John Carpenter reveals his greatest fear: “It’s common throughout the earth”
Directors who specialise in horror tend to have a stronger constitution than most, which comes with the territory when they spend so much time being surrounded by blood and guts. However, that doesn’t mean John Carpenter doesn’t have fears of his own, with one looming larger than the rest.
Understandably, what frightens Carpenter isn’t some far-fetched creature wreaking havoc on the population or a serial killer prowling the streets in search of their next victim. If that were the case, then it’s unlikely cinema would have been gifted with two of its greatest-ever horror flicks.
Carpenter ushered in the age of the slasher with Halloween and launched a franchise that, much like Michael Myers, refuses to go quietly into the night, while The Thing is without question one of the finest and most influential films ever to suffer the ignominy of crashing and burning at the box office.
Toss the ominously inclement weather of The Fog, the automotive murder of Christine, the extraterrestrial invaders of They Live, the bared fangs of Vampires, and the interplanetary spirits of Ghosts of Mars into the mix, and the iconic auteur has covered plenty of bases when it comes to frightening the life out of audiences. Or at least trying to, considering a couple of those aforementioned titles aren’t very good.
Still, Carpenter hasn’t been weaving his way through life unburdened by any semblance of existential dread because even directors who’ve mastered the art of horror have fears of their own. For the semi-retiree, it’s one shared by most people around the world, who experience occasional pangs of realisation that one day everything comes to an end.
“Well, I’ve thought about that, and I think I’m scared of the same things that you are,” he offered when asked by Riot Fest to name his greatest fear. “Everybody is scared of the same things. Every human is scared of death. We know we’re going to die. That’s a frightening thing, the unknown. But we’re scared of disfigurement, or fire, or pain; everything.”
It might sound like a cop-out for Carpenter to essentially say that what frightens him most are the same things that frighten everyone else, but he does at least justify his broad assessment by relating it to the universality of horror “because it works everywhere.”
Death, disfigurement, immolation, and searing amounts of pain are indeed terrifying prospects, with Carpenter doubling down on his generalisation. “It’s common throughout the earth that we’re all afraid of the same things,” and he’s not exactly wrong.
If there’s one thing that no person can ever avoid, it’s their clogs being popped. Carpenter is hardly alone in acknowledging that facing up to his own mortality scares him, not that he’s ever had any issues sending characters he’s created spiralling towards their own doom.
