Bloody-Disgusting is quietly reporting that John Carpenter’s ghost story The Ward is finally seeing domestic release, debuting June 8th on VOD and getting a limited theatrical release on July 8th.
Look, I realize most of you couldn’t care less and that John Carpenter’s career has been in the toilet for a good 15 years now, but this news just makes me sad. Here is a guy who was once arguably the greatest genre director of his time now relegated to the dustbins of what is basically the straight-to-video market. It may not be exactly the same as seeing Orson Welles stoop to wine commercials in the 70’s, but it’s close. I know people who have worked with Carpenter in the last decade, and they all say the same thing; he’s burnt out on the movie business and doesn’t care anymore. He just wants to collect the occasional paycheck, smoke cigarettes and play video games. Which is fine, but man, it’s a bummer for those of us who remember the time when a John Carpenter movie was something to get excited about.
I’m not going to lie — I’ve heard bad things about The Ward. Not Ghosts of Mars bad, but from all accounts it’s your garden variety ‘ghost in a mental ward’ type picture. I will see it because I will always check out the latest output from Carpenter; this is the man who gave us Halloween and The Thing, two of the greatest horror movies of all time. But as I watch The Ward, I may weep softly at the sad demise of this once giant among directors, who seems intent on not going out with a bang, but a whimper.
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If Ghosts of Mars is terrible, then Escape From New York must be pretty bad. I really don’t understand how people can enjoy Carpenter’s campy action fare from the eighties, but can’t at least enjoy his campy action fare from the nineties. Ghost of Mars is pretty fun, and Vampires is okay, too.
I found nothing to enjoy, even ironically, about VAMPIRES. And the tone of his “campiness” changed, I’d say. It got lazier. But the simple truth is that Carpenter always made turds. But they were mixed in with his brilliant films. The problem isn’t that he’s making turds now. It’s that he’s ONLY making turds.
At the risk of spoiling The Ward, I’ll say that its probably better that its shuffled off to VOD where many won’t see it, as it mostly plays out like a feminine version of Shutter Island, and we all remember how disappointing that ended up being.
From 1978 to 1982 he made no turds. I’d argue that he didn’t start making real turds until the late 80’s.
I’ve always been hard on THE FOG because it was during his HALLOWEEN-THE THING hot zone. But true enough. I wouldn’t call it a “turd.”
All you need to do is watch the remake of THE FOG to realize how skilled Carpenter’s handling of the simple and potentially silly material was. It’s a favorite of mine, admittedly due in some part to nostalgia, but I would argue that for what it is, Carpenter’s THE FOG works.
Sad that the first movie he had to offer us in 10 years couldn’t even achieve a major release domestically. The fact that he’s obviously still phoning it in between bouts of getting stoned bodes pretty poorly for his “Darkchlyde” flick, if it ever even happens.
I honestly have not seen much of The Carpenter’s output from the past few years — including his Masters of Horror stuff. The last feature of his I saw was Ghosts of Mars, which I liked in a “watch at 3am” sort of way, that magic hour when everything seems to ring with some sort of integrity, whether imagined or not. I dearly love the man for giving us the likes of The Thing and the Halloween films, (including the third one). It would be so righteous of his apparent love of video games translated into making Escape from Earth into a game, with Kurt Russell giving voice to an aging Snake Plissken in the middle of an Earthly invasion ala They Live.
I don’t think he always made turds. He had weaker efforts, sure (The Fog, Christine), but it wasn’t until Memoirs of an Invisible Man that I think he really made a stinker.
But, as far as I’m concerned, that, Village of the Damned, and Escape from LA are the only bad films he’s made.
The last feature he actually PUT OUT was Ghosts of Mars. The only thing he’s done since then is two episodes of “Masters of Horror,” and now this. So you didn’t miss anything in the past decade, really.
Nothing to enjoy about Vampires? How about Sheryl Lee’s supple ass, and the way James Woods gets pulled off the cross so violently at the end, that it is absolutely hysterical that he lived through the impact/dragging. I’m fighting off laughter right now…. I enjoyed Vampires and Ghost of Mars. Are they “good” movies? No, but even Carpenter’s worst movies are oddly watchable.
The film is not bad. It’s nothing earth shattering, but it’s a low key, low budget horror with no stars. It was never going to get a big release anywhere. I got to see it in a cinema and had a good time. It does feel a little familiar and you do wish he didn’t play it so safe in the way it’s presented.
Then again, he mixed it up plenty in Ghosts of Mars and I found the flashback structure very frustrating.
I still adore Prince of Darkness. Maybe not the best movie, but the concept of the story was awesome, and honestly scary as shit. It worked intellectually quite well. And it is a movie filled with absolute dread, which is something that no one really does in these times of fast edits and ever shorter attention spans. Prince of Darkness made you think to appreciate the scary. I really dig that. Plus one of the best ambiguous endings ever.
Vampires is the complete other end of the spectrum. No subtlety, gonzo-level ridiculousness that I still enjoyed thoroughly. I do miss the John Carpenter of yesteryear though. I even dug on In the Mouth of Madness. I’ll see The Ward out of loyalty. And I am fascinated with Amber Heard.
Prince of Darkness was cool conceptually but totally lacked in the execution department. Whereas They Live was a great movie that looks really stupid on paper. I think Carpenter really started to peter out when he stopped making such great scores (Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, Escape from NY, etc) for his movies. The Thing, his magnum opus, was Ennio Morricone approximating a Carpenter score with his own particular brand of genius. His 90’s-now stuff just seems overly cartoonish (Escape from LA, Ghosts of Mars, Vampires) or just half baked and bland (In the Mouth of Madness). Although my love for a lot of early Carpenter, even the minor classics like The Fog and Big Trouble in Little China, is mixed in with nostalgia to some degree. Too bad all great directors can’t be more like Scorcese and age artistically with such consummate skill.
As far as I am concerned, his output from 1976-1988 is pretty damn great. Not all of them are classics, but they are far from turds as well. He took a few years off after They Live and unfortunately the John Carpenter we all loved never really returned from that break. He peeked his head out a bit with In The Mouth of Madness, but that was pretty much it. He’s never made a film that I have out and out disliked…………….although some are certainly huge disappointments. Here’s hoping he gets his mojo back now that he seems interested in directing on a regular basis again. If not, then I don’t know why he has returned. It’s not like he needs the money.
There actually was a Snake Plissken game in the works a few years back. It’s storyline was set before Escape From New York and Kurt Russell was going to voice the character and do the motion capture for the role. I think the company behind it either went bankrupt or was folded into a larger company who chose to ditch the project. Actually, there was a whole slew of Plissken-related projects that Carpenter, Hill, and Russell were trying to get off the ground. If it had panned out, we would have ended up with a video game franchise, a series of novels, and a TV show. In the end, the only project that actually made it to the public was the comic series, which only lasted a few issues before the company making them went belly up. Supposedly the games would have dealt with his adventures before EFNY, the novels and comics between EFNY and EFLA, and the TV series after EFLA (with a different actor in the role). It’s too bad it didn’t happen, although a post-apocalyptic western show with Russell as an older Plissken these days would be a badass choice for a network like FX (or HBO).
Even Marty has his lesser efforts. To this day, I still despise his Cape Fear remake, particularly De Niro’s Freddy Krueger-esque performance.
That said, his recent output has most definitely been better than anything JC has put out since the end of the 80s. Leaps and bounds ahead of it. God, I would love for Carpenter to get his confidence and hunger back for filmmaking. I will say that he has seemed a whole lot happier and enthusiastic in recent interviews than he has IN A LONG TIME.
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