Want to know the best John Carpenter movies? How about the worst John Carpenter movies? Curious about John Carpenter box office grosses or which John Carpenter movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which John Carpenter movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
John Carpenter (1948-) is an American director, producer, editor, writer, composer and occasional actor. Carpenter is well known for his horror and science fiction movies. His IMDb page shows 117 credits from 1970 to 2016. This page will rank 20 John Carpenter movies…that includes his 18 full length directed movies and his two screenplays. Movies will be ranked from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. This page comes from a request from Ugarte.
John Carpenter Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
John Carpenter Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort John Carpenter movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort John Carpenter movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort John Carpenter movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort John Carpenter movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each John Carpenter movie received and how many Oscar® wins each John Carpenter movie won.
- Sort John Carpenter movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above John Carpenter Table
- One Halloween (1978) movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 5.00% of his movies listed. Halloween (1978) is easily his biggest box office hit.
- An average John Carpenter movie grosses $44.10 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 11 of John Carpenter movies are rated as good movies…or 55.00% of his movies. The Thing (1963) was his highest rated movie while John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998) was his lowest rated movie.
- One John Carpenter movie (Starman) received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 23.80% of his movies.
- Zero John Carpenter movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 0.00% of his movies.
- An good Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 5 Carpenter movie scored higher that average….or 25.00% of his movies. Halloween (1978) got the the highest UMR Score while John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars (2001) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About John Carpenter
- John Howard Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York in 1948
2. John Carpenter’s main influences growing up were westerns by legendary directors Howard Hawks and John Ford….as well as science classics like The Thing From Another World and Forbidden Planet. These fact might describe Steve Lensman too!
3. John Carpenter’s first full length directed movie was the cult classic…..1974’s Dark Star. Dark Star was about a space crew in deep space who take on an alien life form that grows and grows. Sound a little bit like Alien? Well…Dark Star stars and co-written by Dan O’Bannon. O’Bannon would later write Alien.
4. John Carpenter directed the first Halloween (1978) movie and wrote the second Halloween (1981). Since then there have been 8 more sequels….for a total of 10 Hallowen movies. Carpenter was inspired by 1974’s Black Christmas when creating these characters.
5. John Carpenter and Kurt Russell have made 5 movies together: One television movie….Elvis…and 4 theatrical movies. Escape From New York, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From Los Angeles.
6. John Carpenter has an unofficial Apocalypse Trilogy: 1982’s The Thing, 1987’s Prince of Darkness and 1994’s In the Mouth of Madness.
7. John Carpenter turned down the chance to direct: Zombieland, Top Gun, The Golden Child, Armed and Dangerous and Fatal Attraction.
8. John Carpenter has been married two times. He has a son, Cody Carpenter.
9. John Carpenter’s Personal Top 6 Movies: Named his six favorite films as 1939’s Only Angels Have Wings 1959’s Rio Bravo, 1941’s Citizen Kane, 1958’s Vertigo, 1974’s Black Christmas and 1966’s Blow-Up.
10. Check out John Carpenter’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Steve Lensman’s John Carpenter You Tube Video
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
One of the few times your video has more movies than my UMR page. Let’s see I have seen 18 from my page and 22 from your video. Even though I am a huge fan of Kurt Russell, I have never seen #9 Elvis….but it is on my movies to watch list. Favorites would include #1 The Thing….the DVD commentary with Russell and Carpenter is one of the best ones out there. #2 Halloween…not a horror fan at all….but this one is a classic. #4 Escape From New York….cult classic…Snake is one of the best movie characters of all-time. #17 Memoirs of an Invisible Man…always liked this one….though not many others did. Two of the movies are cult classics….Big Trouble and Little China and Dark Star. I like both of them….but do not love either of them. Good video…good timing…as Carpenter and Halloween will be connected together forever. Voted up and shared.
Steve’s Carpenter video has been added to the page.
Hi Bruce, I added some films Carpenter was involved with to expand the chart. When I started working on this video I was surprised to see he only directed 18 films, I expected more.
