Directed by John Carpenter • 1974 • United States
Starring Brian Narelle, Dan O'Bannon, Cal Kuniholm
John Carpenter made his feature debut with this gleefully gonzo science-fiction satire, which began life as a student film and went on to become a cult classic. Onboard the titular spaceship, a team of chilled-out astronauts cruise the cosmos, blowing up planets while dealing with a host of crises ranging from a runaway pet alien (played by a beach ball) to a renegade bomb with a mind of its own. Scripted by future ALIEN screenwriter Dan O’Bannon (who also costars), this midnight movie favorite plays like an extended stoner riff on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
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Assault on Precinct 13
Directed by John Carpenter • 1976 • United States
Starring Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie ZimmerJohn Carpenter’s lean, mean second feature puts a gritty exploitation spin on Howard Hawks’s classic western RIO BRAVO, transposing the story to a soon-to-be-closed LA police station where a gr...
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The Fog
Directed by John Carpenter • 1980 • United States
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom AtkinsLong-buried secrets come back to haunt a small town in this triumph of atmosphere and creeping unease from genre great John Carpenter. Drawing inspiration from the moody masterworks of Val L...
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Escape from New York
Directed by John Carpenter • 1981 • United States
Starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Isaac HayesIt’s the year 1997 and the dystopian hellscape of Manhattan has been turned into a maximum security prison. When the U.S. president’s plane is hijacked and crash lands on the island, it’s up to ha...
