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John Carpenter's fantastic voyage >> The horror guru returns with his Western Vampires by MATTHEW HAYS
"There's no political message here," Carpenter said, leaning back in his chair during an interview the day after the screening. "Vampires are a generic idea. Kids know about it--everyone knows the rules. I wanted to explore the band of vampire slayers with this film. What kind of men would do this kind of work?" Woods is perfectly cast as the seasoned lead slayer, quick-witted but clearly burned out by all the old friends lost over so much spilled blood. Daniel Baldwin plays his rough-and-tumble sidekick, who's soon smitten with a vampire slattern after but one bite. Is Baldwin turning over to the other side? Woods' personal loyalties are soon being put to the test, as the two hunt down vampire nests and try to stake to death as many nasties as humanly possible. Vampire virgin For horror buffs, perhaps the biggest surprise about Carpenter's latest is that the genre veteran hasn't done a vampire movie until now. Lord knows, the director, screenwriter and composer has done virtually everything else, from science fiction (Dark Star, Starman, Escape From New York) to Invasion of the Body Snatchers knockoff (They Live) to Stephen King adaptation (Christine) to your basic horror show (The Fog, In the Mouth of Madness). Undoubtedly the film he is best remembered for, however, is Halloween--still considered one of the most influential horror films and one of the most successful independent movies ever made (shot for a mere $300,000, the film netted $75 million worldwide). The minimalist plot depicted the plight of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, in her big-screen debut), a nice teenage babysitter who found herself the target of a rather resilient knife-wielding, mask-wearing killer called Michael Myers. Halloween, of course, set off a cycle of imitations, from the Friday the 13th series to the Nightmare on Elm Street cycle, as well as a slew of pretty darn cheeseball Halloween sequels. According to your tastes, this means Carpenter is either due for a string of medals or a conviction for cultural crimes of Nuremberg proportions. "Yes, Halloween did have ramifications for the industry. But it was part of an evolution. After Psycho, which was the grandaddy of them all, there were all these ripoffs. Halloween, like Psycho, spawned its own industry. I've just always taken that as flattery." Screaming sequels Indeed, Carpenter was approached to direct Halloween: H20, the sequel which picks up 20 years after the second Halloween movie (which Carpenter co-scripted) left off. "Jamie came to me and said, 'Let's get together and do this again.' Miramax, however, was offering little in the way of financial compensation. I thought, 'Why am I doing this all over again?' I struggled with the first film, and I remember that with a lot of fondness, but I don't know if I want to do that all over again. "I can certainly understand why Jamie wanted to revisit Laurie Strode. She always said it was one of the best characters she'd ever played. She got to play an intelligent survivor. She told me, 'In other movies I always have to take my clothes off.'" Surprisingly enough, the latest chapter in horror's evolution, the self-referential slasher inaugurated by the smash success of Scream, isn't one Carpenter is too wild about, despite that film's recurring odes to Halloween. "It's a bit too self-referential for me," said Carpenter. "I want to go someplace where what I see I really believe, like it's actually happening. I was always reminded it was a movie with Scream." Does Carpenter have any time for the onscreen-violence-causes-offscreen-violence arguments? "I have a 14-year-old son and we've shown him just about everything. I've noticed that he's not fascinated by it, particularly. He knows it's fantasy. I think a lot of the problem is with the Saturday morning stuff, where kids are inundated with ads for toys, guns, etc. It seems like the endless aggression there could be a bad thing. But ultimately, I don't think you can blame movies or TV for this. The real cause of aggression comes from home life, parents--the real stuff." And Carpenter maintained that some of the most well-adjusted people he's ever met are horror film directors like himself (George A. Romero is one of his heroes). "One of the things that upsets people most is their own aggression. Your own impulses can be upsetting. Violence in real life numbs you. I get to work it out on the big screen." John Carpenter's Vampires opens and Halloween: H20 reopens Friday, October 30
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The crowd went ballistic last August, when John Carpenter took to the stage to close the Fant-Asia fest with his latest film. John Carpenter's Vampires, a comic horror-Western hybrid, has James Woods as a desperate vampire hunter out to kill off the evil goth-looking bloodsuckers at any personal cost. The plot is slight and inconsequential, but the action sequences, wherein Woods and company face off against the superpowerful living dead, are pure Carpenter: funny, charged and brilliantly choreographed.