John Carpenter Filmography

L.A. Gothic

Crew: Director

Synopsis: John Carpenter directs this episodic horror film focusing on a former priest's mission to fight L.A.'s supernatural underbelly in order to protect his teen daughter in this Principal Entertainment production. Scribes Jim Agnew and Sean Keller provide the script for the feature. ~ Jeremy Wheeler Read More

Dead On: The Life and Cinema of George A. Romero

Masters of Horror: Pro-Life

Crew: Director

Actors: Caitlin Wachs, Ron Perlman, Mark Feurerstein, Emmanuelle Vaugier

Synopsis: A pregnant girl trapped in a woman's health clinic makes a disturbing discovery about the child growing inside of her while attempting to fight off her father and three heavily armed brothers in director John Carpenter's second Masters of Horror episode. A young couple is driving down a darkened Read More

Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film

Synopsis: For decades fright fans have cowered in horror as vicious killers stalked their helpless prey in the cold flicker of the projector bulb and in darkened living rooms with the curtains firmly drawn. Now, for anyone who has ever wondered just what motivated the filmmakers behind these brutal Read More

The Fog

Crew: Producer

Actors: Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, Rade Serbedzija, DeRay Davis, Kenneth Welsh, Selma Blair

Synopsis: John Carpenter's well-remembered thriller gets an update in this remake from director Rupert Wainwright. Nick Castle (Tom Welling) is a charter-boat captain in the small coastal town of Antonio Bay. Castle's ancestors helped to found Antonio Bay, but while the city's mayor (Kenneth Welsh) and the Read More

Assault on Precinct 13

Crew: Screen Story

Actors: Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Drea de Matteo, Brian Dennehy, John Leguizamo

Synopsis: This action-packed remake of the John Carpenter classic tells the tale of an under-manned Detroit police precinct on its last day of operation that finds itself under siege by a ruthless force that will not stop. This time, a notorious cop-killer and mobster Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishbourne) is Read More

Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns

Crew: Director

Actors: Norman Reedus, Udo Kier, Gary Hetherington

Synopsis: Directed by horror expert John Carpenter, Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns concerns a man who makes his living hunting down films that are often thought lost. He sets off to find a legendary film titled "Le Fin Absolute du Monde," a movie that supposedly turned the one audience who saw it into a Read More

Hollywood's Greatest Villains

Actors: Sharon Stone, George Lucas, John Carpenter

Synopsis: Hollywood has delivered more than it's fair share of memorable movie villains throughout the years, and now viewers have the opportunity to learn more than ever before about their favorite silver-screen boogiemen in this documentary featuring interviews with Basic Instinct star Sharon Stone Read More

Halloween: Resurrection

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Jamie Lee Curtis, Brad Loree, Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Sean Patrick Thomas

Synopsis: Masked serial killer Michael Myers makes his seventh appearance in the eighth installment of this long-running slasher series. Although the climax of the previous installment, Halloween: H20, depicted heroine Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) finally finishing off her brother/tormentor, the opening Read More

Vampires: Los Muertos

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Jon Bon Jovi, Tim Guinee, Diego Luna

Synopsis: Summoned to Mexico to slay a clan of malevolent bloodsuckers, vampire hunter Derek Bliss (Jon Bon Jovi) finds himself in need of a new team when his former group of slayers falls prey to the fanged menace. Once again desperately striving to activate the black cross that will render vampires immune Read More

Masters of Horror

John Carpenter: Fear is Just the Beginning... The Man and His Movies

Actors: John Carpenter

Synopsis: Filmmaker John Carpenter helped redefine the American horror film in 1978 with Halloween, a low-budget thriller which became a major box office success. Since then, Carpenter has devoted his career to bringing a fresh perspective to genre filmmaking, striving to maintain the freedom of an Read More

John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, Jason Statham, Pam Grier

Synopsis: Writer and director John Carpenter returns to the mixture of science fiction and horror that made The Thing (1982) a success. Natasha Henstridge stars as Lt. Melanie Ballard of the Martian Police Force, a member of a law enforcement team two centuries in the future, dispatched to the remote colony Read More

