Horror legend John Carpenter turns 78 today, and Halloween Night: John Carpenter Live from Los Angeles is now streaming on Screambox. Bloody Disgusting is celebrating with John Carpenter Week. Luiz H.C. closes out the festivities with a look at the horror master’s unforgettable creatures.
You don’t become a Master of Horror by making the same movie over and over again, and if there’s one genre filmmaker who makes a point of never repeating himself, it has to be John Carpenter. From iconic slashers to over-the-top kung-fu comedies, Carpenter has always been willing to tackle fresh subject matter in order to tell an unpredictable story.
However, there’s a common throughline connecting the New York-born director’s filmography that I rarely see discussed, and that’s his recurring use of movie monsters even in projects that aren’t necessarily creature features. In honor of Carpenter’s latest concert streaming on our very own Screambox, today we’re highlighting six of the most memorable monsters in John Carpenter’s work!
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining ‘monster’ as any non-human creature featured in one of the director’s projects, though we’ll be limiting entries to one creature per movie. That being said, this is by no means a definitive list celebrating all of the otherworldly beings in Carpenter’s films, so don’t forget to comment below if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list.
6. The Flying Eye Guardian – Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
From exploding gods to demonic primates, there’s no shortage of over-the-top effects in Carpenter’s urban fantasy opus, Big Trouble in Little China. And while fans of the movie might be expecting to see the hairy Wild-Man here, I’d actually like to dedicate this spot to a less-celebrated but no less memorable creature, the many-eyed Guardian!
Looking like a fleshy parody of Dungeons & Dragons’ Beholder monster, John Carpenter’s Flying Eye Guardian has always stuck out to me as both a kick-ass special effect and an incredibly bizarre design. From its mouth eyeball to its leathery skin and pained expression, there’s just something so off-putting about this critter that I can’t help but find him endearing.
5. Fallen Angel – Cigarette Burns (2006)
Often hailed as the last great gasp of John Carpenter’s celebrated career before stepping back from filmmaking in order to focus on music, Cigarette Burns is one of the director’s greatest achievements in serious horror storytelling – as well as the single best episode of the Masters of Horror anthology show.
Of course, much of the episode’s scare factor has to do with the horrific inclusion of a fallen angel in the cursed film-within-a-film, Le Fin Absolue Du Monde (“The Absolute End of the World”). While the creature effects here don’t exactly reinvent the wheel, with the angel being brought to life by Christopher Redman under just enough makeup meant to make him look uncanny, it’s the context behind the angel’s emaciated appearance that makes this one of the most disturbing inclusions on the list.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if this minimalist design ended up inspiring some of those popular “fallen angel” videos that went viral on early YouTube!
4. The Fascinators – They Live (1988)
The Blue Aliens from They Live are much more humanoid than the reptilian Fascinators from Eight O’Clock in the Morning (the Ray Nelson short story that the film is based on), but that doesn’t make them any less freaky. Skeletal ghouls that look more like the hollowed-out husks of human beings than actual extraterrestrials, these creatures have since become known as the terrifying face of authoritarian manipulation around the world.
That’s why Carpenter’s version of the Fascinators makes it onto the list, as it’s hard for a monster to be more memorable than by becoming forever associated with the ideas that it was created to criticize.
3. Beach Ball Alien – Dark Star (1974)
John Carpenter’s big-screen debut may be one of the most divisive features in his filmography, but even the haters have to admit that Dark Star boasts plenty of low-budget charm. If you need proof of that, look no further than the bizarre Beach Ball Alien that the crew of the Dark Star kept as an interplanetary pet.
A gas-based life-form with plastic-like skin and webbed feet that look suspiciously like a crewmember’s hands, the Beach Ball Alien has to be one of the most ridiculous monster designs in all of genre cinema. While it ultimately attacked Sgt. Pinback, I still felt bad for the inflatable critter when it was accidentally blown up by a tranquilizer dart.
2. Lovecraftian Wall of Monsters – In The Mouth of Madness (1994)
This one is a bit of a cheat, as the Wall of Monsters is more of a collection of several different Lovecraftian abominations rather than a single monstrous entity, but since they all represent the same idea of insane fiction burrowing its way into reality, I figured that we could make an exception for the work of Sutter Cane.
Besides, from fleshy star-spawn to multi-limbed crab-people, these designs are so damned cool that it would be impossible to choose a single favorite! In fact, it’s a shame that we only get the briefest glimpse of these practical creatures in the finished film, as they only get more interesting the more you look at them.
1. The Dog-Thing – The Thing (1982)
The most obvious inclusion on this list, The Thing, is also likely the creature responsible for the most nightmares. Using John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella as a jumping-off point, John Carpenter’s expert combination of gross-out body-horror and cosmic dread (brought to life by practical effects master Rob Bottin) is undoubtedly the scariest version of Who Goes There?
Out of all the alien antagonists’ terrifying forms, I’d argue that the initial dog-alien hybrid remains the most memorable. Not only does it introduce us to the grisly biology that allows the creature to shapeshift, but this Shoggoth-like exterior also helps to tell the disturbing story of all the previous beings who fell victim to the Thing from Another World.
Keep up with John Carpenter Week here.
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