30 Years Ago: John Carpenter's Village of the Damned (1995)

"God said let us make man in our own image after our likeness. But image does not mean outer image, or every statue or photograph would be man. It means the inner image, the spirit, the soul...but what of those in our midst who do not have individual souls or spirits?...They have the look of man, but not the nature of mankind."

- Reverend George (Mark Hamill) discusses "the children" of Midwich in John Carpenter's Village of the Damned.

John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned is a remake of the beloved 1960 black-and-white classic directed by Wolf Rilla (itself an adaptation of John Wyndham’s book: The Midwich Cuckoos). 

All three productions focus on children of extra-terrestrial origin, and the world's response to these changelings.

The J.C. film dramatizes the story of a sleepy town in scenic, quiet Southern California. On the day of the annual town picnic, something unseen and malicious moves quietly over the placid, wide-open skies of Midwich. The presence of this invisible interloper is just barely perceived by some locals, including Dr. Alan Chafee (Christopher Reeve). But -- by and large -- it remains undetected...moving on a secret agenda.

Then, at 10:00 am, the object strikes. Everyone within the town boundaries of Midwich falls inexplicably unconscious. When the citizenry spontaneously awakens at 4:00 pm, all the women of child-rearing age are…pregnant. Even the town virgin. Even the faithfully married woman whose husband (Peter Jason) has been away in Japan for several months.

Before long, a secretive employee of the United States Government, Dr. Verner (Kirstie Alley) arrives in Midwich and encourages the pregnant women to carry their babies to term with the promise of Federal funding.

The women – perhaps affected by alien brainwashing – keep the babies. We experience one of these possibly alien brainwashing dreams too: a strange vision of euphoric emotions and roiling storm clouds. The women are garbed in simple garments and they caress their abdomens with a sense of exaltation.

In nine months, the mystery children of Midwich are born, and though they initially appear human, the platinum-haired children possess a distinctive “hive” or group intelligence. They also lack all human emotions. 

Over the ensuing six or seven years, the children separate themselves from the human citizenry of Midwich (even their parents) and protect themselves from human interference with terrifying psycho-kinetic abilities. In short, these alien children can “persuade” the weak human mind to commit terrible acts of violence; acts including suicide. The townspeople come to hate the children, just as the children come to regard humans as inferior.

Unfortunately, the children grow more powerful over time, led by Chafee’s icy daughter, Mara (Lindsey Haun). Sensing a losing battle, Dr. Verner finally reveals the childrens’ true alien nature to Chafee. Now their school teacher, Chafee attempts to destroy the emotionless alien progeny before their influence can spread beyond Midwich.

Only one of the children, named David (Thomas Dekker), seems to possess a human side. Perhaps this is so because his female “twin” or partner died in childbirth years earlier. That intense sense of loss has granted David a first-hand understanding of loneliness, and the human quality of “empathy.”

Hive Mind: One Size Fits All in This Village

There are many aspects of this particular Carpenter film that just don’t seem to work as well as they should; and these problems all stem from one particular creative decision: the apparent necessity of transplanting the events of the drama from an isolated, homogeneous English village in the 1960s to modern, diverse America in the 1990s. 

In other words, many of the problems exist at a script level; or at the level of intention.

For instance, in a small, isolated English community of decades past, it is possible to believe that all the villagers attend the same church, and are of the same religious persuasion. Somehow, we can accept the uniform nature of the indigenous population in that foreign, slightly timeless setting.

In John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned, however, there is just one church and one priest (played by Mark Hamill) in Midwich, and all the new mothers without exception even attend the same “mass Baptism” service. This may sound like a small matter, but it means -- essentially -- that there are no Jews, no Muslims, and no Atheists in Midwich. Just Christians. And Christians all of the same denomination, apparently.

Again, that just doesn’t quite ring true. I live in small town North Carolina, and all around me there are people of various ethnicities, religions, and political beliefs. On a purely human level, would every mother and father involved agree to a mass baptism instead of an individual one?

I call this the “one-size fits all” dilemma, and it extends even beyond the film's central narrative to the very appearance of the children themselves. In the original film, the children wore ascetic-looking clothing that was contextually accurate to a life in the 1960s (and England). The clothing read to our eyes as “gray” or “black” because, simply, the film was shot in black-and-white. Again, there's a timeless quality to it.

In John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned, the Midwich children – all from different families – universally wear similar gray clothes, but a color world surrounds them. I understand that the filmmakers were groping for an “equivalent” look to that which was utilized in the 1960s original, but it’s a “one size fits all” solution that doesn’t make sense on more than a surface level.

Are viewers to assume these children – at age 7 – have no older (human) half-brothers and sisters in their families, and therefore no hand-me-downs to wear? 

That the children shop at the nearest Gap, but that their parents only purchase slate-gray outfits for them?

Even if the parents were forced to somehow purchase only gray clothes, it seems likely that someone might comment on this oddity. You could argue that there is a distinct leitmotif in the film concerning "eyes." It is the eyes which are the source of the alien power; and Mara and Chafee discuss eyes being "windows of the soul." Perhaps the gray clothes result from the fact that the children are color blind. That's a shot in the dark, however. The film does not establish that idea even indirectly. You get the feeling that this was a visual decision, to garb all the children in grays (in a color world), and it doesn't quite make logical sense.