Most of the Best of Carpenter lists on the net has The Thing at no.1, I have no problem with that it’s his best film. One of the few remakes as good if not better than the original. Cronenberg’s The Fly is another that comes to mind.
I’ve seen 23 of the 25 films on this chart, the two I missed are – The Ward and Body Bags.
I saw Elvis The Movie at the cinema would you believe, in the West End of London 40 years ago! It was re-edited for theatrical release in Europe. Thanks for the comment, vote and share, much appreciated.
As I’ve said previously I admired John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing and in fact thought it much superior to Howard Hawks’ 1951 outing, which to me seems rather stilted and old-fashioned now. However there was no other Carpenter movie that I ever liked; the antics of Michael Myers for example were too repetitive for my liking so Mike bored me; and whilst I am very fond of Kurt normally, the Snake was not for me.
However John doesn’t need my complete approval because: (1) he has a net fortune of $35 million at the moment according to Celebrity Net Worth (2) he has had 19 movie awards and 20 nominations which I consider good for the genre that he specializes in (3) his ranking places across 5 polls of greatest directors are diverse but average out at a respectable 20th The individual placings are 7, 9, 10, 29 and 44. (4) unlike many of your recent selections John HAS received Work Horse love. In fact you and he agree on all John’s Top 5 best reviewed movies though in a different order.
I like virtually all of the material that you have included in John’s video but here are the ones that most appealed to me and earned the video a 98% personal satisfaction rating from me. POSTERS 1/two for Ghosts of Mars 2/1st one for Halloween Three 3/2nd one for The Ward 4/1st one for Escape to LA 5/Body Bags 6/2nd one for Vampires 7/set for prince of Darkness 8/The Fog 9/Elvis 10/Mouth of Madness 11/two for They Live 12/set for Big Trouble in Little Burnley 13/set for Escape to new York 14/set for Precinct Thirteen 15/set for The Thing. Well done making that your No 1. WH ranks it joint 3rd for review.
STILLS 1/Chevy Chase 2/Vampires 3/Halloween Two 4/The Fog 5/Christine 6/They Live 7/Big Trouble in Little Burnley 8/Escape to New York 9/Halloween 10/The Thing
An excellent Halloween treat from you but I must go now: the Trick or Treaters are at the door!
Happy Halloween Bob! Thanks for the review, rating and info, much appreciated.
Glad you liked the picture gallery.
John Carpenter is only credited with directing 18 films so I had to find a few more he worked on to beef up the video and make it a top 25.
You mentioned The Thing in one of your earlier posts today and here it is at no.1 on the video, what are the odds? 🙂
Critics weren’t crazy about his films but they have a big following, most of them are cult classics and they’ll probably all get remade eventually.
There was an unofficial remake of Escape from New York a few years ago titled Lockout, starring Guy Pierce and set in space. John Carpenter wasn’t happy, according to Deadline – “A Paris appeals court has ruled that Luc Besson must pay more than $500,000 (450,000 euros) in damages to John Carpenter and rights holder StudioCanal for plagiarizing Carpenter’s 1981 classic Escape From New York when he made the 2012 film Lockout.”
Two films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13. One movie scored 9 – The Thing, and two more scored 8 out of 10 – Dark Star and Star Man.
“The trick with shooting a low-budget film is to shoot as little footage as possible and extend the scenes for as long as one can.”
“If I had three wishes, one of them would be “Send me back to the ’40s and the studio system and let me direct movies.” Because I would have been happiest there. I feel I am a little bit out of time. I have much more of a kinship for older-style films, and very few films that are made now interest me at all.”
John Carpenter’s five favorite films – Only Angels Have Wings, Citizen Kane, Blow Up, Rio Bravo and Vertigo. “Vertigo is a perfect nightmare. Perfect. It’s a dream, and it’s stunning. It’s so dark and obsessive, and it came from this director who claimed to only want to entertain the audiences. But that’s not true; it’s a masterpiece.”
I’ll upload one more video tomorrow than I’ll have a break.