The American Nightmare

Actors: George A. Romero, John Carpenter, Tom Savini, David Cronenberg, Wes Craven

Synopsis: In the late '60s, the tone of American horror films began to shift in the wake of the startling success of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead -- horror films became gorier, bleaker, and began to subtly reflect the political and social upheaval gripping the country. Through the '70s and Read More

Vampires

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director

Actors: James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Sheryl Lee, Thomas Ian Griffith, Tim Guinee, Maximilian Schell

Synopsis: John Carpenter directed this horror-western, adapted from the novel Vampire$ by John Steakley, illuminating the pivotal figure of fearless vampire killer Jack Crow (James Woods), who lost his parents to the creatures. In a remote New Mexico location, Crow and his team, protected with chain-mail Read More

Escape from L.A.

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter, Songwriter

Actors: Kurt Russell, Stacy Keach, Steve Buscemi, Peter Fonda, Cliff Robertson

Synopsis: Escape from L.A. finds Kurt Russell once again in the role of Snake, which he played in the 1981 film, Escape from New York. Los Angeles has finally had the really big earthquake everyone was afraid of, and what remains is now an island. Because the country's ultra-righteous President-for-Life (Cliff Roberton Read More

Village of the Damned

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director

Actors: Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, Michael Paré, Meredith Salenger

Synopsis: This film is a remake of the classic 1960 science-fiction thriller, Village of the Damned, which was based on the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. Veteran horror director John Carpenter is at the helm this time, with Christopher Reeve replacing George Sanders in the starring role. Aliens Read More

First Works: A Revealing Look at Today's Greatest Directors, Vol. 2

Synopsis: Everyone has to start somewhere, even if they are Martin Scorsese or John Carpenter. This documentary takes a look at their beginning works and film school clips along with those of Richard Donner Lethal Weapon 4, Ron Howard Cocoon, John Milius, director and writer, and Susan Seidelman Desperately Read More

In the Mouth of Madness

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director

Actors: Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jürgen Prochnow, Charlton Heston, David Warner

Synopsis: Hired to help locate a missing author, an insurance investigator discovers to his terror that the nightmarish events depicted in the writer's best-selling horror novels are coming true. Wishing to be both a horror film and a parody of the genre, John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness combines Read More

The Silence of the Hams

Actors: Dom DeLuise, Ezio Greggio, Billy Zane, Joanna Pacula, Charlene Tilton, Martin Balsam

Synopsis: In the tradition of Mel Brooks, this Italian comedy offers an episodic parody of classic thrillers and horror movies. Film includes cameos from several stars including Mel Brooks, John Astin, Larry Storch, Phyllis Diller, John Carpenter, and John Landis. The story begins as director Ezio Greggio Read More

Body Bags

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Mark Hamill, Stacy Keach, David Warner, John Carpenter, Roger Corman, Wes Craven, Deborah Harry, Tobe Hooper, Sam Raimi

Synopsis: Horror virtuoso John Carpenter hosts this goofy horror anthology, originally produced for Showtime as a gory stepchild of HBO's Tales from the Crypt series. Playing an emaciated, eye-rolling "coroner," John introduces the audience to a triptych of creepy vignettes in the EC horror-comics mode Read More

Memoirs of an Invisible Man

Crew: Director

Actors: Chevy Chase, Daryl Hannah, Sam Neill, Michael McKean, Stephen Tobolowsky

Synopsis: Chevy Chase stars, though not always visibly, as Nick Halloway, a low-level businessman with an acerbic approach to life and work, whose humdrum existence utterly bores him. Nick gets an unexpected jolt of excitement when, nursing a hangover, he's the only one not to evacuate an office building Read More

Blood River

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Rick Schroder, Wilford Brimley, John Ryan

Synopsis: This made-for-TV western stars Rick Schroder as a hotheaded cowboy who guns down the man responsible for the death of his parents. On the run from his victim's powerful father, Schroder is sheltered by old codger Wilford Brimley. Brimley seems to be operating out of friendship, but his reason for Read More