That kind of unquestioned, “one size fits all” thinking is all over Village of the Damned. Take for instance, the impressive night-time shot of the caravan heading to the hospital. Car headlights stretch over the horizon as the delivery date finally arrives. Again, a beautiful composition and a great visual, but we are made to understand that the pregnant women deliver at exactly the same time on the same night?

I understand the women have been implanted by aliens, but the aliens are gestating inside the bodies of human women; and those human bodies are individual. Each one is unique. I assume that during their pregnancies, the mothers-to-be had different diets and different exercise regimens, for example. 

Seems to me those factors would also determine how fast or how strongly the baby develops in each woman. Just like all the children wearing gray, or all the denizens of Midwich attending the same Church, this mass exodus to the hospital reeks of plot contrivance. On a simpler level, is it believable that every woman would still be living in the same town at delivery time, anyway? (Again, that could be a stipulation for the Federal funding, but that’s not established in the text of the film.)

And, as I belabored in my book, The Films of John Carpenter, the plot of Village of the Damned clearly encompasses several years. By my reckoning at least seven or eight years pass, considering the age of the children by the film’s climax. And yet there is no on-screen indication that time has passed for any characters other than the children. The Washington Post review picked up on this and noted that Carpenter shows "no grasp of character development, plot line or time passage," (Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, April 28, 1995).

Just think for a moment how greatly technology has changed in the last few years ors. Think of how different your street looks today than it did eight years ago. Look in a mirror and judge yourself for a second: even the healthiest amongst us “ages” in eight years in a variety of ways and I’ll testify to this: having a baby ages you faster than any force in the world.

But seriously, fashions change, hair-cuts change, people move from one home to another, and people gain and lose weight over the years. Yet, Village of the Damned skips over seven or eight years in the blink of an eye, and adult characters don’t change at all. Not what they wear; not how they style their hair; nothing!

For once in a Carpenter film, the action scenes aren’t particularly well-handled either. They come across as minor and not particularly scary. One character is injured when she is forced to squeeze painful medical drops into her eyes. Oh no, not painful eyedrops!

That incident may have read as dramatic on the page, but on the screen it just seems, well…silly.

Some of the pacing seems off too. Carpenter does well with the film’s climax: with Chafee blocking his thoughts (with images of a brick wall) from the children; even as a bomb ticks down to destruction. But the scene leading up to that finale -- a sustained assault on the children by local police and a helicopter -- seems entirely unnecessary. For one thing, we know the government is going to bomb the dickens out of Midwich anyway (because that’s what they did with the other “colonies"), so why bother to send police forces in on the ground where they’ll just be cannon fodder? 

For another thing, how do the children make a helicopter pilot (at night, no less) crash his chopper? Another moment, involving Midwich-ers of the 1990s spontaneously taking up torches (!) on Main Street also seems very off. 

Torches? Really? In 1995 America?

Village of the Damned fails because of the relentless accumulation of little things like these aforementioned points. By itself, not one of these issues is enough to scuttle the film.But taken in combination, the film seems slap-dash; careless. 

Writing in Magill's Cinema Annual of 1996, Kirby Tepper noted that while Village of the Damned was well-intentioned, something was missing. He called the film "a bit shallow," and noted that the "lack of depth in the film can be seen in its campy dialogue and its discrepancies." Although I disagree, to an extent on the comment about dialogue, I agree with the rest of that criticism. Something just feels...off.

Why Can’t We Just Live Together? Race Relations in America and in Midwich

On my first viewing, the most troublesome aspect of John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned was its apparent (and bland) passing-over of an important hot-button issue during the Age of Clinton: reproductive rights.

After all, Village of the Damned concerns women forcibly impregnated during an alien rape, who all decide to carry their pregnancies to term.

I just felt that the film left the whole issue of reproductive rights entirely unexcavated. When does society consider it right to “terminate” a pregnancy? Is life sacred, no matter what the origin? As I wrote in The Films of John Carpenter, I felt that the movie missed so many possibilities and opportunities by avoiding the issue of abortion all together.

Today, upon reading this complaint, I realize that I was reviewing the film I had expected and hoped for, rather than the film that was made. And that's not fair. John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned does indeed concern a hot-button issue of the 1990s, but it isn’t reproductive rights. Rather, it is race relations. This is entirely appropriate given some of the startling events of the decade.

On March 3, 1991, for instance, a twenty-five year old black man, Rodney King, was stopped by officers of the LAPD for speeding while attempting to dodge a traffic ticket. The policemen beat Mr. King so savagely that one eye socket was shattered, one leg was broken, a cheekbone was fractured, and some of his fillings were knocked loose from his teeth.

Soon after the event, CNN re-played the amateur videotaping of that beating around the clock. When a poll was conducted about the incident, some 92% of Los Angeles residents believed that the very men sworn to protect and serve the community had utilized excessive force on this occasion. Frankly, it was hard to see it otherwise: King was outnumbered by the police, and didn’t seem to be putting up much by way of resistance. And certainly not after the beating began. Yet on April 29, 1992, the four police officers most deeply-involved in the beating of Rodney King were acquitted of all wrongdoing by a jury of peers. As a result, Los Angeles…exploded.

