The flop that nearly ruined John Carpenter’s career: “You have got to change your ways”
These days, if a movie gets bad reviews, doesn’t score a huge opening weekend, and receives negative buzz on social media, it will more than likely disappear from cinemas almost immediately. That film is unlikely to get a second chance, either, because ancillary markets like home video are nowhere near as strong as they used to be. In that scenario, a filmmaker could legitimately be ruined almost overnight – and that’s exactly what nearly happened to John Carpenter’s career when he suffered a catastrophic flop in the ’80s. Thankfully, though, times were different, and he lived to fight another day.
Between 1978 and 1981, Carpenter made Halloween, The Fog, and Escape From New York. By that point, he could virtually write his own ticket in Hollywood, and he chose to make his major studio debut with a big-budget remake of a classic 1950s sci-fi horror film. According to Carpenter, though, he wasn’t so much remaking Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World – one of his favourite movies ever – as he was making a new adaptation of the source material: John W Campbell Jr’s 1938 novella Who Goes There?
As he made the movie, Carpenter pushed boundaries with special effects technology thanks to the pioneering work of Rob Bottin, and in the process, pushed the boundaries of screen violence. In fact, he crafted The Thing to be a merciless, bleak movie that would challenge audiences and make them think about the dark corners of their own hearts – all while showing them some of the most visceral imagery ever created. In 1985, he told Starlog, “I knew it was going to be strong, but I didn’t think it would be too strong.”
In the end, Carpenter was wholly unprepared for what happened when The Thing was unleashed upon an unsuspecting populace. It flopped at the box office, for one thing, but the reviews were arguably more troubling. You see, many critics seemed actively angry at him. “I was called ‘a pornographer of violence,'” a stunned Carpenter admitted. “I had no idea it would be received that way.”
In 1996, the horror legend told The Director’s Chair, “People still think of it as a little bit above pornography because it was so strong at the time. They’d never seen a monster like that before. Even Alien wasn’t as vicious as The Thing.” Amazingly, an agent told Carpenter that he walked out because he couldn’t stomach the movie, and “one of the preview ladies threw up in the bathroom after the dog scene.”
To Carpenter’s eternal shock, though, even his usual bread and butter – the horror fiends – seemed to hate the picture. “The Thing was probably the movie that changed my creative career more than any other,” he confessed. “That movie was universally hated by critics and audiences, especially the genre fans.” Suddenly, a shaken Carpenter was fielding calls from his agent and people in his inner circle who were advising him, ‘You have got to change your ways.'”
This wasn’t all a storm in a teacup, either – the negative reaction had tangible results. Carpenter claimed he was fired from Universal’s Stephen King adaptation Firestarter because of The Thing’s calamitous reception, which was made all the more confusing because he insisted, “I thought I made this great film.”
Ultimately, to ensure his career wasn’t derailed in a manner he couldn’t come back from, Carpenter scrambled to get hired for another job as soon as he could. This was the driving force behind accepting another King adaptation, Christine, which he wasn’t exactly passionate about but could use to get himself back on track. In the end, he enjoyed making that movie and it was a modest hit, so he wasn’t kicked out of Hollywood forever.
However, Carpenter sometimes wonders what his career could have been if The Thing had been a critically acclaimed hit movie right out of the gate instead of a cult classic whose reputation grew over the years. “I take every failure hard,” he admitted to Time Out in 2008. “The one I took the hardest was The Thing. My career would have been different if that had been a big hit.”
