JOHN CARPENTER'S OTHER HALLOWEEN

The Ghost Maker: A Halloween Tale

By John Carpenter

I live my days in silence, behind the barred in windows of this asylum, in a cell of shadows. Until this moment I have spoken to no living person of the events of that Halloween night five years ago - because I could neither ask for nor expect belief.

But today, my doctor has given me paper and a pen, as he hopes I shall be compelled to write out my tale of horror and madness - once and for all expelling the demons that hold me in their catatonic embrace. I know this horror shall never leave me.

So my purpose, Dear Reader, is to finally put before the world the events of Oct. 31, five years past, as I experienced them, that no man may follow me to this hideous darkness in which I dwell, awaiting the only mercy I shall ever know - my release - the moment of death.

It was a bitterly cold night and I welcomed the warmth of the hearth in Howard Necron's study that All Hallow's Eve five years ago. I settled myself comfortably into an armchair by the crackling fireplace and waited as Necron poured two large snifters of brandy. He then turned to me with the oddest smile...

"I suppose, William, that you wonder why I have asked you here this evening," Necron said as he poured the amber liquid.

I admitted that I had been somewhat curious, as for the last 15 years we had been bitter professional rivals. We had once been partners in science and the closest of friends as well, but a dark schism had developed over our opposing research ethics. Necron had always wanted to prove that which should have, to my mind at least, remained in the ephemeral world of mathematics and theory. Disagreement had turned to debate, which in turn had become cold enmity.

"What would you say, William, if I told you that using universally accepted scientific principles, I could create a ghost?"

"I would say, Necron, that you were as mad as a March hare." My smile of derision must have been obvious, for he turned quickly away, pausing for a moment with his back to me before he slowly crossed the study to hand me the brandy snifter.

"To science, eh, William?" As he raised his glass to mine, his gaze seemed to burn into me, as if a shrewd smokey secret passed behind his eyes. I nodded and took a sip of the brandy. It had a sharp undertaste, and as I started to mention something about it, Necron settled himself closer to me on the ottoman at my feet.

"What is Schrodinger's cat?" he asked in a whisper.

"There's no need for this. We both know what it is." I suddenly felt unfocused. Drowsy. Probably the heat from the fire, making me sleepy. "It is a... a... thought experiment used to demonstrate the paradox of observer-created reality," I answered.

Necron seemed unbearably close to me now, his face but inches from my own.

"Yes," he said, "Nothing is real until you observe it."

Necron now stood, staring down at me with triumph and ice, the fire flickering on his face, shadows squirming like mad, devouring insects. A wave of dizziness washed through me.

Necron continued: "Imagine a box. The size of a coffin. Inside it is a radioactive particle with a 50-50 chance of decaying in, say, one minute. Also in the box is a glass bottle containing cyanide gas, and a Geiger counter. And, finally, into the box, is placed - an unconscious man."

"A cat, wasn't it?" I broke in. I was having a difficult time maintaining any line of reasoning, but there was a chill to his words.

His eyes began to drift strangely above me, as I sipped once again from my drink. That metallic undertaste assaulted me again. What had he put in my brandy? Could Necron be that insane? I tried to focus on his face. His features seemed to melt in the heat of the fire.

"If the radioactive particle decays, the Geiger counter so records it, trips a hammer, smashes the glass bottle, thus allowing the cyanide gas to escape and kill the man."

Necron's words were running all together.

"You mean... the cat," I mumbled weakly.

"Or," he said, "if the particle does not decay, the Geiger counter is silent, the hammer not tripped, the man allowed to live."

The room was spinning like a child's music box. The heat from the fireplace... Necron looming above me... My eyes bobbed open, closed. "What did you put... in my drink?"

But Necron ignored my slurred question.

"Don't you see, William? I could be either a murderer or a savior, because until human eyes see inside the box, the man inside is both dead and alive at the same time - a complex, linear combination of the two. The man in the box is a ghost of all possibilities of dead and alive, condemned to live in a limbo until the box is opened and he is observed by human eyes." His voice had dropped to a sibilant rasp, eyes glowing with a fury.

The snifter of brandy suddenly fell from my fingers. As I lost consciousness Necron's face was the last thing I saw.

"I am the ghost maker," he said, grinning. Then there was nothing. Blackness. Silence.

I awoke. I was lying down. Enclosed. Trapped. I couldn't move. Listening. Trying to breath. Then suddenly I threw up my arms. Touched a solid surface above me, no more than a foot away from my face. A lid. I was buried. In a coffin. A box.

I pushed up the lid a fraction of an inch.

A sliver of morning sunlight appeared as the lid opened, illuminating the inside of the box.

I suddenly saw the thing above me. It was hovering, just a foot away. Its body prone, it was staring down at me. Fuzzy. Indistinct. Its arms reached for me and at the same time another pair of arms lay at its side.

It was a blurred composite. A living transition. A contradiction. All possibilities, dead and alive. It undulated. Gazing eyes. Dead eyes. Living eyes. Blue decaying flesh.