A riot ensued on April 29, 1992 – the worst in American history -- in which 3800 buildings were vandalized, thousands of buildings were burned, and property damage spiraled to a cost of one billion dollars. Fifty-three people were killed. On TV, we saw looters and worse. We saw a trucker, Reginald Denny, pulled from his cab and attacked on live television. Sixty percent of the buildings destroyed in the Los Angeles riots belonged to Korean-Americans.

So it wasn’t just the King verdict that had sparked this conflagration. Something else had been unleashed. Hatred begat hatred, begat hatred, again and again, across the diverse population of Los Angeles. A shaken Rodney King timidly went before a camera crew in an attempt to curb the violence.

He famously asked: "Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?...It’s just not right. It’s not right."

That question -- "can we get along?" -- is the very question that appears to underline Village of the Damned, produced just two years after the L.A. riots.  Late in the film, a character involved in the racially-charged battle between the alien children and defensive mankind asks - in a clear echo of King's appeal - “Why can’t we just live together?”

Examine the scenario closely, and you can detect how this remake involves two races in one society jockeying for superiority .and survival. Even young David feels intense race-based pressure to conform to his kind, to side with, essentially, his “skin color.” Meanwhile, the majority race (the humans) fear that which is new, different and “alien” among them. They fear a loss of humanity’s role as the master of the planet. The humans want to protect what which is theirs, and which has always been theirs: the “human” way of life. They want things to be as they have been traditionally (and hence, theirs is the conservative, safeguard argument). By contrast, the minority (the alien children) views the same battle not in terms of “hate” but rather as a “biological imperative,” a stand for their own culture; which is in danger of being  assimilated or destroyed by the larger, more powerful culture

In the end, standing between these two entrenched racial viewpoints is -- literally -- a brick wall that seemingly cannot be breached. Chafee talks about competition vs. cooperation, and the superiority of human emotions, but even he is not impartial in his judgment. His prejudices are already set in stone. Mara – the leader of the children – calls him “a prisoner of his values.” She is thus arguing for a progressive cause: an acceptance of a new viewpoint outside that which is traditional and known. 

The children (violently) stand up for their way of life (“there are going to be changes...”) while the adults of Midwich attempt to kill or bully them. Religion turns them into a convenient scapegoat, and the Reverend of Midwich compares them to devils, or demons. George Buck Flower, appearing in a cameo, attempts to frighten and intimidate the children, telling them directly, “you ain’t right!” The children fight back with lethal, ugly, force.

Viewed in terms of race relations, one can start to see how some of Village of the Damned's apparent weaknesses are mitigated, at least a little. It even seems necessary that the adults are treated in as monolithic a fashion as the children (as merely humans, rather than as Catholics, atheists, Jews, liberals or conservatives) because every little difference begins to take away from the central metaphor. It is much more important to see the battle as being between humans on one side and the children on the other.

Even the distinguishing features of the aliens – those trademark gray clothes and bad platinum wigs – visually characterize the race “differences” we are meant to note. 

And the lethargic, overlong police attack on the children? In some way that too reflects the specifics of a race war: the law enforcement arm of the Majority has come to wipe out the minority. It’s Rodney King all over again, only here Rodney King is telekinetic, mad and quite capable of defending himself. And when the children riot, it is bloody...

And consider this too…perhaps the townspeople of Midwich are picking up those objectionable torches, willy-nilly, because they’re going to a “high-tech” genre lynching (President Bush Sr.'s description of another racially-tinged event of the 1990s: the 1991 confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas). The image of the torch is resonant in American history, and consistent with the racial motif. The torch explicitly reminds one of a KKK rally, or some such thing: of a mad mob out to destroy the reviled “other,” the “outsider” living in “our town.”

Although many townspeople and the Children die in the film, Village of the Damned is not without hope on the subject of race relations. David shows the capacity for love and other “human emotions” and is thus a bridge between man and alien...the hope for the future. Interestingly, he character of David was not featured in the original film, and therefore one must conclude that he was added here -- in a turbulent time -- so as to show that a peace was possible between the races; that race different need not necessarily end in riot, death or assimilation.

Maybe all the awkward, weird elements of Village of the Damned actually further the film’s leitmotif of a looming race war; of race intolerance and hatred in America. 

We Have Become Accustomed to the Power of Science

Nearly all of John Carpenter’s films feature some strong anti-authoritarian message. Prince of Darkness and Vampires take aim at the Catholic Church. Escape from L.A. and They Live go after the Republican Party, and even Halloween exposes “holes” in our apparently safe infrastructure (law enforcement, medicine, parents, psychology…). 

Village of the Damned is no different, but here the target of Carpenter’s maverick streak seems to be irresponsible, grasping science.

It is irresponsible science that allows the alien children to grow inside human women, out of “curiosity.” It is irresponsible science (represented by Alley's Verner) that keeps the secret of the aliens for so long, from the affected populace. It is alien science, of course, responsible for the strangest experimentation of all: the implantation of alien embryos into human wombs.

