In the Mouth of Madness 4K UHD (1995)

"I Think Therefore You Are - In 4K!"

Arrow Films are releasing a special 4K edition of the third in John Carpenter's loosely themed 'Lovecraftian trilogy', all of which were critically panned on release and opened to either indifferent or disastrous box office returns. Of course it's a different story now. THE THING (1982), PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1987) and IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1995) are all considered classics but believe me, it wasn't always easy being a Carpenter fan back in the day, sitting in an empty cinema on opening weekend and then having to defend them when critics in both the small and large presses were heading their reviews with titles like 'Quatermass and the Shit'.

There's a nod to Nigel Kneale's third Quatermass in ITMOM, of course, with the novel The Hobbs End Horror playing a key role. John Trent (Sam Neill) is an insurance investigator charged with looking into the disappearance of best-selling horror author Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow) and finding himself in the town of Hobbs Ends where it turns out Cane's novels are becoming reality and are preparing to open the gateway for the return of the 'Old Ones'.

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS does a fine job of telling its story while allowing Carpenter's obsessions with loss of control and the nature of reality to bubble along as subtext for some of it before throwing logic to the winds and becoming full-blown metatextual. Like Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner before it, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS threw down a gauntlet of 'follow that' in the mid-1990s that nobody had the slightest inclination of picking up, which remains a huge shame. But at least we still have the film.

Arrow's 4K transfer is excellent. Flesh tones are a little red at the beginning but obsessive fans who know the film inside out will likely still be surprised at the degree of extra detail that can be picked out, not least much of the writing on posters and signs. 

The disc comes with an excellent set of extras. There are three commentary tracks, including a new one from podcasters Rebekah McKendry and Elric Kane which is packed with facts & enthusiasm and bubbles along nicely. Archival commentaries consist of one with John Carpenter and producer Sandy King, and the other with John Carpenter and cinematographer Gary B Kibbe.

There are are interviews with King (22 minutes) and Prochnow (7 minutes) and archival ones from the  2018 Shout Factory release with Julie Carmen (10 minutes) and Greg Nicotero (17 minutes). Other archival material includes Horror's Hallowed Grounds looking at the movie's locations (12 minutes), 12 minutes of behind the scene footage and a brief five minute making of.

There's more new material in We Are What He Writes which offers, over its 34 minutes, perspectives on the movie from three different creatives - Camille Zaurin, Tom Lee Rutter and George Lea. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas gets her own video essay where she looks at the history of 'cursed media' including paintings and music. There are also trailers, TV spots and an image gallery. The set also comes with a reversible sleeve, double-sided poster and a book featuring new writing on the film. An excellent package for a long under-appreciated work.

John Carpenter's IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS is out from Arrow Films in a limited 4K UHD set on Monday 20th October 2025

Halloween 4K Ultra HD (1978)

The Night He Came Home in 4K!

Yes indeed, as part of the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of John Carpenter's ground-breaking classic horror, Lionsgate are releasing his HALLOWEEN in the 4K Ultra HD format, with a package that also includes the film on Blu-ray.

Is there anything left to say about HALLOWEEN? Michael Myers escapes from a mental institution. Pursued by his psychiatrist he returns to the town where he committed murder on Halloween night when he was aged 5 with the intention of doing more of the same. Does it matter who he is, or where he comes from? Not according to Carpenter, who in interviews at the time said that none of that was important (are you listening, Rob Zombie?). 

What did matter was the style, and HALLOWEEN has lashings of that, from Carpenter's widescreen compositions that are likely taught in film school now (if they aren't they should be), to Dean Cundey's gliding camerawork, to Carpenter's prickly theme music that's repetitive without ever becoming annoying (very clever, that).

