"Monsters in movies are us, always us, one way or the other. They’re us with hats on."
John Carpenter
In the late 1970s, a young filmmaker named John Carpenter was approached by a pair of enterprising movie producers out to make a low budget fright flick. With only a couple of modest critical hits under his belt, Carpenter took the gig – about a maniac with a taste for babysitters – and went about transforming what could have been a throwaway drive-in B-movie into one of horror cinema’s most iconic masterpieces, and one of the highest-grossing indie films of all time. Not only an amusing anecdote, this triumphant tale just goes to prove that you should never underestimate the power of John Carpenter, a master visual craftsman (and dab hand on the synthesizer), who’s been turning oft-dismissed genre fare into bona fide cinematic gold for over 40 years.
Here's our look at Carpenter's towering influence accross horror and other genres.
And here's a rundown of his masterful, spine-chilling work as a composer.