5 John Carpenter Movies That Deserve A Second Look

John Carpenter has an incredible batch of movies, but unlike many of his contemporaries, several of his movies were not successes when released. Instead, Carpenter has several movies that became popular when they hit home video and became cult classics. That means he has movies that fans love but not movies that have been widely accepted by mainstream audiences, and these are movies that deserve more love.

Carpenter became a sensation when he released Halloween in 1978 and popularized what would become known as the slasher genre. However, that was the last movie he made that was a monster success. The Fog was a box office success, but it was seen as a critical disappointment for Carpenter at the time. The Thing was a box office and critical failure, and its low numbers cost the director a chance to make the Stephen King adaptation Firestarter.

After The Thing's failure, Carpenter was a risky name for Hollywood, even though his movies ended up becoming cult classics. In the case of The Thing, that movie became a seminal masterpiece that didn't achieve its level of success until years later. Throughout his career, Carpenter has made several movies that have never earned the same level of respect as The Thing, and these movies deserve a lot more respect.

Escape From L.A. (1996)

Escape from L.A. is the sequel to the beloved Escape from New York, which is one reason that the follow-up didn't find a huge level of success when it was released 15 years after the original sci-fi thriller. Released 30 years ago on August 9, 1996, Escape from L.A. is a movie that plays better today than it did when it was released in the 1990s. Kurt Russell is back as Snake Plissken, and he is now sent to Los Angeles to kill the president's daughter and retrieve a doomsday device.

The movie is a dystopian thriller in which the United States is run by an ultra-conservative president who deports anyone who won't conform to the new rules of society. Dystopian thrillers play a little closer to the heart today than they did in the 1990s, and while the movie didn't get great reviews, it isn't as bad as critics made it sound at the time. The movie also has Bruce Campbell in a rare villain role.

The Fog (1980)

After his breakout with Halloween in 1978, Carpenter directed the made-for-TV film called Elvis, starring Kurt Russell. In 1980, he was back with another horror movie called The Fog, and fans who wanted to see a film on Halloween's level left the theaters disappointed. The movie was a box office success, making $21.3 million on a $1.1 million budget. With two brilliant scream queens in Adrienne Barbeau and Jamie Lee Curtis, plus the legendary Janet Leigh in the movie, it deserved better.

In 2005, Hollywood remade the movie with Smallville's Tom Welling, but that movie was so terribly reviewed that it made people realize that Carpenter's original movie wasn't as bad as history makes it appear. If anything, the movie has one of Carpenter's best musical scores, and the movie has a distinctive creepy factor that makes it still a scary experience today.

Prince Of Darkness (1987)

Released in 1987, one year after the brilliant Big Trouble in Little China flopped at the box office, Carpenter went back to his independent roots and made the dark horror thriller Prince of Darkness. The movie reunited Carpenter with Halloween star Donald Pleasence, cast as a Catholic priest who enlists some quantum physics students to investigate an ancient cylinder hidden beneath an abandoned church in Los Angeles. However, this results in the arrival of Satan.

There is a lot to love about Prince of Darkness, and it even includes a small cameo by rock legend Alice Cooper as a possessed unhoused person. This was more than a satanic horror movie, as Carpenter tied scientific concepts with religious horror, and it ended up as a bigger box office success, thanks in large part to a smaller budget. Despite mixed reviews, it has a cult following and is a great religious horror thriller.

In The Mouth Of Madness (1995)

Released in 1995, In the Mouth of Madness is the best Carpenter movie released in the 1990s, although it is one that few people talk about today. The film stars Sam Neill as an insurance investigator who visits a small town while looking into the disappearance of a successful horror novel author. However, when things from the author's supernatural books begin to happen in real life, the investigator begins to question his own sanity.

Carpenter directed what he called his "Apocalypse Trilogy," which begins with The Thing and continues with Prince of Darkness. In the Mouth of Madness is the third and final installment in that trilogy, whose films are only connected by their themes rather than storyline. Like most of Carpenter's later movies, the film was not a financial success, barely making back its original budget. However, it is a dark and disturbing horror movie, and one of Carpenter's best.

They Live (1988)

When it comes to John Carpenter's career, the one movie that completely represents his status as a cult favorite director is They Live, which stars professional wrestling legend Rowdy Roddy Piper. At that time, a movie headlined by a professional wrestler was never expected to be much of anything other than a promotional push for the wrestler. Piper wanted more, and he teamed with Carpenter for this alien-invasion sci-fi movie.

The movie has Piper as a drifter who finds a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see that aliens have already conquered Earth and are living in disguise as the ruling class of humans. The movie has so many great moments, including a long fight between Piper and Keith David that South Park spoofed years later. This movie, above all other John Carpenter movies, is bigger and better than its reputation as a cult classic might suggest.