This year, the film world is celebrating the 35th anniversary of John Carpenter’s iconic horror film “Halloween” with a year long exploration of the movie, as well as the release of a special edition that promises new looks at the 1978 masterpiece that shot the gun for hundreds of copycats, wannabes, and unofficial remakes that would storm the theaters in the eighties looking for their own piece of the pie. With that, we sound off on our top ten John Carpenter characters.
Who are some of your favorite John Carpenter characters? Let us Know Below!
10. Jack Crow
People didn’t quite respond to this vampire film from Carpenter, but it had his signature all over it. Jack Crow is a bad ass vampire hunter with a horrific past who takes on the bloodsuckers with all the blunt one-liners of a pissed off minimum wage worker. It’s almost as it one of the Reservoir Dogs quit crime and went on to fight evil.
9. Jack Burton
Burton is the ode to the classic American cinema heroes who finds himself embroiled in an out of this world catastrophe. Though Burton is the main hero of “Big Trouble,” he’s hardly invincible or infallible.
8. DJ Stevie Wayne
Stevie Wayne is the kind of DJ every town wishes they had. Gorgeous, sexy, talented, and whip smart. She is one of the few people in “The Fog” to figure out that the town of Antonio Bay is cursed, and she manages to help many of the town’s residents escape the wrath of the fog’s demons while also escaping imminent death.
7. Dr. Samuel Loomis
Henry Loomis is a flawed hero that’s already been defeated by the time we’ve met him. He failed to help young boy Michael Myers, and has also failed to catch on to Michael’s plans to escape the insane asylum. He can’t convince authorities about Michael’s return, and by the time the first film ends, he has no choice but to shoot him dead. When he discovers Michael’s evil has allowed him to live another day, he’s failed beyond comprehension.
6. Michael Myers
Michael Myers is a sweeping storm of unstoppable evil and force, an eternal stain on the town of Haddonfield Illinois. For reasons no one will ever be able to explain, he despises the town, and hates the essence of it. When he inexplicably murders his sister one Halloween night, he grows in to a faceless form of evil who arrives to do battle with Laurie Strode. Michael will always be that curse the town and Laurie.
5. Napoleon Wilson
Wilson is not by any means a hero, but he is a villain that has to work with others to ensure his own survival by any means necessary. In spite of his status as a big criminal, the hordes of gang members raiding the abandoned precinct in “Assault on Precinct 13” could care less. They only want to murder everyone in the precinct and will stop at nothing. By the end, Wilson has become a valuable asset for survival, and Wilson shows why he’s a high profile criminal.
4. RJ MacReady
MacReady is one of the first men to realize the threat of the thing when it enters in to his and his crew’s Antarctic station. And as a means of survival he does whatever it takes to weed out the thing and ensure his own safety. MacReady is one of the banner characters of the Carpenter canon who gets the job done and battles the thing for survival. Even in the very end of “The Thing,” man and alien are still doing battle. Who the man and who the alien are, though, is still being debated.
3. Laurie Strode
Laurie Strode is the quintessential heroine that all movie heroines aspire to be, and have failed at being. Many could make the argument that Sydney Prescott was a great horror heroine, but in truth she’s just a meta-heroine meant to be modeled after Strode. Laurie is the woman who is thrust in to a situation she can’t fight or escape. Despite her means of survival, she’s a dim witted teen like her friends, but it’s her quick thinking and will to survive that put her above her ill-fated friends. She faces down evil and, for the most part, survives to tell the tale. But she is given the punishment of knowing beings like Michael exist in her world.
2. Snake Plissken
Plissken is the Wild West character John Carpenter always envisioned. He’s the man with no name, he’s Yojimbo, he’s Rooster Cogburn, he’s Matt Dillon, he’s the embodiment of the old West outlaw who survives by his wits and his sheer amazing gun skills. Carpenter never had a chance to make his Western so Plissken is a post-apocalyptic cowboy in apocalyptic New York, and he’s the guy you want by your side when shit hits the fan.
1. Nada
Nada is the man with no name that Carpenter is a fan of. Being the western fan boy, Nada is the cowboy who arrives in to town looking for a direction and some work. It takes Nada’s flannel donning quick witted punishment to create a ripple and help the world wake up once and for all from its alien masters. Nada is an unforgiving presence who will do whatever it takes to wake people up. Even risk being gunned down in a bank. In the end he’s an excellent anti-hero who just wanted a fresh start, and ended up becoming a saving grace for Planet Earth.