In the fraction of a second before it disappeared I saw the creature's shape crawling, diffracting - indefinite, exploding anew out of rippling flesh.

A leering death's head began to scream down at me, disintegrating, crumbling and decomposing, growing and rejuvenating, humanity degraded and corrupted, dead and alive, revealed in an instant.

And then it was over. The thing disappeared. Its features settled, collapsed into definition. I looked around - the glass bottle at my feet was unbroken, the cyanide gas contained. The Geiger counter at my side was silent.

My mind raced frantically. Dead plus alive. Alive minus dead. Dead plus the square root of minus alive.

And then, as I continued to push upward, the impact of Necron's experiment hit me. As my fingers lifted the underside of the lid, the thing made man stared back at me in horror, screaming a long, sustained shriek of utter annihilation. Touching the unfeeling surface of a mirror - I realized the hideous image had been a reflection.

It was I.

 









© 1988, John Carpenter and The New York Times

NADA

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (2015)

It sounds depressing to say this, considering we have to go back over 25 years to 1995, but In the Mouth of Madness is, and probably will be, John Carpenter’s genuinely last great film as a director. Following that would come a string of underwhelming and critically derided titles like Village of the Damned, Escape from L.A., Vampires (underrated!), Ghosts of Mars, and then, after a seven-year break, The Ward. Unless you’re a devout Carpenterphile, it’s likely that more people know about the bad reputation of Escape from L.A. than who know that In the Mouth of Madness exists at all. 

And that’s a crime.

Unexpectedly written by Michael DeLuca, who is known more as a producer and New Line Cinema’s former President of Production than as a screenwriter, In the Mouth of Madness is a Lovecraftian love letter to the genre – one filtered through the use of a purposely Stephen King-ish horror writer, here called Sutter Cane (and played by Das Boot’s Jürgen Prochnow). It’s a Lovecraft monster movie, a mind-bending psychological thriller, a satire on the power of pop culture, but most interesting, it’s also a clever take on film noir. International treasure Sam Neill (the U.S. definitely has joint custody with New Zealand) is John Trent, a private investigator hired to find a missing author, who is forced to work alongside Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), your proto-femme fatale – someone who cannot be entirely trusted. Together they’re tasked with solving the mystery of Sutter Cane’s alleged disappearance, but more importantly, trying to navigate the highly distressing question: what is reality?

This combination of genres boosts In the Mouth of Madness and offers it a non-derivative identity, but the most gleeful aspect is Carpenter’s sheer desire to scare his audience. In spite of the few moments of purposeful comedy (Sam Neill lazily singing “America the Beautiful” and intermittently staring out the passenger-side window during the duo’s very long car ride to Hobb’s End absolutely kills me), you can sense the intent for terror in every frame. Prior to 1995, the last time Carpenter was this dedicated to scaring his audience was maybe 1987’s Prince of Darkness, but definitely 1982’s The Thing. Though the mid-90s and beyond is the era during which the director would begin to embrace graphic violence (Vampires is ridiculous, and his Masters of Horror entries are very icky), In the Mouth of Madness relies mostly on eerie and somewhat abstract images – the former courtesy of KNB FX’s Lovecraftian creations and Carpenter’s simplistic editing tricks, and the latter courtesy of the production’s various Toronto shooting locales, which appear so majestic yet isolated that they feel plucked from a dream. Something as simply rendered as a disembodied hand knocking on a window or touching someone’s shoulder from behind, only to immediately disappear, is almost embarrassingly rudimentary considering its effectiveness. That’s not to say there isn’t bloody mayhem — it wouldn’t be a Carpenter film without at least a bit of the red stuff — but it’s noticeably dialed down in favor of a different kind of horror experience.

In the Mouth of Madness is the most undervalued film of Carpenter’s career. Like many of his other titles, appreciation for the film has grown over the years, having a strong presence on video and benefiting from its association with the very genre-friendly studio of New Line Cinema.

THE ANNIHILATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

ONE GOOD SCARE

Excellent stuff.

DO YOU WATCH SUTTER CANE?

Very cool custom-made DVD insert. Props to its (unknown) artist.

THE WARD (2010)

(Spoilers for The Ward can be found throughout. Read with caution.)

Listen, after 2001’s Ghost of Mars, John Carpenter’s previous theatrical feature, we all wanted to love The Ward. We wanted it to be worth the ten-year wait. After all, it was directed by a living legend who has been consistently five years too early for all the concepts he's introduced to the genre. Many of his most heralded films received lukewarm-to-middling reviews at the time of their release, but slowly and steadily began to be recognized for the genius (or just downright fun) little tales of beautiful nastiness that they were. Halloween received ho-hum reviews for several months until a positive one by The Village Voice turned it all around. The Thing, now rightly hailed as a classic and a defining moment in the horror genre – having inspired filmmakers as diverse as Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo Del Toro, Eli Roth, and so many others – was vilified upon its release. Critics called The Thing a porno of violence and accused Carpenter of filling his movie with irredeemable set pieces. David Ansen of Newsweek called it "an example of the New Aesthetic - atrocity for atrocity's sake" while Alan Spencer for Starlog contended that "John Carpenter was never meant to direct science fiction horror movies. He's better suited to direct traffic accidents, train wrecks and public floggings" (IMDB).