This anti-science message was part and parcel of the 1990s too. The X-Files (1993-2002) concerned, rather explicitly, alien experiments involving human gestation (in episodes such as "The Beginning" and in the first feature film, Fight The Future). Episodes such as "Soft Light" revealed the danger of forward-pushing science carried too far too fast. 

This whole philosophy of "tampering in God's domain" again came into vogue because of rapid technological advances in the 1990s. This was the era that saw Big Blue beat a chess master, cloning become a reality, and the development of the human genome project.

 But what was the moral authority behind such science? If you reject the race war analysis of Village of the Damned, you might consider in its stead, the film as an anti-science screed, one concerning the danger of genetic experiments carried to – literally – Aryan ends (blond haired, physically-perfect white children are the result). These Aryans wear uniforms (the gray outfits) that visually recall the uniformity of Hitler Youth. The children are also frighteningly dispassionate in the pursuit of their goals.

Sometimes Mysteries Don’t Get Solved

Village of the Damned is not a great film. However, like all works of art, it reflects the issues of its day (the mid 1990s), whether that issue is the blazing pace of scientific advancement or turbulent race relations. For me, the film has never quite worked as more than the sum of its parts; but studying it in terms of the race aspect has proven illuminating. 

There is another facet of Village of the Damned I more thoroughly appreciate now than I did on original viewing: the visual component. 

In particular, the first half of Village of the Damned is very strong. The movie opens as an alien shadow goes by overhead, in a series of menacing aerial shots. On the soundtrack, we hear an inhuman whispering…like a storm is slowly building; like something is watching. Carpenter handles this section of the film deftly, generating a strong sense of paranoia and also voyeurism. The aliens are among us – chattering – but we don’t see them. 

In her review of the film, critic Janet Maslin praised Carpenter's staging of this opening, noting that Village of the Damned "has one of the eeriest opening sequences in horror history." (The New York Times, April 28, 1995).

Carpenter’s macabre sense of humor is also entirely intact here. One of my favorite moments involves the Midwich fellow cooking hot dogs at the Town Picnic. Last year he burned the hot dogs, goes the gossip. This year ,however, he falls asleep on the grill during the time of the alien “black out” – and burns himself to a crisp. When the picnic-goers awake, Carpenter cuts to a shot of the grill and we see a smoking, flame-broiled human form splayed out there. This is wicked fun, pure and simple, and the kind of nightmarish vision we expect in a carefully-crafted Carpenter film.

Many Carpenter films look better across the passage of years, as the director’s neo-classic virtues stand out more and more from today's interchangeable, TV-style movies. Ultimately, I submit that is also the case for Village of the Damned. Carpenter’s skill behind the camera makes a difference, and elevates the film. 

In the final analysis, Village of the Damned may not be a good film. But thanks to Carpenter’s visual aplomb, it at least looks like a good film.

On some days that’s enough...

Cult-TV Movie Review: Someone's Watching Me (1978)

Originally titled High Rise, this made-for-TV movie from director John Carpenter stars Lauren Hutton as Leigh Michaels, a headstrong, single, career woman who moves into Los Angeles' impressive Arkham Towers.

Arkham is a state-of-the-art (for 1978) apartment building replete with computer-controlled air-conditioning, high-tech elevators, "eighty miles of wiring and cables" and boasting a restaurant in the foyer, a gift shop, even a wedding chapel in the lobby.

Despite such "modern" conveniences, TV-director Leigh finds herself targeted and pursued by a dedicated and obsessive technological stalker, one who operates from a safe distance with the very latest tools of the trade: electronic surveillance devices, telescopes, tape recorders, walkie-talkies and the like.

In a way, it's the "flip side" of Halloween. Because here, the killer doesn't need a knife to do damage. The telephone will do just fine.

The film's central notion, well-captured by the young Carpenter (who also wrote the teleplay), is that - as Hutton's Philosophy professor boyfriend (David Birney) opines -- "we insulate our lives" and "guard our spaces," but technology can bring terror home; to our very hearths.

The invisible stalker, Birney suggests, is "trying to hurt" Leigh "without touching" her.

Or, as Leigh's lesbian friend, Sophie (Adrienne Barbeau) aptly describes the situation: "rape is when a man consciously keeps a woman in fear."

This is a premise that carries a new meaning, certainly, in the 21^st century, with the advent of social media and ubiquitous iPhones. We have seen, just in the last few years, how these tools are harnessed to diminish and bully women.  See Gamergate for just one example.

As a filmmaker, Carpenter is a neo-classicist, an old-fashioned visually-skilled auteur who here -- instead of evoking Howard Hawks (as in Assault on Precinct [1976]) -- suggests the canon of that master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.  For example, th film opens with a Saul-Bass style opening credits scene that could have been ripped right from Psycho (1960). The credits are accompanied by Harry Sukman's Herrmann-esque score, which squawks like Psycho too.

Also, the film involves the pursuit of a woman by an unseen killer, and there are plenty of Hitchcockian red herrings among the characters to keep things lively, including a "slick man" who accosts Leigh at night, an obnoxious co-worker named Steve who doesn't take "no" for an answer, and the odd horticulturist who lives across from Leigh, in the parallel building called Blake Towers.

