Current Events > Favorite John Carpenter movie out of these 10.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Halloween for me.

My top 5:

1. Big Trouble in Little China
2. The Thing
3. The Fog
4. In the Mouth of Madness
5. Prince of Darkness

And leaving out In the Mouth of Madness was a bad move for the poll. That was his last great movie.

The Thing

And in no order

Assault on Precinct 13
They Live
Big Trouble in Little China
Escape from New York
Halloween

Interesting enough I finished re-watching Escape from New York last night up and starting Escape from L.A. tonight. I honestly do not remember any thing about it except maybe there was a basketball game.

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Big Trouble in Little China is a classic.

The Thing is probably my next favorite.

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ArianaGrandSlam posted...

where the fuck is Mouth of Madness, my first pick
where the fuck is Halloween III, my second pick

out of these I'd have to say The Thing, then They Live, then Halloween, then Escape from NY, and then in a distant last Escape from LA. I've yet to see the others.

Didn't direct Halloween 3.

Top 4
Big Trouble in Little China
The Thing
They Live
Escape From New York


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His best movie is Halloween. The Thing rides largely on underdog syndrome, memorability, and the fact that film critics hate the movie at first only to end up appreciating it after the fact while more casual audiences love the idea but largely get lost in the process of the film from A to B.... then theres really weird overlap between those two groups over the years. My lasting gripe with The Thing is that for every amazing special effects shot it has it has an equal number of ones which didnt work. Its a very interesting movie.

Big Trouble in Little China, IMO.

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Assault on Precinct 13 is one of my favorite movies. Seems stupid on paper but it is so good

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The Thing is a masterpiece.

Mouth of Madness also.


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Big Trouble in Little China is a close 2nd or 3rd IMO. You gotta take into account.... Halloween sparked a whole genre of imitators.

Xethuminra posted...

My lasting gripe with The Thing is that for every amazing special effects shot it has it has an equal number of ones which didnt work. Its a very interesting movie.

Curious to see what you meant by this. Can you expand on it. You usually have very good, albeit unique takes.

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The Thing is my favorite, followed by Halloween, then Escape from NY and Assault on Precinct 13. I prefer to pretend that Escape from LA was a mock buster.

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The Thing is my favourite, but it's a solid filmography generally. Even Escape From LA, which is way better than people give it credit for because most of them only remember the surfing scene.


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Vicious_Dios posted...

Curious to see what you meant by this. Can you expand on it. You usually have very good, albeit unique takes.

Its a great way to take the temperature of a viewer, especially a very young or very seasoned audience. To see if they latch onto the premise, can follow what happening, and if they can categorize the moments that work from the ones that dont from the ones that they just kinda like the idea of & separate the movie from maybe why they wanted it to be. The Thing is much bigger than the sum of its parts. Its rarely directly scary. A handful of shots make you jump, but the paranoia of whos it & what would happen if she escaped.... thats the lasting love. So yeah.

But you know on one hand, you got the head falling off and walking away which looks better than Alien tbh and on the other hand you got the guys chest opening up into teeth which is a really cool idea and highly amusing in the way they executed it and has the fear effect but honestly the special effect didnt look good. And then theres guy they burn who acted the part so damn well, but the tentacle hands did not really work out on film. So thats very divisive & honestly this a must-watch & research for any aspiring film-person. But yeah theres tons of things like that. The big debut of Wilford Brimleys monster form at the end is a prime example. The floorboards coming up looked amazing, but again.... when we see its body it just didnt really look all that great in many shots. But the idea of it is fantastic & the execution was so memorable that it sticks and people still think about that monster even though it doesnt really look that believable. Another cool facet is the fact that The Thing monster is an imitation. So,
even when it looks subpar.... there can be this kinda meta or alien element that makes the puppets effective perhaps especially when they look terrible.

The dog kennel scene is a perfect example of the movies DNA. You can barely see it because its dark, and thats scary, and were worried the dogs will come for us but they dont and they set up the dog at the beginning of the movie and then when we get to dissect the dogs corpse it is basically just a lump of trash and the dialogue during the dissection is amazing & memorable and of course whats really dangerous about the dog is the tentacles. Then, I mean.... the design with all the mixed up faces & teeth & stuff became a huge inspiration for designers everywhere. Its a lot of happy accidents too. I could write a whole thing on The Thing lol. The prequel is very interesting as well. What they did left an impression with the audience in more ways than one, but itll never have the same reputation.

Xethuminra posted...

Its a great way to take the temperature of a viewer, especially a very young or very seasoned audience. To see if they latch onto the premise, can follow what happening, and if they can categorize the moments that work from the ones that dont from the ones that they just kinda like the idea of & separate the movie from maybe why they wanted it to be. The Thing is much bigger than the sum of its parts. Its rarely directly scary. A handful of shots make you jump, but the paranoia of whos it & what would happen if she escaped.... thats the lasting love. So yeah.