El Diablo

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Anthony Edwards, M.C. Gainey, Robert Beltran

Synopsis: In the made-for-cable El Diablo, Anthony Edwards plays a bespectacled Eastern schoolteacher who is bullied and cowed by the wild westerners all around him. Soon, however, he is forced to summon up his courage to expedite the rescue of his prettiest female student (M.C. Gainey), who has been Read More

They Live

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster, George "Buck" Flower, Peter Jason

Synopsis: John Carpenter wrote and directed this science fiction thriller about a group of aliens who try to take over the world by disguising themselves as Young Republicans. Wrestler Roddy Piper stars as John Nada, a drifted who makes his way into an immense encampment for the homeless. There he stumbles Read More

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Crew: Composer (Music Score)

Actors: Donald Pleasence, Ellie Cornell, Danielle Harris, George Wilbur, Michael Pataki

Synopsis: And still they come? This fourth entry in the Halloween franchise focuses on Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), the niece of ubiquitous masked-killer Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur). Jamie tries to lead a normal life, but she can't escape the vengeance of her "funny uncle," who once more escapes from Read More

Prince of Darkness

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Donald Pleasence, Jameson Parker, Victor Wong, Lisa Blount, Dennis Dun

Synopsis: Proving that you can never guess what you'll find when you clean out the basement, a man of the cloth discovers that ultimate evil has made a hiding place in his cellar in this tale of terror. Father Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is a priest who discovers a strange object in a church basement -- a Read More

Big Trouble in Little China

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter, Songwriter

Actors: Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun, James Hong, Victor Wong

Synopsis: Playing in a manner that can be conservatively described as larger than life, Kurt Russell plays a macho truck driver who agrees to go to the San Francisco airport and pick up his friend's (Dennis Dun) fiancee (Suzee Pai, freshly arrived from China. Suddenly, a gang of Chinatown toughs kidnap the Read More

Black Moon Rising

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Hamilton, Robert Vaughn, Richard Jaeckel, Lee Ving

Synopsis: A John Carpenter story served as the launching pad for Black Moon Rising. Veteran thief Quint (Tommy Lee Jones) is hired by the FBI to steal some politically volatile computer tapes. The owners of the tapes are displeased, and begin chasing Quint all over the countryside. Just when he's about to Read More

The Philadelphia Experiment

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Michael Paré, Nancy Allen, Eric Christmas, Bobby Di Cicco, Kene Holliday

Synopsis: This science fiction thriller was inspired by a mythical real-life event, the WWII era disappearance of an entire naval vessel during a radar-cloaking test. In 1943, David Herdeg Michael Pare and Jim Parker Bobby DiCicco are sailors stationed aboard a Virginia battleship. Their vessel is Read More

Starman

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ted White, Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckel, Robert Phalen

Synopsis: Having crashed to Earth, an extraterrestrial space traveller must assume a human identity lest he be captured by the authorities. The alien (Jeff Bridges) chooses the likeness of the recently deceased husband of Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen). At first dumbstruck, Jenny becomes both hostile toward Read More

Christine

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky, Harry Dean Stanton, Christine Belford

Synopsis: Director John Carpenter returns to the suburban landscape he explored so chillingly in Halloween (1978) with this lean, stripped-down adaptation of the Stephen King best-seller about a haunted car with a devilishly bad attitude and the teen underdog who falls head-over-heels for her Read More

The Thing

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David

Synopsis: John Carpenter's The Thing is both a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film of the same name and a re-adaptation of the John W. Campbell Jr. story "Who Goes There?" on which it was based. Carpenter's film is more faithful to Campbell's story than Hawks' version and also substantially more reliant on Read More

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Producer

Actors: Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O'Herlihy, Ralph Strait, Michael Currie

Synopsis: The only installment of the Halloween series to abandon the Michael Myers story line, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is an intricate sci-fi horror hybrid. A week before Halloween, an older man named Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry) is wounded by a mysteriously dispassionate group of assailants in Read More

