to increasing frustration; the way Wilson and Wells resolve who has to risk their lives, etc.) are funny but also fraught with a touch of unease so that the increasing tension of the scenario is not disrupted.

10) I respect the fact that just as Carpenter spent some time thinking through the scenario, he spent some time showing through their actions that these gang members are not idiots. And because they're not idiots, the heroes are raised up in our eyes since they have to struggle to outlast them.

Overall...a clever little actioner that shows a lot of what made John Carpenter the mega-super-star he was in the late 70's and early 80's, a film that can be looked at as a blueprint for future films in his ouvre.