Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckel
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.
Did I Like It: First of all, I’m just going to say this part simply and quickly. Any movie where the antagonist has a complete change of heart and helps the heroes escape after getting a dressing down from his superiors for being “a GS-11.” I like that a lot. I had forgotten about it. Even if this hadn’t been one of Carpenter’s films, I would have on the whole liked it quite a bit.
That being said, it’s weird to see Carpenter—and he really didn’t try it again, until Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) maybe—make a film that doesn’t have a pitch black heart.
It’s even weirder that Carpenter made this film shortly after—Christine (1983) only remains in the gap—he made the bleakest tale of alien visitation, The Thing (1982).
But, at his best, that’s what John Carpenter does: surprise.
It surprises not only in Carpenter’s choice of genre—alien invasion as hybrid of mediation on grief, romantic comedy, and road picture—but also in terms of casting. Carpenter would have been forgiven for using the Robert De Niro to his Scorsese and putting Kurt Russell in the role of Starman. That would have been a mistake, though. Whether Carpenter had the presence of mind to go another way, or he had the idea thrust upon him by the studio, but there’s an inquisitive, guileless innocence to Bridges that Russell didn’t even have when he was outwitting Cesar Romero.
It almost, just almost, makes one want to ignore that Carpenter isn’t using Dean Cundey as cinematographer. It might be a bit too much to allow for Carpenter to not writing the score. Unless you’ve managed to get Ennio Morricone, there’s really no excuse for that kind of mis-fire.