Each one of these men could be the long-distance stalker, and Carpenter wrangles maximum (for TV...) suspense out of the killer’s identity. In one telling shot that evokes the best tenets of film grammar, the killer tells Leigh he can see her through her open window, and she retreats whimpering to the sheltered bathroom, to a tight, confined space between toilet and bathtub, Carpenter's camera adopts an overhead angle. It's as though we're gazing down at Leigh in a fishbowl, which is precisely what the comfortable apartment has become for this woman. Her privacy has been stolen from her.

Carpenter's telefilm also cogently suggests the anonymous, disconnected and isolating manner of modern metropolitan life.

An early shot at street-level reveals a group of cars traveling in one direction endlessly, not unlike lemmings. 

Who's in them? Where are they going? Could one of the drivers be the stalker? 

These are the questions the uncomfortable composition suggests.

The film also pauses during scene transitions to include views of gleaming skyscrapers, ones with mirrored windows.

In other words, you can't see in; can't see what's behind the panes. All we see is ourselves, looking in; reflected. The identity of others (like the stalker...) are protected.  This also seems like an uncanny premonition about our modern culture. Social media is about seeing ourselves in a positive light; about narcissism.

Two things tend to date Someone's Watching Me!

The first is the film's technology. The surveillance devices, tape recorders and telephones all appear antique today, in the world of micro-technology, apps, wi-fi and the like. It's up to the minute for the late 1970s.  But watching the film, you can't help but realize how far we've come.

And yet -- simultaneously -- that's a reckoning that supports the film's thesis too. Via the Internet (and faxes before it), and cell phones and beepers and the like, technology has infiltrated our homes in ways deeper than Carpenter -- or anyone -- would have imagined in the disco decade. Today, it's even easier for a stalker to "get in" while simultaneously remaining "far away."  This is actually the premise of a brilliant Black Mirror episode, “Shut up and Dance,” in 2016.

The second aspect of Someone's Watching Me that's aged, but which – personally-speaking -- I enjoyed, is the idea of having a character, in this case Hutton's Leigh, voice her fears as a running, external monologue. This device recurs in Halloween: we are often privy there to Laurie Strode's (Curtis's) thoughts. She has a running dialogue, calling herself “kiddo,” and the like.

Today, we might decry this running verbal soliloquy as stilted or dated, but again, it's right from the Marion Crane/Psycho playbook. It's a nice window into Leigh's thoughts in Someone’s Watching Me, but today we'd consider the device "hokey."

It's interesting to consider Leigh Michaels, as played by Lauren Hutton, because she represents the late-1970s ideal of the liberated American woman.

She's depicted as "kooky" but extremely smart; professional but with an off-kilter sense of humor. She reserves the right to say "no" but is also sexually aggressive when it suits her. Because she is a single, career woman in a "man's business," Leigh is also disbelieved by the authorities when she reports the nature of her stalking (which includes phone calls, and unauthorized visits to her apartment while she's at work.).

This allows for a "don't cry wolf" kind of subtext to the telefilm, but the point is exactly what Leigh says: "Whenever I get around to telling the truth, no one believes me." 

Someone's Watching Me! suggests that this happens because Leigh has stepped out of the "traditional" role of women in society. She can't be believed or trusted because she's sexually aggressive and unmarried, a heterosexual woman "making it on her own." Society has already dismissed her before the killer first sets his telescopic sights and sites on her.

Leigh's only friend, noticeably, is a gay woman, another female "outsider." Sophie believes Leigh where the men  -- the police -- don't.

The notion of voyeurism, the terrain of fellow Hitchcock heir Brian De Palma (see 1984's Body Double...), is also vetted carefully in Someone's Watching Me!, making it a sort of latter-day Rear Window (1954).

There are plenty of telling shots here adopting the perspective of the telescope lens as it peers in at other apartments, at women going about their business...unaware that they are being visually stalked. Carpenter alternates between this "remote" view of invaded personal lives with a series of stunning, desperate, faster-than-usual P.O.V. subjective shots symbolizing Leigh's "eyes." These occur as she finds her personal space (her apartment) violated by an unwanted visitor.

Had Someone's Watching Me! been made for the cinema, it would likely have been scarier than it is; but it's still one of the very best TV-movies of the era, in part because Carpenter's screenplay is filled with ideas about "modern" life in the disco decade; the change in women's roles in our society; the easy availability of technology, the isolating nature of city life, and the like.

These ideas make the perfect background for a solid thriller in the Hitchcockian vein, even if -- occasionally -- you'll marvel at how much things have changed since the era of Jimmy Carter and the ERA.

Technology continues to invade our homes, unabated, and the question becomes: is it still victimizing us today?   I’d have to say that it is, and to a much more significant degree.

Note: The avid Carpenter fan will find plenty of the director's trademark touches here, but also some direct references to his next project, 1980's The Fog. For example,The building across from Arkham is called Blake Towers. Blake, as you will recall, is the name of the Leper Leader in The Fog. Also, the first victim of the stalker in Someone's Watching Me! is named Elizabeth Solley. That's also the name of Jamie Lee Curtis's character in The Fog.

Cult-Movie Review: Dark Star (1974)

Conceived as Planetfall, Dark Star (1974) is the first film of director John Carpenter and writer Dan O’Bannon. The film began as a student project at U.S.C. in 1970, with principal photography occurring early in 1971. 

