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John Carpenter Calls Halloween Kills “The Quintessential Slasher Film” During Fantasia Q&A

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John Carpenter

With the Fantasia Film Festival having bestowed legendary Halloween director John Carpenter the Lifetime Achievement Award for his still prolific output in cinema and music, former Fangoria Editor-in-Chief and Fantasia Co-Director of International Programming Tony Timpone hosted a live streamed Q&A with the director this past Saturday.

An hour-long masterclass, Carpenter touched on many of his films during the discussion, from 1978’s Halloween and 1981’s Escape from New York to 1980’s The Fog, as well as the upcoming 2021 feature Halloween Kills (which he executive produced), which he called, “so intense,” and “the quintessential slasher film.” Interesting anecdotes abound, with Carpenter reminiscing on the late great actor Donald Pleasence to his short-lived involvement with The Exorcist III, and a whole lot more.   

You can watch the entire Q&A below.

Cinematographer Gary B. Kibbe Passes Away

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It’s with sadness that we report the passing of longtime John Carpenter collaborator and cinematographer Gary B. Kibbe.

According to Halloween director Carpenter’s official Twitter account, Kibbe was 79 years of age at the time of his passing.

Born January 9, 1941 in Los Angeles, California, Kibbe got his start in film working as a camera operator on several features in the 1970s, with his first Carpenter collaboration coming in 1981 by way of Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween II (which Carpenter produced), and his second on 1986’s Big Trouble in Little China, which Carpenter directed. Kibbe would later go on to photograph the majority of Carpenter’s films produced since the mid-1980s, including Prince of Darkness (1987), They Live (1988), Body Bags (1993), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), Village of the Damned (1995), Escape from L.A. (1996), Vampires (1998), Ghosts of Mars (2001).

Further credits as a cinematographer include 1984’s Sixteen Candles, 1986’s Stand by Me, the 1992 Tales from the Crypt episode “King of the Road,” and additional photography on 1996’s The Crow: City of Angels.

 

Our sincerest condolences to Kibbe’s friends and family from everyone here at HalloweenMovies.com.

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l-to-r: Gary B. Kibbe, John Carpenter & Roddy Piper on the set of They Live (Photo Credit: Cinephilia & Beyond)

John Carpenter Talks Surviving Hollywood

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Filmmaker and master of horror John Carpenter sat down with Variety’s Jenelle Riley for an interview recently to discuss his career, and touched on such topics as the films which frightened him as a boy (1958’s The Fly and 1951’s The Thing from Another World, among them), growing up in a segregated South, his early years at USC, his approach to scoring film, and Jason Blum’s challenge to him of, “Why don’t you get off your lazy butt and make it good instead of sitting around and complaining?” as it pertained to the Halloween film series, which prompted his return as executive producer and composer in last year’s David Gordon Green-directed box office hit.

It’s a great watch (and if you pay close attention, you’ll even spy in the b-roll a Rick Baker-designed maquette of a Creature from the Black Lagoon suit mock-up, which was intended for a never-made remake of the eponymous 1954 film which Carpenter was once attached to direct for Universal).

Interesting stuff. Check it out below.

John Carpenter to Receive the Prestigious Golden Coach Award at Cannes Director’s Fortnight 

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According to Variety, Halloween director and horror master John Carpenter is set to receive the 2019 Golden Coach Award (Carrosse d’Or) at the Director’s Fortnight sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival on May 15th.

In its letter to Carpenter, The French Directors’ Guild, which chooses the recipient of the award, called the filmmaker “a creative genius of raw, fantastic and spectacular emotions,” and when on to say that each of his films “enhances the irresistible delight of staging. In each of them, the work on space, on what is off-screen, on the visible and on the invisible, is constantly renewed and regenerated in order to redefine fear – a fear that is always prone to trigger emotions in characters and actors who have now become iconic.”

Past recipients of the award include Martin Scorsese in 2018 and Werner Herzog in 2017.

Congratulations John from HalloweenMovies.com and everyone at Trancas!