HALLOWEEN has been sequelised (pretty painfully on the whole), remade (oh dear) and it's now up for a reboot, the trailer of which looks promising. We shall have to see. Meanwhile, here's the version I want to see, the version nobody has yet told. The version from Michael Myers' point of view. So when you watch the film again, here's a different take on what the film might be about:

Nervous, shy Michael Myers breaks out of the hospital where he was incarcerated just because when his parents came home one night he happened to be standing outside the house holding a large knife. He travels back to his home town of Haddonfield to prove his innocence. Once there he steals his sister's gravestone to prove how much his misses her and vows to help the teenagers of Haddonfield enjoy Halloween and feel safe. 

He helps a young man get back on his feet but lifts him up a bit too high and kills him. Knowing the man's girlfriend will be distressed by this he tries to break the news gently to her by doing his famous 'ghost with specs' routine. It all goes a bit wrong and in the excitement he loses his voice so that when another girl calls all he can do is breathe heavily. 

Meanwhile evil psychiatrist Dr Loomis has pursued him to Haddonfield. Dr Loomis isn't very good at psychiatry ("The evil is gone!" I mean what kind of psychiatrist says that?) but Michael wants him to feel good about himself so when Dr Loomis fills his gun with blanks by mistake Michael pretends to be shot. Fortunately his balcony plunge is onto a soft surface. He leaps up and thinks maybe a game of hide and seek might cheer Dr Loomis up but by then it's time for the film to finish. Never mind, maybe he can make it up to that scared girl who he was only trying to help by visiting her at the local hospital.

Lionsgate's 4K transfer looks terrific, with deeper blacks that make Michael's emergence from the shadows seem even more impressive. The Blu-ray disc is the 35th anniversary one, so you get the Carpenter / Jamie Lee Curtis commentary, two featurettes - 'The Night She Came Home' and 'On Location 25 Years Later', TV version footage, TV and radio spots and a trailer. 

John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN is out from Lionsgate in 

4K Ultra HD now.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)

"One for the Completists"

That John Carpenter film his fans don't tend to mention gets a new UK Blu-ray and DVD release courtesy of Fabulous Films.

After meeting Alice Monroe (Daryl Hannah) at a bar one evening, stockbroker Nick Halloway (Chevy Chase) goes on a bender and ends up so hungover the next morning he falls asleep in a room in the research facility where he's supposed to be attending a symposium.

A freak accident caused by a spilled cup of coffee turns half the building invisible and Nick along with it. Pursued by David Jenkins (Sam Neill) and his gang of CIA agents who want to recruit Nick as an assassin, will our hero find love and escape the bad guys?

A critical and commercial failure on its release, I'd like to be able to say that time has been kind to MEMOIRS, but I can't. There's something about this film that's just tonally off. Chevy Chase makes a reasonable leading man in pretty much a non-comic role, Daryl Hannah does what she had been doing best in the 1980s (blonde likeable but nothing special heroine) and Sam Neill plays Damien Thorn yet again.  
But it just doesn't work. It's neither funny enough nor suspenseful enough, and while setting a movie in the world of stockbrokers and their rich friends (with us expected to feel sympathy for them) might have appeared glamorous in the early 1990s, certainly now that approach feels all wrong.

It's an odd film for John Carpenter to have made, and perhaps that's the key. The characters in Carpenter's best films are resolutely working class (THE THING, THEY LIVE) academics (PRINCE OF DARKNESS) or middle classers who are just about getting by (HALLOWEEN, THE FOG). What MEMOIRS really needed was someone who could perhaps have had more fun with the upper class world the film is set in, like Joe Dante, or someone who could have gone a far more serious route - imagine if David Cronenberg had treated the subject the way he did THE FLY.

As it is we're left with a film the main appeal of which is for completists of the works of Carpenter, Chase et al rather than for the film itself. And if you fancy seeing Father Ted's Bishop Brennan (Jim Norton) as a physicist. 

        For those who are interested, Fabulous' transfer does indeed look fabulous. As extras you get deleted scenes and a featurette on the special effects. 

