GENIUS OF JOHN CARPENTER: THE FOG & THE THING

John Carpenter, as much as (if not more than) Wes Craven has been a horror cinema pioneer and mainstay with a career that has spanned generations.  I'm not even going to mention the holy grail of horror films in this entry.  Carpenter's genius extends to THE FOG and the THE THING as much as it does Halloween.

The Fog is a creepy ghost story about beings in a fog that kill the inhabitants of a small town.  The subject of a remake in 2005, the film combines ghost story elements with enough blood and a great score by Carpenter himself to create some very real scares and palpable suspense.  It's smattered with Halloween alums including Annie Bracket and Sheriff Bracket.  Jamie Lee Curtis stars as well in a role that many have suspected (and few have dismissed) is actually a renamed Laurie Strode on the run after her runin with her brother who mentions her "badluck".  Even actors from Halloween 3 show up. Adrienne Barbeau stars and well, is the kind of woman who led me to Rule 34 her.  All in all a great flick!

A movie I knew was great, but I had to re see was Carpenter's THE THING.  Carpenter's love of the original is evident in Halloween as the movie plays on Tommy Doyle's TV.  Reuniting with Snake Pliskin himself, Kurt Russell, Carpenter weaves a gory, scary tale of an alien invader.  What makes this movie so great is the characterization as the morale and trust of the team unravels as each suspects the other of being the alien.  That Carpenter is able to move from slasher to supernatural to alien and crafts excellent story lines give evidence to his skill as a story teller.


The Fog Trailer

The Thing Trailer