John Carpenter licked his wounds following the box office failure of Big Trouble in Little China with this lower budgeted horror film. It was a return to profitability if not quality; it’s not one of Carpenter’s best efforts. The story isn’t much - weird stuff to do with the devil, a bunch of people (some of them not very good actors) are holed up at a small location (Carpenter once pointed out that the plots of his films tended to be either journeys or sieges).
I enjoyed Jameson Parker on Simon and Simon but he’s a bit stiff as the hero here – wearing a John Carpenter moustache. The female leads are poor (the final sacrifice should be moving but it isn’t), though Donald Pleasance and Victor Wong add some old school weirdness. The music score is one of Carpenter’s best. The commentary track on the DVD is between Carpenter and, bizarrely, one of the minor members of the cast – but that member isn’t a bad chatter and his presence obviously relaxes Carpenter.
OK just to think about it:
Dark Star – journey but in a small area so could also be a siege
Assault on Precinct 13 – siege
Halloween – elements of siege
Elvis – journey (but that’s more metaphorical)
The Fog – siege
Escape from New York – journey
The Thing – siege
Christine – neither
Starman – journey
Big Trouble in Little China – journey
Prince of Darkness – siege
They Live – journey maybe?
In the Mouth of Madness – journey maybe?
Memoirs of an Invisible Man - journey
Vampires – turns into siege
Ghosts of Mars –journey that turns into a siege
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