Escape from New York

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes

Synopsis: The year is 1997. Manhattan Island is now a heavily guarded maximum-security prison, where the scum of the earth have converged. When Air Force One crash-lands in Manhattan, the president (Donald Pleasence) is held hostage by its denizens. One-eyed mercenary Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is Read More

Halloween II

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Charles Cyphers, Jeffrey Kramer, Lance Guest

Synopsis: While John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic Halloween irrevocably changed the style of horror cinema with its simple but relentlessly tense story, it triggered more than a decade's worth of uninspired, exploitative knock-offs, and one could easily list Halloween II among these failures. As with its Read More

The Fog

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Adrienne Barbeau, Hal Holbrook, Janet Leigh, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Houseman

Synopsis: Following the phenomenal box-office success of his seminal horror classic Halloween, director John Carpenter teamed up with producer Debra Hill for a second independent horror project, this time in the mode of an old-fashioned ghost story. The end result was The Fog, a spooky romp about a dark Read More

Elvis

Crew: Director

Actors: Kurt Russell, Shelley Winters, Bing Russell, Season Hubley, Pat Hingle

Synopsis: The first volley in the never-ending "Presley movie" blitzkrieg, the made-for-TV Elvis: The Movie stars Kurt Russell as the King, Season Hubley as Priscilla, Pat Hingle as Col. Parker, Shelley Winters as Elvis' mom, and Bing Russell (Kurt's real-life father) as Elvis' dad. The film recounts Presley Read More

Better Late Than Never

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Harold Gould, Strother Martin, Tyne Daly, Harry Morgan, Marjorie Bennett

Synopsis: The elderly residents of a nursing home tire of being oppressed and stage a revolution in this made-for-television comedy. Following the ensuing riot they rush out and commandeer a passing train to go out for a few final adventures. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Eyes of Laura Mars

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Dourif, René Auberjonois, Raul Julia, Lisa Taylor

Synopsis: A shutterbug is haunted by psychic visions of the killer who is murdering all of her friends in this hit thriller. Intense and driven, successful photographer Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway) has made a name for herself by juxtaposing sex and violence in her glamorous photos. But at the height of her Read More

Halloween

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers

Synopsis: It was "The Night HE Came Home," warned the posters for John Carpenter's career-making horror smash. In Haddonfield, Ilinois, on Halloween night 1963, 6-year-old Michael Myers inexplicably slaughters his teenage sister. His psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) can't penetrate Michael's Read More

Someone's Watching Me!

Crew: Director, Teleplay By

Synopsis: Hot on the heels of his theatrical-feature megahit Halloween, writer-producer John Carpenter concocted this nailbiting made-for-TV suspenser. Lauren Hutton stars as stylish career girl Leigh Michaels, who lives in an ultra-modern, glassed-in high rise apartment. Leigh's relatively tranquil Read More

Zuma Beach

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Suzanne Somers, Steven Keats, Michael Biehn, Mark Wheeler, Kimberly Beck

Synopsis: A high-school boy's ho-hum summer at the beach turns into a dream-come-true when he is befriended by a beautiful but depressed singer whose career is on the wane. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Assault on Precinct 13

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Gilbert De la Pena, Al Nakauchi, Laurie Zimmer, Gil Rankin, Martin West, Cliff Battuello, Tony Burton

Synopsis: Cops, secretaries, and prisoners stuck in a soon-to-be-shuttered L.A. police station fight off a horde of murderous gang members in director John Carpenter's homage to Howard Hawks. When police officer Bishop (Austin Stoker) is left in charge of Precinct 13 on the last day it's open, he isn't Read More

Dark Star

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Brian Narelle, Andreijah Pahich, Carl Duniholm, Dan O'Bannon

Synopsis: The directorial debut of horrormeister John Carpenter comes in the way of Dark Star a parody of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001--A Space Odyssey. The story follows four hippyish techno-nerds in their mission through deep space to destroy planets and ward off boredom and loneliness as they Read More

Resurrection Of Broncho Billy

Crew: Screenwriter