David Cronenberg VS. John Carpenter
batmon
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batmon
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Halloween, Escape from New York, They Live, Big Trouble in Little China, etc etc.
It is hard to deny Carpenter Halloween, Escape from New York and Eyes of Laura Mars...but they still don't quite live up to Cronenberg for me.
It's a hard choice on the Teen Beat aspect; Cronenberg might be from Toronto, but Carpenter was married to Adrienne Barbeau
J.C. has NOT put out a decent full length film in several years. The last o.k. thing he did was "Cigarette Burns" and thats a 45 minute feature for the "Masters of Horror" series.
And didnt Halloween start the Slasher genre?
Dead Ringers is my shit though.
No way dude. See Bava's "Blood & Black Lace" and grip of other Italian jawns....
I think this is a bit of apples and oranges, although definitely an interesting one ... Carpenter is way more straightforward action/tension, while Cronenberg is all about the mind-fuck and quasi-surrealism.
I think Carpenter has more films that I fully ride for, but Cronenberg takes way more chances.
Videodrome was always a late-night cable brain-blower for me back in the 80's, no doubt.
However, Carpenter's output from 74 to 88 contains some of my personal favourite films of all time and he will therefore come out on top in a comparison with almost any director put up against him. JC for the win.
Cronenberg gets the nod simply for making Naked Lunch. Give most directors the book, and I bet they'd tell you it's un-filmable. It has no plot, no conflict, nothing to really drive a story-line. What it does have is a series of sketches and perverted fantasies, ramblings and anecdotes, loosely tied together by Burrough's writing style and themes of power and sexual gratification. Cronenberg had to mix elements of it's real-life genesis, Burrough's past, and the book to conjure up a story, but is there really a story? Could this film be watched with out any knowledge of the book, the writer, the 'scene'? I don't know, but I think it's brilliant art.
They were calling it Slasher film in 1963?
Carpenter, no contest. I like Cronenberg, but his style is very detached and his movies can seem a little emotionless sometimes. Most of the time, that suits the material, but I've always found Carpenter's work more enjoyable in any event. He's one of my favourite film-makers of the modern era - The Thing is not only a Private Mindgarden Top 10-er, but I'd argue it's one of the most underrated movies of the 80s and possibly the greatest remake ever.
Why the comparison, though, batmon? Apart from the low-budget/indie background, I'd say they're very different film-makers.
I think cronenberg had a bigger impact on me - Existenz, Videodrome, Scanners, The Fly. Probably my age. (80s kid). Discovering Carpenter in a catch up way, its clear that he makes better films, with doper soundtracks. Cronenberg does some really freaky stuff that no one else does tho. Proper skin crawling putridity.
They both also mix comedy and creepy (in very different ways).
If I had to live with one filmography or the other, I'd probably choose Cronenberg only because I really like more of his movies than I do Carpenter's. But that's pure bean counting...there's no denying how great some of Carpenter's films are.
Does it matter what they were calling it? Peeping Tom and all those Giallo movies share a huge amount with slasher movies. When was the term "slasher" even coined, and by whom? I know that there are some people who would say that almost anything that was made outside of the 70's isn't a "true" slasher, but then that excludes 90's revivalist efforts like Scream. At any rate, I think that the first movie credited as a slasher is Black Christmas.
Back on topic, both directors have done a lot of great stuff, but I don't really see why the comparison is being made. Is it because of Cronenberg's body horror concept and Carpenter's work with special effects in movies like The Thing?
At any rate, I'm gonna go with Cronenberg, simply because he's produced a lot more movies that I love - has nobody mentioned Dead Ringers yet? - even though some of Carpenter's rank among my favorites of all time.
Do they have to be the SAME to critique the flavor, taste,etc of an apple and orange.
No, not at all. Just wondered if you were coming from a specific angle with it.
Isn't the lack of emotion intentional in a lot of his movies? It mirrors the detached, clinical perspective that pervades much of modern life. For example, doctors or scientists of some kind play the part of villain, antagonist, or at least instigator in so many of his movies: Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Shivers, Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, The Fly, Dead Ringers, and eXistenZ. In a bunch of his other movies, that same emotionless feel mirrors various states of detachment or alienation from reality/society/whatever, i.e. Videodrome, Crash, and Spider. You can even look at the cold, mechanical, totally brutal scenes of violence in A History of Violence and see that same sort of detachment (from "self" or your own body/actions, whatever you want to call it).
So, while it can be alienating for the viewer, I think that it's wholly intentional. Cronenberg is probably one of the best popular examples of the idea of abjection in art.
Yes.
I would add that Cronenberg's movies all have heart, they have heat...it is always just bubbling underneath the surface. It makes for amazing tension and gives depth to what would otherwise be an Atom Egoyan film. Egoyan's films are very good examples of when detachment and lack of emotion do not work. Only he can make a busload of children dying as tragic as a parking ticket.
I actually think the Carpenter and Cronenberg comparison is a good one. Lynch is too psychological, even when things get really odd, you still feel like it's all in everyone's heads. With Carpenter and Cronenberg, there is a really feeling of the "other".
No real or specific angle angle at all.
There are similarities. Both have those great late-nite 80's HBO classic i used to peep.
Haha, it's been a while since I've seen that one. Exotica wasn't bad, though, was it? I think it's possible that, "emotionally", he was carrying way too much over from Exotica to The Sweet Hereafter. Overall, though, I do get the feeling that he's one of those directors that the CBC really wanted us to like at some point in time.
I agree, I don't think that the Lynch-Cronenberg comparison is very apt, beyond the fact that they make unconvential horror films. While Cronenberg deals a lot with the body and alienation, Lynch (as far as I can tell) is much more about manifesting psychic terror, which is something that I think Inland Empire does an excellent job of underlining. I think I need to read Lynch on Lynch, but that doesn't cover Mulholland Drive or Inland Empire.
Off track slightly but, while Lynch on Lynch is a great and highly entertaining read, as fas as I recall it doesn't offer that much insight into the inner workings of the man. I think the most illuminating insight I ever had was the BBC interview when he described the duck's eye.
While both he and Cronenberg were always lumped into the same bracket for years I think they're pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum.
I disagree. I don't think Lynch's intention is to foster a sense of alienation. His movies are generally extremely intimate.
Eraserhead is pretty much him filming his own neuroses; Blue Velvet has some fairly graphic scenes dealing with generally private subject matter; Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire explore the very innermost workings of their subjects via dreams or dream logic. I mean, Inland Empire could be described as a visual representation of someone's very personal nightmare.
EDIT: I think the real similarity between Cronenberg and Lynch is that they both try to find the fundamental roots of what it is that we find truly scary or horrifying.
edit~
You mean, From Beyond, right? The Beyond is the Fulci flick. Both are great, though (poor man's nothing!)
Gordon wrote for Robot Jox and Space Truckers are both mindgarden classics, and anyone interested in giant robots and killer cyborgs and all that awesomeness should check them out.
BTW, sorry for the prolific posting in here everyone.