“Breaking Taboos: John Carpenter Still Astonished by the Impact of a Terrifying Film”

If you are a fan of horror films, you necessarily know John Carpenter, a master of the genre who has built an excellent reputation with The Thing, Christine, Night of the Masks, Fog and many more. His ultimate classic is probably Halloween in 1978, the starting point of a saga which reveals to us the flagship antagonist that is Michael Myers. It seems natural to imagine that Carpenter is a horror movie buff himself; the man has previously expressed his admiration for certain works that helped shape the genre, as Night of the Living Dead by George A Romero, a zombie film staple, and Chainsaw Massacre by Tobe Hooper.

In the supernatural category, he also cites The Exorcist from 1973, a pillar signed William Friedkin. This timeless classic based on a 1971 novel of the same name chronicles a young girl's demonic possession and her mother's desperate quest to have her exorcised. “You know what's scary about The Exorcist. Everyone knows what's scary about this movie. It's the devil“, Carpenter said about him in an interview with the media The Fader. And added: “The first time I saw it, I thought that to be truly effective, this film required belief in a higher power. But since then, I've learned to appreciate it for what it is.”. And even today, certain scenes still have quite an effect on him: “I watched it again recently and was surprised by its intensity. The things they were doing back then, with this little girl, they broke a lot of taboos, my God. It's really very good.”

Unfortunately, the Exorcist saga has become quite sluggish over time and has inherited a few reboots and sequels that are far from living up to the original. Carpenter seems barely aware of the work his friend David Gordon Green did on the film rebootaccording to a recent statement to the Los Angeles Times: “I love what David did when he created the three Halloweens. I found it fabulous. I heard that The Exorcist wasn't really up to par. This could be an awesome movie. I don't understand how anyone can screw this up.“

John Carpenter's favorite films

It's not very complicated to know John Carpenter's favorite films. The media Fader has already spoken with the filmmaker to establish the complete list. We also know that it includes a slew of classics like X The Unknown (1956), The Quartermass Experiment (1955), Horror Of Dracula (1958) but also The Fly (1958) and The Thing From Another World (1951). Obviously, the man seems much more attached to period feature films than to modern productions.