But you know on one hand, you got the head falling off and walking away which looks better than Alien tbh and on the other hand you got the guys chest opening up into teeth which is a really cool idea and highly amusing in the way they executed it and has the fear effect but honestly the special effect didnt look good. And then theres guy they burn who acted the part so damn well, but the tentacle hands did not really work out on film. So thats very divisive & honestly this a must-watch & research for any aspiring film-person. But yeah theres tons of things like that. The big debut of Wilford Brimleys monster form at the end is a prime example. The floorboards coming up looked amazing, but again.... when we see its body it just didnt really look all that great in many shots. But the idea of it is fantastic & the execution was so memorable that it sticks and people still think about that monster even though it doesnt really look that believable. Another cool facet is the fact that The Thing monster is an imitation. So,
even when it looks subpar.... there can be this kinda meta or alien element that makes the puppets effective perhaps especially when they look terrible.

The dog kennel scene is a perfect example of the movies DNA. You can barely see it because its dark, and thats scary, and were worried the dogs will come for us but they dont and they set up the dog at the beginning of the movie and then when we get to dissect the dogs corpse it is basically just a lump of trash and the dialogue during the dissection is amazing & memorable and of course whats really dangerous about the dog is the tentacles. Then, I mean.... the design with all the mixed up faces & teeth & stuff became a huge inspiration for designers everywhere. Its a lot of happy accidents too. I could write a whole thing on The Thing lol. The prequel is very interesting as well. What they did left an impression with the audience in more ways than one, but itll never have the same reputation.

This whole post is excellent and pretty objectively correct. I've read interviews with Stan Winston in which he says that a lot of the reason for the disjointed special effects was because the original team couldn't get the scale of the models quite right, so they had to use forced perspective camera work which showed the flaws that would be invisible under normal circumstances.

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If it had come from any other filmmaker

blah blah blah

Carpenter

blah blah blah

Shining

The Thing is literally my favorite movie

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I think if Carpenter was going to change gears into anthology for Halloween,

he needed to do it for 2.

but the idea of making a hospital-setting with Michael Myers was so attractive.... and.... it launched his franchise into wanted syndication in other hands, which definitely lined somebodys pockets & stoked the mythos-mind of the audiencebase for years to come (and still
does tbh). Excited for Halloween Kills! Can it pull the trick no other pocket of the franchise has been able to achieve?? 2 good movies in a row pls & thx

I will also say that his Master's of Horror episode, Cigarette Burns, was phenomenal as well.

The Thing is IMO the greatest film ever made, but I'm a huge sucker for great practical effects.

I like The Thing and all, but my god is it ever a meme film. It's starting to annoy me at this point.

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I dont just think The Thing is Carpenters best film, I think its one of historys finest.

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ArianaGrandSlam posted...

where the fuck is Mouth of Madness, my first pick
where the fuck is Halloween III, my second pick

out of these I'd have to say The Thing, then They Live, then Halloween, then Escape from NY, and then in a distant last Escape from LA. I've yet to see the others.

Thing is my second place and season of the witch my 3rd, but otherwise this. Mouth of madness is amazing

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I can't believe I love Halloween as much as I do and I haven't watched any of his other movies.

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MorbidFaithless posted...

I can't believe I love Halloween as much as I do and I haven't watched any of his other movies.

Come on man.

The Thing.

It's always The Thing.

It'll always be The Thing.

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ClunkerSlim posted...

We may be the minority in the poll.
But were right.

Count me in

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I'd rank the ones listed as follows:

Halloween
Escape From New York
The Thing
Christine
Big Trouble In Little China
They Live
The Fog
Assault On Precinct 13
Escape From LA
Vampires

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Glad to see The Thing dominating.

It really got robbed in its initial run. The movie poster made it look like a slasher movie and the shortening of the title from The Thing from Another World probably didn't help either. "The Thing" is a nondescript title. In context, it's meant to refer to the indescribable. But if it's the pre-internet world of the early 1980s, and you're thumbing through the back pages of the newspaper to see what movies are showing at the local theater, The Thing isn't a title that's likely to catch your attention.

I have no clue what kind of commercial advertisement it may have received, but I can't imagine too many shots could've been shown in a TV trailer.

The Thing is one of my favorite movies ever, let along one of Carpenters.
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Lol, I'm still the only one who voted Christine
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I feel like The Thing might be CE's favorite movie in general. It's mine.

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I bet CE wishes they were getting paid to shill this hard. It's gotta be exhausting.
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Predictably, everybody says The Thing

But the people who know what's up know that THEY LIVE is his best movie.

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The Thing

With honorable mention for Big Trouble in Little China.
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UnholyMudcrab posted...

I bet CE wishes they were getting paid to shill this hard. It's gotta be exhausting.

speaking of try-hards

FortuneCookie posted...

speaking of try-hards

Nobody was speaking of tryhards

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You literally said people were shilling hard for calling a good movie a good movie.

I'm sorry about your attention needs, but you're not going to get your fix from this topic.

Definitely The Thing. It's one of my all-time favourite movies.

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FortuneCookie posted...

You literally said people were shilling hard for calling a good movie a good movie.

I called it a good movie earlier in the topic. I just think it gets an annoying amount of reverence. CE treats The Thing like /r/movies treats Inception or The Dark Knight
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Halloween is literally my #1 favorite movie of all time.

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Keith David and Roddy Piper beating the hell out of eachother is better than most entire movies.