John Carpenter Recommends What to Watch This Halloween

Filmmaker John Carpenter has delivered audiences more than a dozen terrifying tales over the [...]

By Patrick Cavanaugh

Filmmaker John Carpenter has delivered audiences more than a dozen terrifying tales over the course of his career, making him a veritable master of horror, and he has some choice recommendations if you're struggling with what to watch this Halloween. Carpenter himself has given audiences one of the most classic films to celebrate on the holiday with Halloween, but the filmmaker himself prefers to enjoy moody, gothic horror during this spooky season. While Carpenter's recommendations, The Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula, might be considered tame by today's standards, the filmmaker pointed out how provocative they were at the time.

"Yeah, two moves from the '50s," Carpenter shared with Entertainment Weekly when asked for Halloween recommendations. "The Curse of Frankenstein and the Horror of Dracula. Both Hammer films, and they're both really fun. They were groundbreaking at the time, they were also extremely violent at the time."

As far as the ire these films drew at the time, the filmmaker joked, "Any time you can outrage British critics, you're doing something right."

In the decades since Carpenter rose to prominence in the genre world, he has regularly expressed his interest in horror and sci-fi films from the '50s and '60s, as they shaped his overall tastes in cinema. One of his most famous films, The Thing, is even a remake of The Thing from Another World, both of which are based on the novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell.

Carpenter's last directorial effort came in 2010 with The Ward, though he recently served as a producer and composer on last year's Halloween. Fans regularly wonder about his opinions on contemporary horror films, but his long history with the genre makes them difficult to enjoy.

"No, I see the plumbing," Carpenter confirmed to ComicBook.com when asking if a modern horror film has scared him. "You have to be young, young is good, and know a little less [to get scared]. But when a movie does affect me, that means it's great because it's gotten past all my sensors."

The filmmaker did point out that 2008's Let the Right One In, an adaptation of the 2004 novel of the same name about a young vampire who befriends a boy in her apartment complex, did offer him some exciting surprises.

"There was a movie a few years ago I thought was just fabulous," Carpenter confessed. "It was called Let the Right One In. I believe that was a Swedish film. Oh, man, that was terrific. Just terrific. It just reinvented the vampire myth quite a bit. And I liked it."

Carpenter will be producing and scoring Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, releasing on October 16, 2020 and October 15, 2021, respectively.

What do you think of the filmmaker's suggestions? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!

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