But why exactly did Carpenter’s films works so well in his heyday? And what made those films apart of Carpenter’s golden age of filmmaking? All three of Carpenter’s major successes all have the same common denominator when it comes to generating fright. The characters in these films are in many respects victims of being on the wrong side of history. Before cell phones and internet, technology which we now consider rudimentary was more vulnerable. While many of that technology still exists today, we are not nearly as dependent on it as we used to be. And if our landlines power-down or our radio signals disappear, we have many other options besides a howling voice to seek help. What makes Carpenter’s classics work is that the characters are plagued by technologies they depend on.
Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, and The Thing contain plots wherein characters must fight for their own lives against a force they soon realize cannot be stopped by authorities. Carpenter isolates his characters from the larger world by focusing on a small number of people in a very small setting. In Assault on Precinct 13, Anderson, California is a small suburb infested with gang members who rule the streets with assault rifles. The film culminates at a small police precinct which is closing down and cannot protect the public when Anderson is most vulnerable. In Halloween, Michael Myers stalks a small suburb with an incorrigible “sheriff” and kills within a one block radius. And in The Thing, the characters themselves share an evil which cannot be contained. Small settings, no help from the outside world, and an unstoppable motherfucker that wants you dead. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining abides by the same horror principles.
Of course the possibility remains that such plots can still be plausible today. The 2007 indie-horror The Strangers fits the Carpenter horror philosophy with ease, even if not as successful as the man himself. But because of the nature of enhanced communication through technology, most horror films are not nearly as effective as they used to be. It’s not that people aren’t sure how to make them now. Rather it is the conditions into which our society has evolved to that makes modern day horror flicks either implausible or simply impossible. The world is too connected now for someone to be cut off from society so much as to be insignificant or unheard.
Charlie Wachtel is a Senior Writer for The Film Crusade as well as Founder of www.filmcrusade.com.
