‘Everything I know about evil I learned in that small town’: John Carpenter on terrifying the world with Halloween, The Thing and The Fog
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- John Carpenter, 78, has released a graphic novel called Cathedral based on a cinematic dream about a portal to the underworld beneath a disused church, paired with a heavy-metal soundtrack he describes as fitting 'this heavy metal groove that we were starting on'
- Carpenter says 'Everything I know about evil I learned in that small town' of Bowling Green, Kentucky, where his family moved in 1953; he was bullied by 'country boys' for carrying his musician-father's violin to school
- Halloween (1978), made for $325,000 and starring then-unknown Jamie Lee Curtis, grossed over $70 million and is widely cited as the foundational slasher — its suburban domesticity was the point, Carpenter says: 'when it pulls back… and reveals we're in the suburbs. That's the whole idea'
- The Thing opened just two weeks after Spielberg's ET in summer 1982 — Carpenter recalls the contrast vividly: 'I remember seeing the boys on their bicycles… and then they go up into the sky magically. And that's when I threw up'
- Carpenter still collects residuals from Halloween sequels he didn't direct, quipping: 'I sit on the couch and a cheque arrives in my hand. What's wrong with that? I have to admit, with all the rebellion in the world, I am a happy capitalist'
- Carpenter's spare, synth-driven scores and filmmaking style have influenced directors (Guillermo del Toro, Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron), TV (Stranger Things), and musicians from Daft Punk and Portishead to Trent Reznor and Hans Zimmer — though he claims he's oblivious and 'rebelled against mobile phones… I can't do that'
- Carpenter's 1974 debut Dark Star was a lo-fi parody of Kubrick's 2001 built with egg cartons for spaceship interiors and an inflatable beach ball for an alien, alerting Hollywood he could deliver on a shoestring
Why it matters: Carpenter's Cathedral graphic novel gives the 78-year-old auteur a fresh creative outlet while his $325,000 Halloween grossing $70 million and The Thing arriving opposite Spielberg's ET remain defining touchstones of horror and sci-fi. The profile matters because Carpenter's influence — running from del Toro and Tarantino to Daft Punk and Hans Zimmer — is still expanding even as he insists he doesn't own a computer.