The film underwent re-shoots in 1972 to extend the fifty-minute production to eighty-minutes, and to make it viable for a theatrical release. The film was then purchased by Jack H. Harris (The Blob [1958]), who demanded additional re-shoots. The film finally premiered in 1975, and met with positive reviews, but relatively little audience appreciation.

Regardless of its origin as a student film, Dark Star is today considered a cult-classic.  Its low-budget nature does not take away significantly from the film’s success in part because it is clear the filmmakers had both a creative strategy, and an example to follow.  

In short, Dark Star is the anti-2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  As a work of (caustic) 1970s art, it knowingly draws all the opposite conclusions about space travel, mankind, and man’s place or role in the universe. In so cleverly over-turning the 2001 apple cart, Dark Star not only lives up to its title, it remains one of the funniest science fiction films made in the 1970s.

“Don’t give me any of that intelligent life crap. Just give me something I can blow up.”

Eighteen parsecs from Earth in Sector EB-90, the spaceship Dark Star continues its apparently un-ending mission: to destroy unstable planets in order to pave the way for human colonization. 

Unfortunately, the ship has grappled with some severe damage recently, and the newly promoted captain, Doolittle (Narelle) is ill-prepared when one of the ship’s thermonuclear bombs prepares to detonate while still attached to the underbelly of the ship.  Dark Star’s computer suggests teaching the bomb the study of Phenomenology. 

While Doolittle grapples with this existential crisis, Sergeant Pinback (Dan O’Bannon) battles a mischievous alien pet that has escaped from captivity and Lt. Talby (Dre Pahich) dreams of seeing the mysterious Phoenix Asteroids with his own eyes…

“Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?”

Dark Star is an outer space comedy that succeeds brilliantly on the basis of a very good, well-told joke. Visually, thematically, and in terms of philosophy, the film cleverly operates as the antithesis of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Being the “Anti-2001” may sound like a relatively simple or juvenile thing, but actually the opposite is true considering how consistently Carpenter and O’Bannon’s film develops its world-view.  By creating a world so clearly and deliberately the inverse of Kubrick’s vision, Dark Star’s creators have fashioned an intelligent and challenging response to that beloved science fiction film, one that meaningfully re-evaluates mankind’s nature and his place in the universe.

In brief, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a majestic, stately picture that establishes the mysteries of the universe in the form of the monolith, but which also suggests that man’s progress over time possesses a shape and a purpose; moving from ape-like primitive to evolved star child. 

By contrast, Dark Star suggests the absolute absurdity and pointlessness of the human existence, and therefore of the universe itself.  Right down the line, element-to-element Dark Star mirrors and parodies 2001’s sense of “cosmic purpose” with its own sense of man’s irrelevance in the scheme of things, as well as his general pettiness.

In Kubrick’s 2001, the space age is beautiful, stately, wondrous and because of man’s intended destiny, even ordered.  The spaceship and space station interiors are depicted as roomy and minimalist, and the incredible visuals of space vessels in flight -- docking and landing -- are sometimes accompanied by instances of classical music such as the Blue Danube Waltz, a composition that suggests the formal, dance-like nature of objects in space, and in motion.  

2001’s “theme song” as it might even be considered is “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” a formal composition by Richard Strauss (1864 – 1949) which again, primarily denotes order.  As Kenneth Von Gunden and Stuart H. Stock wrote in in Twenty All-Time Great Science Fiction Films (Crown; 1982, page 190), the composition:

“…opens with an ascending phrase of three notes…which represent Nietzcshe’s view of the evolutionary rise of man…These three notes serve note that the number three is essential to the film: from the perfect alignment of the three spheres of Earth, Moon, and sun at the beginning to the appearance of things in threes.”

Dark Star’s first anti-2001 conceit is to adopt country music -- the vernacular of personal stories and human emotions -- as its theme song.  The country music genre is not generally symbolic in nature, but literal in its storytelling of failed love affairs or a relationship now lost.  So where Kubrick utilizes his music to suggest the transcendent and ordered nature of space travel, Dark Star’s theme, “Benson, Arizona” by Bill Taylor evokes nothing of grandeur or cosmic importance.

The lyrics of “Benson, Arizona” explicitly involve the long separation between an astronaut and his Earthbound love, a love that connects that astronaut not to the future (and evolution), but the traditional past.  

This connection is like a tether, dragging him back to earthbound concerns and therefore precluding the chance for growth or transcendence.  Dan O’Bannon noted this context when he said in an interview that the astronauts’ days aboard Dark Star were sad and ridiculous.

The specific comparison between 2001 and Dark Star involves the nature of life on a ship traveling in space.  In A Space Odyssey, the crewmen fly the roomy Discovery towards a rendezvous with destiny near Jupiter.  In Dark Star, the unkempt astronauts fly their ship, the Dark Star on an endless quest across the galaxy to destroy unstable planets.   One journey is, in keeping with the name of the ship, about “discovery.”  The other is about death and destruction…about “blowing things up.”

In the course of these journeys, both men are contacted by home, and again, Dark Star makes a point of inverting the themes featured in Kubrick’s film.  In 2001, a news anchor for BBC-12’s “The World Tonight” interviews astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) about life on ship.  There is a time lag of approximately seven minutes because Discovery is 80 million miles away.  But meaningful conversation about life in space is still possible…just delayed.