John Carpenter's MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN is out on DVD & Blu-ray from Fabulous Films on Monday 1st October 2018

The Thing (1982)

"Excellent Presentation of Carpenter's Classic"

John Carpenter's brilliant interpretation of John W Campbell Jr's classic story Who Goes There gets a director (and DP Dean Cundey) supervised 4k restoration from Arrow Films.

An Antarctic research team have their routine disrupted when a Norwegian in a helicopter arrives doing his best to kill the dog he's been pursuing. The dog survives, unfortunately for everyone, because in fact it's a shapeshifting, tissue-absorbing, perfect-replica-making alien life form. Soon members of the team are starting to be killed off and / or replaced, leaving us with the age-old horror film question - who will survive and what will be left of them? 

One of the best horror films ever made, one of the best science fiction films ever made, and one of the best 1980s films ever made, all of that probably means I can venture to suggest John Carpenter's THE THING is one of the best films ever made full stop. It's certainly a superb exercise in the horror of paranoia, complemented by a splendid script (everything we see and hear is relevant); a fine ensemble of character actors; understated, claustrophobic music (Morricone was definitely the right choice) and of course Rob Bottin's amazing special effects. A financial disaster at the time for Universal (it was the summer of ET: The Extraterrestrial, and the company probably wasn't too bothered because they made ET as well), time has shown the film's enduring quality, and if any movie of the early 1980s deserves the 4k restoration treatment, this is it.

So how does the transfer compare with the old Universal Blu-ray most of us will have in our collections? Well, the Arrow 4k gives you a crisper image with more detail but the picture has been brightened considerably - here at HMC we had to turn the contrast way down on our monitor to finally get rid of all the picture noise, so be aware. On the other hand if you're happy with your Universal disc I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to upgrade.

Unless you want the extras, of course. The Universal disc extras have all been ported over, including the Carpenter / Russell commentary, the feature-length making of, featurettes, out-takes, behind the scenes stuff, trailers and more.

New to the Arrow disc is a new feature-length documentary 'Who Goes There?' which looks at the history of THE THING and includes new cast and crew interviews. '1982 - One Amazing Summer' is a new documentary about the movies released during the summer of 1982 (obviously) and you also get a new commentary track for THE THING from Mike White, Patrick Bromley and 'El Goro' who are all podcasters.

You also get Sean Hogan's short Frightfest tribute THE THING: 27000 HOURS (with an optional Hogan commentary as well), No Thing Left Unsaid - a video record of a panel at the 2017 Texas Frightmare weekend, and three short featurettes about fans of the movie who have gone the extra distance in their love for the film.

Arrow Films have done that as well, by the way. A 4k transfer and lots and lots and lots of extras. You also get a poster, lobby cards, and a book. If you haven't got THE THING on Blu-ray, get this. If you already have, chances are you're going to want this version as well. An excellent package. 

The 4k restoration of John Carpenter's THE THING is out on Blu-ray from Arrow Films on Monday 23rd October 2017

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

              “Excellent Presentation of a Carpenter Classic”

        The film that, along with HALLOWEEN (1978) earned John Carpenter the moniker of ‘the Cut Price King of Hollywood’ gets a UK 40th anniversary DVD Blu-ray release courtesy of Second Sight. 
        After gang members are killed in an LA ghetto shoot out, more of their kind make a blood pact of vengeance on the local police force. Converging on a police station that is in the process of closing down, it falls to just-promoted cop Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) to defend the building and those within it with the aid of convict Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston). 

          Very much a cross between a Western (John Carpenter has never been shy in citing the influence that John Ford’s RIO BRAVO has had on his body of work) and a horror picture (the gang members hardly speak and are very much in the mould of the devil worshippers in PRINCE OF DARKNESS or the ghosts in THE FOG), ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 still works well despite its low budget. There are good acting turns from both Stoker and Joston, as well as Nancy Loomis in her first movie role, and Kim Richards as the little girl who gets more than an ice cream in a gunshot scene that has become infamous in exploitation cinema. The assault doesn’t actually take place on precinct 13 at all, but it’s such a good title, and the film really does live up to a fine exploitation tradition, that it can hardly be criticised for that.
 

