The Business of Horror
The latest rejiggering of John Carpenter’s (1978) will be premiering soon after this issue hits the stands, and while it doesn’t exactly put the franchise founder front and centre—he’s ceremoniously included in the credits as an executive-producing éminence grise—it nonetheless attests to the way that Carpenter’s influence continues to shape genre trends during this new heyday of horror. It’s also fitting that this fresh disinterment of Carpenter’s signature property arrives during a powerful resurgence of pop-cultural interest in the work of the director’s literary contemporary Stephen King, with the second “chapter” of last year’s killer-klown blockbuster (2017) set for release in 2019 and the new television series (titled after, and set in, the fictional Maine burg that features in so many of King’s stories) debuting this past summer. While filmmaker and author only collaborated once, on the haunted-car chiller (1983)—one of the more competent King movies, and one of the less inspired Carpenter ones—they’ve nonetheless always seemed like secret sharers, their fates entwined ever since King’s debut and Carpenter’s original each altered the course of the horror genre in the ’70s, leading to an explosion of paperback imitators and copycat slasher flicks that filled drugstores and drive-ins throughout