Dark Star opens with a message from McMurdo Base on Earth as a military officer contacts the crew and notes that there is a ten year time lag in conversation because Dark Star is 18 parsecs distant from Earth, a gap that makes any meaningful conversation impossible.  In 2001, the “entire world” joins the BBC interviewer in wishing Dave and Frank a “safe and successful journey” to the stars.  Dark Star’s communique to Earth, by contrasts gets play in “prime time” and “good reviews in the trade,” but the actual content of the message from home is negative.  Earth will not be sending replacement radiation shields to the damaged ship, because of budget cuts and the vast distance separating the ship and the home world.

Both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dark Star also comment on “intelligent” devices and their relationship with mankind.  In the former film, the mellifluous-voiced HAL 9000 becomes murderous on the journey to Jupiter, and must be de-activated.  Under Dave’s auspices, man re-asserts his rightful control over the machine (thus symbolically conquering technology; the latest in the line of tools since the ape-man through that bone into the sky in the film’s prologue…) and then heads off to evolve via the stargate/monolith “trip.” 

Once more, Dark Star inverts that very premise.

Here, the crewmen of the Dark Star must interact with a talking bomb, one who is convinced that it must detonate (following an accident aboard ship which activates it) and thus kill everyone.  The ship’s acting captain, the appropriately-named Doolittle (Narrelle), -- who all-things considered would rather be surfing – must teach the bomb Phenomenology in order to prevent it from self-actuating and detonating.  After the bomb learns Phenomenology -- the study of consciousness, essentially -- it becomes an ego-maniac, convinced that it is the only sentient being in the universe.  The bomb decides that it is God and before detonating declares “Let There Be Light.” 

In other words, in Dark Star, man does not conquer his technology.  Instead, he is eclipsed and destroyed by it. Technology supersedes man, and man does not evolve…he is destroyed.  Dark Star even re-parses the transcendental stargate sequence of 2001 to its own ends. It is notable too that the bomb adopts the self-image of man: as destroyer.  The ship’s mission was to blow up planets, and now the bomb will blow up man, a variation of that mission.

In Kubrick’s film, Bowman endures a “cosmic trip,” and the aging process, and then is re-born as the evolved “star child.  There’s a cosmic trip” in Dark Star too, but it is not transcendental in nature.  A crewman named Talby (Pahich) joins the glowing, colorful “Phoenix Asteroids” and becomes indistinguishable from them.  The message is hence that man is not unique and special -- he is not a delicate snow-flake -- but rather part and parcel of a vast, meaningless universe, and in some ways just another grain of sand inhabiting it. 

Doolittle, meanwhile also meets his distinctly not transcendental end. He surfs into the atmosphere of a planet…and burns up. His point of greatest self-actuation is reliving his favorite form of leisure…a hobby.

Up and down, Dark Star functions so colorfully and so amusingly because it undercuts and reverses the premises of the grand Kubrick film again and again.  In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Discovery is a perfectly-ordered technological paradise featuring very few signs of human character or individuality.  The Dark Star’s living quarters, by contrast, look like a messy dorm room.  The Discovery is so spacious that Frank Poole can jog alone through a vast circular track.  The Dark Star, by contrast, is so small that its crew literally possesses no elbow room on the bridge.

The men of Dark Star are also not the brave, resourceful astronauts we have come to expect from efforts like 2001 or Star Trek.  Talby sits alone on the observation deck, isolated from the crew.  Pinback can’t be bothered to feed his alien pet.  Doolittle would rather dream about surfing in Malibu than handle the ship’s problems. Even the injured captain, Powell -- who is kept stored barely alive in some kind of cryogenic freeze unit -- is more interested in his hobby (baseball in general, and the Dodgers specifically) than in helping the ship survive a crisis.  The evolution of man does not seem like much of a possibility with these characters as the spearhead for the future age, does it?

Even visually, Dark Star plays knowingly as a mirror reflection of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  In Stanley Kubrick’s film, the Discovery first passes on the screen from left to right, a visual short-hand for a journey outward.  In John Carpenter’s Dark Star, the ship passes from right to left, thus implying a journey back rather than forward.  Since the film concerns man’s inability to transcend petty concerns and specific incidents (reflected in the use of country music as well as the crew’s petty demeanor), the idea transmitted is that mankind is forever journeying, but not really heading anywhere of import.

There’s an old truism about movie-making that goes: the best way to criticize a film is to make another film yourself.  In some crucial and cerebral fashion, Dark Star epitomizes that notion, and note-for-note, it overturns the premises and ideas of the grand 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

If the 1970s is truly the wake-up from the hippie dream, as my friend and mentor, Johnny Byrne used to insist, then Dark Star is pointedly the wake-up from the 2001 dream; an acknowledgment of the absurd and pointless nature of man’s existence…even in the Space Age.

Television and Cinema Verities: John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) Edition

"I screened the final cut [of Halloween], minus sound effects and music, for a young executive from 20th Century-Fox (I was interviewing for another possible directing job). She wasn't scared at all. I then became determined to "save it with the music."