STEVE:
Thanks for the feedback with bags of additional trivia and facts.
Interesting information too about the making of low budget films and about Lockout. Looking forward to your offering tomorrow. I’m glad that John picks my Jimmy’s Vertigo as Hitch’s masterpiece.
I’m looking forward to your offering tomorrow.
Thanks for the info, will check it out.
Including Halloween 2 and Eyes of Laura Mars, I’ve seen 18 listed movies. Halloween was a revelation for me when it hit theaters, one of the first “adult” movies I’ve seen. I remember that it was highly discussed in the german media, praised for it’s innovative way of creating suspense (the breathing of Michael Meyers “inside” his mask, tightening the suspense without being visually gory), yet also criticized for it’s brutality…which WAS visible in the end results, with bloody corpses lying or hanging around seemingly everywhere. Another favorite is The Fog, I always liked Carpenter’s then- wife Adrienne Barbeau, and the joy of seeing Jamie Lee and Janet Leigh in one movie endeared that one to me. Starman is a good one with Kurt very likeable in it, and his Ssssnake has become sort of iconic. I also enjoyed They live!, but In the Mouth of Madness, The Ward, Prince of Darkness only seem to show the decline of a formerly highly innovative and individual director. Assault on Precinct 13 is the one movie by Carpenter that disturbed me deeply- only saw it once, and like the original Exorcist I think I will never watch it again. The Thing may be in imdb’s Top 250, but I really love the original b/w movie, so I agree it’s a good one, but not my favorite. I actually like The Eyes of Laura Mars, though not directed by Carpenter…but produced by then Streisand partner Jon Peters…thus leading to Babs’ singing of the title track, the unusual “Prisoner”, one of my fav Barbra Songs. And just for the record: Carpenter directed a tense TV movie in 1978, Someone’s watching me, starring Lauren Hutton and Miss Barbeau- that one scared the beep out of me when I first saw it. So, to everyone who thought Lupino is stuck in the 30’s and 40’s moviewise…he does love a good Horror flic any day of the week…even if it’s in colour and Dolby Digital 😉
Hey Lupino….your 18 is right there with me….but one behind Steve’s 19. Halloween scared the hell out of me as a kid….as an adult I have revisited it many times (and I am not a horror fan at all)…..and have been amazed how Carpenter was able to craft the movie. So many scenes in which the audience sees Michael Meyers and the character does not. Many times Meyers is looking in a window in the background…..or standing by a bush. That helps build the suspense.
The Fog is a fun move to watch as well. Jamie Lee Curtis and Carpenter have a nice movie history too. Did you know she does the opening narration for Escape From New York? I have not seen The Ward….but I agree his most recent movies have not been as strong as his earlier movies.
I think both Things (1951 & 1982) are excellent movies….and I have watched them many many times. Actually I have listened to Carpenter’s commentaries many many times too….the ones with Russell are must listen too…..though at a point in their Big Trouble in Little China…they stop talking about the movie altogether.
Someone’s Watching Me is a good tv movie….I have seen and liked it as well. Somehow…I have managed not to ever see Kurt and John’s Elvis movie….I need to watch that one.
Good to see you have seen some movies that have color and Dolby Digital…..lol. Thanks for the feedback.
Hey Bruce,
glad you agree with me about Someone’s watching me. Never saw Kurt Russell as Elvis, either. I knew about Jamie Lee Curtis’ narration in Escape from NY, but I never heard the DVD commentaries you are talking about. Watched all of Carpenter’s movies on the big screen, and the only 2 films of his I own on DVD are Halloween (and Halloween 2 if that counts) and…Someone’s watching me.
Hey Lupino…Halloween 2 counts….even if they forced him to write the movie. I have seen Escape to New York many times….but…..finally connected the dots that it is JLC at the beginning.
I own all 4 Russell/Carpenter movies…..but no other Carpenter ones.
Film rejects actually do a breakdown of the commentary…..just type in “The Thing DVD commentary” and it will pop up.
Good feedback.