Happy birthday, John Carpenter!

By Lois Kennedy

Today is a red letter day in the world of horrorphiles: it’s master director John Carpenter’s 68th birthday.

Carpenter has a long, storied background in filmmaking, according to IMDB starting in 1962 with the short film Revenge of the Colossal Beasts. He is most famous for his groundbreaking film Halloween, which helped solidify the slasher genre and inspired countless other movie makers with his unique camera angles (for examples shots from the point of view of Michael Myers), the inclusion of a strong, smart female character who conquers the monster, and an opening which introduces the killer at work. Carpenter is also the director behind The Thing, Prince of Darkness, The Fog, Christine, They Live, In the Mouth of Madness, and Village of the Damned. Though he hasn’t made anything since 2010’s The Ward, IMDB claims that a new film, a comic book adaptation, called Darkchylde is in development.

If that’s not enough, he’s also responsible for non-horror favorites Escape from New York, Escape from L.A., Starman (at least that’s one of my mom’s favorites), and Big Trouble in Little China.

In case you’re still not impressed with the man’s contributions to the genre, he’s also a talented composer. He wrote the score for the great majority of his movies—yes, he’s the one behind the chilling and evocative Halloween theme.

So the next time you’re watching Friday the 13th or any other slasher movie, you can thank the man with all the innovations. Happy birthday, Mr. Carpenter.