- John Carpenter discusses one movie executive's response to his first cut of Halloween (1978), in the liner notes of the films soundtrack album, from Varese Sarabande. "A Note from the Director and Composer," by John Carpenter, February 5, 1983.

At Anorak: The Five Most Underrated John Carpenter Movies

My latest article, now posted at Anorak, tallies up the five most under-appreciated John Carpenter movies.

As all readers here know, I have long been an admirer of Carpenter's output, and consider him a truly great genre director.  I believe his films are superbly-crafted, and thus stand the test of time.

Here's a snippet of the article:

JOHN Carpenter’s film career has had its critical ups and downs, but time – the final arbiter of success, perhaps – has been almost universally kind to the vast majority of his cinematic work.

Reviled upon release in the summer of Spielberg’s E.T., John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is now revered as a horror classic and a work of art superior to the Howard Hawks film of 1951.

Similarly, Carpenter’s anti-yuppie battle cry, They Live (1988) has been re-evaluated as an ahead-of-its time masterpiece about the imminent death of the middle class in America, and “vulture capitalists” picking at its bones.

Even In the Mouth of Madness (1994), dismissed on original release as lesser-Carpenter, is widely considered now to be the finest interpretation of the Lovecraft aesthetic yet committed to film.

Why do Carpenter’s films age so well, and thus almost universally merit serious re-examination?

In part this pattern repeats because his neo-classical visualizations — his understanding of where to place the camera for maximum visceral and artistic impact — compares so favorably to the modern green-screen “fix-it-in-post” approach to modern movie-making.

And in part this occurs because Carpenter’s work is admirably consistent. His canon features what might be readily termed an umbrella of unity.  In particular, the director almost universally contextualizes his films as Westerns…only as westerns set in unusual settings such as Mars, or at the (supernatural) town of Hobb’s End.

The following five films — including Carpenter’s two most recent works — as yet await the full light of critical study and appreciation, but nonetheless deserve to be spotlighted.  They are, as of right now, Carpenter’s most underrated works of art.

Ask JKM A Question: The Thing Part 3?

Friend and regular reader SGB writes:

"John since we are both John Carpenter fans, I was just wondering if you think THE THING 3 has been set up by the end of the THE THING (2011) prequel to the THE THING(1982) film.

I liked that THE THING (2011) fit as a prequel to the THE THING(1982) exploring both the spaceship crash site and Norwegian camp that Kurt Russell would later do. The way the THE THING (2011) film ended with the beginning of the THE THING(1982)  film was excellent. All set in the year '82.

Now my question is do you think that a potential THE THING 3(201?) has been established to be made if they wanted to?  

It would be still set in '82, I would like to see a sequel to the THE THING(1982)  film with Kurt Russell, Keith David and the survivor Mary Elizabeth Winstead  of the  THE THING (2011) film meeting up on their journey to the previously mentioned Russian camp base for rescue or another encounter with the thing. A perfect trilogy. Kurt Russell and Keith David could reprise their roles with makeup in my opinion."

Thank you for the question, SGB!

Since 2011 and my original mixed review, my appreciation for the prequel, The Thing (2011) has grown a bit. I own the film on blu-ray and have watched it in conjunction with Carpenter's The Thing (1982) a couple of times.  Although I dislike the CGI effects, I feel the prequel is a good faith effort to continue the franchise in terms of spirit and approach, and that the two films generally fit well together.

Now, in regards to The Thing Part 3, I think the sequel you outline would have been possible (maybe even probably) if the prequel had succeeded at the box office.  I know that I have desired to see a John Carpenter-helmed sequel to The Thing since I first saw the 1982 film on a double bill with Ridley Scott's Blade Runner in Los Angeles that long ago summer.

However, the unpleasant reality is that, worldwide, the prequel made only approximately 28 million dollars, on a budget of 38 million dollars.  And that budget figure doesn't include, I assume, marketing costs.  

Now, DVD/Blu-Ray sales also aren't factored in to the worldwide gross figure I noted above, so perhaps the movie broke even on the secondary market, but I wouldn't bet on it.  And that fact, means that no The Thing 3 is in the offing.

Carpenter's The Thing was also a notorious box office bomb in 1982 -- though it seems impossible to believe, now -- and it took thirty years for the world to catch up with the fact that the movie is a masterpiece. 

Although the prequel's reputation will grow in the years ahead, perhaps, I don't feel it will achieve the same blazing trajectory, in part because it owes much of the energy it does possess to (successfully) re-creating the atmosphere of Carpenter's film  And without achieving that "escape velocity," so-to-speak, I just don't think there's going to be an impetus to see the sort of Thing sequel we both desire.

On the other hand, someone could start a Kickstarter campaign to produce The Thing 3.  But I would guess, given the figures for the prequel, thatabout forty-million dollars would have to be raised.  That's a high threhsold, and even the successful Veronica Mars kickstarter was considered a giant success at 5.9 million dollars.

I hope I'm not being a "debbie downer" here, because you know I'm in your corner (and The Thing's corner).  I just feel that Universal Studios wouldn't consider a Thing 3 a viable enterprise at this juncture.  

At some point in the future, someone will no doubt choose to adapt "Who Goes There" one more time, but I feel like it won't be in the language/visualization of the Carpenter version.