Whenever I hear the synth-heavy compositions of Carpenter it always feels like meeting an old friend. One you, more often than not, get along with really well.

Prince of Darkness is an odd beast of a horror film and, after this rewatch with a gap of some 15 years preceding it, one I can easily rank among Carpenter's best. This film's scope is a lot bigger than I'm used to from him and it actually has a very clever script,…

Film 15 of Steve Grzesiak's Worldwide Month of Scary Bastard Films

Hey, guys. Remember when I said I was going to watch only one horror film from each country and that I would only watch all new stuff?

"That's right, Steve, you did!"

I lied.

"ARRRRRRRRRGH!" *splat*

Well, I've had trouble fitting stuff in and plus I thought it would be cool to end the month revisiting a couple of my all time favourites and seeing if they still stood…

John Carpenter's forgotten masterpiece?

Okay, maybe 'masterpiece' is perhaps slightly overstating its merits - after all, Prince Of Darkness has a fair few rough edges, one or two questionable performances and a slightly daft semi-central premise that would stop it from perhaps ever seriously being considered as such.

But for me, as someone who can even find some good in Carpenter's clunkers (except Village Of The Damned, obviously), this deserves to be considered as one his very best films, just…

John Carpenter takes his specific brand of straight-faced horror to delirious and surreal heights, and it's mostly successful. This has to rank as one of his most ambitious movies if not his most ambitious, and if not for some unforgivably weak links in the ensemble cast, one of his best.

I especially love the way that despite the entire final 2/3rds or so taking place in one confined setting, this never seems to be anything less than a globally apocalyptic…

Part of...
Horroctober 2012

Hello... Hello... I've got a message for you... and you're not going to like it.
-Wyndham

When a film opens up with Donald Pleasence playing the part of a priest, named Father Loomis no less, you know there's evil a foot somewhere. It's a film that came out during John Carpenter's golden era where the director came out with some of the greatest genre films of his time in succession. It was a time that the…

If Letterboxd is correct (and it largely is), this is the 2000th film I've seen overall. So yay, here's to at least 2000 more!

And let me just get this out of the way: Porn moustache. Two girls, one cup. Drink the Kool-Aid. There, now we can begin the review.

I wanted to dislike this movie, I truly did. Something inside me kept screaming "What is this all about? Who cares about these characters? What's with all this quasi-scienti-religioso psychobabble?".…

In many respects, this is ingenious stuff. The imagery is consistently surreal (Cocteau and Dali are given explicit nods), the concept is both original and cerebral, it features one of Carpenter's best scores, and the use of anamorphic lenses renders a large number of compositions almost subconsciously unsettling. Unfortunately, after a brilliant set up, the film flounders. It not only runs out of imagination, trading both physics and metaphysics for zombie action, but even as a Carpenter-style drama of a…

I always got this film and Lord of Illusions mixed up. Having finally seen them both now, I’m pretty sure ill be able to tell them apart at long last. Anyway, this was great. A very strong film from Carpenter. I loved the idea behind the whole thing. A relic found in a church that could mean the end of the world. I love the way the students are all trapped inside. The homeless people that surround the church at…