          Second Sight’s presentation of John Carpenter’s pre-HALLOWEEN action thriller is second to none. The transfer looks excellent and the DTS-HD 5.1 sound mix is great - crank up the volume to hear Carpenter’s score at its best. There’s also a wealth of special features, including two commentary tracks - one from John Carpenter and another from Tommy Lee Wallace.
 

          There are new interviews with star Austin Stoker, producer Joseph Kaufman and future HALLOWEEN III director Tommy Lee Wallace. There’s also a new 12 minute talking head piece from Nancy Loomis where she discusses her career and why she gave up acting.
 

          You also get archive interviews with Carpenter and Stoker, a trailer and radio spots. Exclusive to the Blu-ray is John Carpenter’s student short CAPTAIN VOYEUR and a 53 minute French documentary on Laurie Zimmer. The limited edition box set also contains five art cards and a bonus CD of the movie soundtrack. A great package for a great film. 

John Carpenter's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 is out on Blu-ray, DVD, Download and On-Demand from Monday 28th November 2016

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

John Carpenter’s big budget knockabout chop-socky fantasy is about to get the  extra posh treatment from Arrow in the form of a steelbook Blu-ray release, as well as a standard package for those less keen to fork out extra for the metal. It’s a film that didn’t do very well on its initial release, which is a shame as it’s a lot of fun and it's certainly deserving of some love and attention.

Truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) delivers a shipment to the Chinatown district of San Francisco, beats his friend Wang (Dennis Dun) at cards and agrees to give him a lift to the airport to pick up his green-eyed fiancée. What Jack doesn’t know is that the girl is wanted by evil 2000-year-old wizard David Lo Pan (James Hong on deliciously daft evil form) to free him from a curse he was placed under all those years ago. The girl gets kidnapped and Jack and Wang, together with reporter Gracie (Kim Cattrall channelling goodness knows how many spunky 1940s heroines) have to break into Lo-Pan’s domain to get her back. Of course they don’t count on the whole host of supernatural oriental entities that are going to try to stop them.

Coming at the end of a run of higher budgeted studio pictures (he made 1984’s STARMAN prior to this) BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA proved to be such an unpleasant experience that John Carpenter went back to his low budget roots after this with the gets-better-every-time-you-watch-it PRINCE OF DARKNESS. Thankfully all the problems came after the production rather than during it, and the film itself is a piece of riotous entertainment. Kurt Russell’s Jack is not so much an everyman character as a uselessman character, completely unlike the usual Hollywood hero. Apparently that didn’t sit well with Hollywood executives and was one of the many reasons the picture was buried. That’s a huge shame because Russell’s performance is spot on as he gives us the incompetently funny side of macho. All the actors get into the spirit of the piece, with special mention going to Dennis Dun who has the job of holding everything together and keeping the plot going.

Carpenter's direction is bright and colourful and stylish as befits the material, and as ever he makes excellent use of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. W D Richter’s script ‘adaptation’ effortlessly revises the original screenplay’s Western setting to somewhere altogether different, and the dayglo colours and well edited action sequences make BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA feel much like a bigger, crazier version of Walter Hill’s STREETS OF FIRE, but with Carpenter synthesisers rather than Jim Steinman songs.

Arrow’s Blu-ray is a lovely transfer and is packed with extras, including a commentary track from John Carpenter & Kurt Russell ported over from the previous DVD release, and a brand new set of interviews with Carpenter, Russell, cinematographer Dean Cundey, producer Larry Franco and stuntman Jeff Imada. There’s also a vintage making-of featurette, extended ending, deleted scenes, a music video featuring Carpenter's band the Coup de Villes, trailers, TV spots, new poster artwork and a booklet. All round this is an absolutely excellent presentation of a neglected gem, and well worth picking up in Arrow's new Blu-ray version.

Arrow are releasing John Carpenter's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA on Blu-ray in steelbook and standard editions on 16th December 2013