Christine
She can't (and won't) drive 55.... Stephen King's novel about the twisted love affair between a boy and his car gets transferred to the screen, courtesy of suspense master John Carpenter. Although lacking some of the more outré supernatural elements of the source material, this high-octane cinematic tune-up more than delivers the goods, horror-wise (Christine's midnight rampages will never be forgotten)--as well as being a sly exposé of the random cruelties within the high-school pecking order. Keith Gordon (who has gone on to become a stellar director in his own right, with films such as A Midnight Clear and Mother Night to his credit) gives a wonderfully controlled central performance. Carpenter's atmospheric original score is backed up by a well-chosen collection of rock classics, including George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone" (the titular character's all-too-apt theme song). --Andrew Wright
Vampires
Talk about an opening. The first few minutes of John Carpenter's Vampires--in which James Woods's vampire killer leads a dawn raid on a New Mexico "goon nest" of bloodsuckers--not only suggests a horror movie that will not pull any punches, it even evokes some of the more disturbing dream-memories of American Westerns. Muscular and uncompromised, the sequence suggests a new Carpenter classic unraveling before one's eyes. Well, dream on. Things don't quite work out that way, but this is still a film to reckon with. There are a few serious (and surprising) misjudgments on the director's part, particularly a mishandling of Sheryl Lee's role as a prostitute poisoned by the bite of a "master vampire" (who pretty much wiped out Woods's team of goon terminators). But aside from some weaknesses, the action is jolting, the suggested complicity of the Catholic Church in destroying monsters is provocative, and the traces of Howard Hawks's continuing influence on Carpenter's storytelling are in evidence. --Tom Keogh
Starman
While most movie buffs are likely to call Halloween the best movie from John Carpenter, others--die-hard romantics and anyone who cried while watching E.T.--might vote in favor of the director's 1984 hit Starman. It's easily Carpenter's warmest and most beguiling film, and the only one that ever earned an Oscar nomination. That honor went specifically to Best Actor nominee Jeff Bridges for his performance as an alien visitor to Earth who is knocked off course and must take an interstate road trip to rendezvous with a mothership from his home planet. To complete this journey he assumes the physical form of the dead husband of a Wisconsin widow (Karen Allen) who responds first with fear, then sympathy, and finally love. Carpenter's graceful strategy is to switch the focus of this E.T.-like film from science fiction to a gentle road-movie love story, made believable by the memorable performances of Bridges and Allen. It's a bit heavy-handed with tenacious government agents who view the Starman as an alien threat (don't they always?), but Carpenter handles the action with intelligent flair, sensitivity, and lighthearted humor. If you're not choked up during the final scene, well, you just might not be human. --Jeff Shannon
