Carpenter Trio: The Bogey Man Will Get You
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embodiment of primitive evil: the Bogy Man whom man cannot
escape (Muir 77).
The film was hailed as a major achievement in horror by the audience
and by critics. It was seen as suspenseful and truly frightening. It still works, all
these years later, even for those who may have seal it before. Although
Halloween has been described as the “seminal slasher film,” it stands well above
its imitators, including the sequels, which failed to fully re-create its magic.
Even prior to his 1978 classic, Carpenter-directed films exhibited a
fascination with evil, although in Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), its origin was
more specific and earthly. Here, a youth gang seeks revenge on a police station
for the earlier slaughter of some of its members by “law enforcement driven to
horrible extremes” [Assault on Precinct 13). Reflecting the shadowed, masked
face of Michael Myers, the attackers are shown as robotic zombies, without
identities as complete human beings. Evil is represented here by a faceless,
nameless, ceaseless force, symbolic of the eternal existence of the dark side.
There is also a clear indictment of the authority of government, represented by an
about-to-be-closed police station manned by an odd assortment of individuals
who lack a direct connection with the earlier massacre of gang members. One of
the defenders of the precinct station is a convicted murderer, which further blurs
the identity of forces from the dark side. In Carpenter films, these forces may be
ethereal representations of a lurking menace; they may be grotesque, repulsive
horrors; or they may be clean-cut agents of government.
The Fog, Carpenter’s 1980 effort, was, like Halloween, a result not only
of his directing, but his writing, as well. In this story, nameless ghostly victims of
a century-old shipwreck seek revenge on a California village. The ancestors of
the current residents lured a ship loaded with lepers and a cargo of gold to the
shore, where they murdered the ship’s inhabitants in order to steal the gold. The
ghosts are only occasionally and partially glimpsed; a luminous fog, which drifts
in and out of the village, signals the ominous presence of the ghosts and their dark
mission of murderous retribution. The Fog ends with the admonition that the evil
has not been vanquished. It continues to exis t and will reawaken at some future
time. Evil is shown here in the guise of human shape, but also as an everlasting
entity, transcending mortal form.
In Escape from New York (1981), Carpenter is once again credited with
writing as well as directing. Here, the island of Manhattan is literally a prison;
Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is enticed to free the President of the United States
(Donald Pleasence), who has been captured and held hostage by a gang headed by
the “Duke of New York,” ruler over inmates of this island-prison. Near the end
of the film, the Duke is savagely gunned down by the President, who, thanks to
the efforts of Plissken, manages to escape to freedom. Evil in this film is
represented not only by the violent acts of mayhem and murder, but also by