Despite his consistent post-Thing filmography, Carpenter openly states that his remake of the Howard Hawks 1951 classic nearly destroyed his career. It forced him on a path to grin and bear safer studio projects before fleeing back into the world of independent filmmaking, thanks to a distribution-only deal with Universal (which resulted in both Prince of Darkness and They Live, both considered among the master’s best).

So, the question remains: How will The Ward be looked upon in ten years from now? Will people’s general indifference and disappointment toward it subside? Will it be elevated and looked at with a new pair of eyes? Well, considering the director’s own and aforementioned Ghosts of Mars is still considered the dung pile most said it was in 2001, the jury can and will be out on that for the next decade.

But here’s the thing about The Ward, people. It ain’t that bad. It really, really isn’t. Yes, the script could have been stronger and a bit more unique. And yeah, it would’ve been nice to have a better twist ending than, “oh, she’s a crazy split personality.” Many negative reviews for the film have pointed to the script as the main reason for the film’s failure. And I will not sit here and try to convince you otherwise. No, the script is not very good. It's a convoluted amalgamation of J-horror, typical slashers, a bit of the ol' torture porn, and psychological thrillers. But I really take offense to the claims that The Ward is point and shoot; uninspired looking and almost TV-movie in scope—that Carpenter’s ever-dependable look and feel were completely absent from the film.

Guys, when I read those claims, I really have to wonder what fucking movie it was you watched.

After the movie’s initial opening, in which we see Amber Heard’s Kristen fleeing through the woods after having burned down a house, we cut to the psychiatric institution where our characters are committed. And the camera slowly pushes down a long hallway, inches off the ground, as background music echoes off the wall. We’re not even five minutes in, people, and it sure feels like a fucking Carpenter movie to me.

Except for the director’s most unheralded movie, In the Mouth of Madness, he’s never made a movie that actually fucked with your mind—that showed you only pieces of the overall puzzle as you sat back and tried to make sense of it all. And that’s precisely what The Ward is: a puzzle, being slowly put together by Kristen. While the destination may be all-too-often traveled, at least the intent is to shock and surprise you.

As to the claims that the film lacks energy and enthusiasm from the director (one report actually had the audacity to claim he was directing the movie from his trailer), I can only point to the impromptu dance the girls share in the common area of the hospital. The sequence is directed with, at first, such an infectious sense of enthusiasm that you can’t help but smile as you see these girls trying to exorcise themselves of all the bad mojo hanging over their heads and just, for once, get some enjoyment out of life; and that’s of course before the scene quickly takes a turn for the worst, showing in brief, nearly-subliminal images the ghoulish face of the ghost that is haunting them all. It’s a new bag of tricks that Carpenter is trying out, and I, for one, welcome the change. Much as I’d like for him to consistently churn out the types of movies that he made in the ‘80s, well…that would be boring after a while, wouldn’t it? Don’t you want to see growth from your filmmakers? Don’t you want to see them leave their comfort zone and try something new (at least, new to them)? That's up for debate. He could announce tomorrow the long-mooted Escape from Earth and people’s boners would shoot through their computer screens, but he tried revisiting Snake Plissken once before, didn’t he? And that didn’t turn out all that great.

Plus, I could think of worse ways to spend 90 minutes than watching Danielle Panabaker run around in that Daphne-from-"Scooby-Doo" outfit.

"Mind if I titillate?"

Carpenter, his old age having caught up with him, is no longer the jack-of-all-trades he used to be.  Instead of editing, writing, producing, scoring, and directing, he has, in recent years, opted only to go with the latter, leaving everything else up to his colleagues. And yes, that has changed (not destroyed) the look and feel of his films. But not in any way that makes them less deserving of our attention. They're different, but not inferior. They reflect a Carpenter in his golden age. They reflect a man who doesn't want to entirely throw in the towel, but just wants to make it a little bit easier on himself. He's put in the time, had his battles with studios (Universal) and ego-maniacal actors (Chevy Chase). He's earned the chance to take it easy. If we want to experience a great Carpenter screenplay, there's always Halloween, and if we're jonesing for an iconic score, there is always The Fog.

Speaking of music, Mark Killian's haunting, ethereal, and unusual score for The Ward picks up where Carpenter left off, who'd scored his previous (and probably last) film Ghosts of Mars. But Killian knows what makes Carpenter's music so effective: It's simple, to the point, but ever-present.

If nothing else, The Ward should be considered a potential conduit to getting Carpenter back behind the camera for more features. Apparently (and disappointingly) The Benders has been appropriated by Guillermo Del Toro, man of a thousand announced projects, and I don't know what's going on with Darkchylde, but Carpenter is ready and willing to get back behind the camera, should the circumstances be right.

Lazy script or not, inconsistent or not, The Ward brought our director back to us. For that, I’ll always be grateful.