Horror Icon John Carpenter’s Favorite Movies Surprisingly Aren’t Scary

It hardly needs repeating, but director John Carpenter is known for making multiple horror classics, including “Halloween,” “The Fog,” “Christine,” “The Thing,” “Prince of Darkness,” “In the Mouth of Madness” and “Vampires.” Although Carpenter doesn’t have a notable, recognizable style or motif in his filmography (apart from recurring actors) he does seem to possess a subtle, natural mastery of filmmaking craft that makes all his films, even the bad ones, imminently watchable. 

Carpenter loves horror, of course, but oddly, he’s not a horror guy at heart. He possesses an old-world workman’s attitude when it comes to filmmaking, just sort of sussing out, by instinct, how to shoot a scene, regardless of genre. Carpenter has given multiple interviews where he’s talked about monster movies and sci-fi flicks that inspired him (he loved “Forbidden Planet” as a boy, as well as Godzilla movies), but moreso, Carpenter talks about the films of John Ford and Howard Hawks, two American filmmakers best known for their high-profile Westerns. Carpenter even considers some of his own genre films to be Westerns, most notably his “Assault on Precinct 13,” which is a remake of the 1959 Western “Rio Bravo.” The man loves him some Howard Hawks. 

Once every decade, the British Film Institute hosts the Sight and Sound poll, asking hundreds of notable critics and filmmakers what their ten favorite movies are. Carpenter was invited to participate in 2022, and of his ten favorite movies, four of them were directed by Howard Hawks. Two of his top 10 were high-profile John Wayne-starring Westerns (one of which was made by John Ford, and the other by … Howard Hawks), and exactly zero of them were horror movies. Carpenter may be friendly with the horror community, but he’s a cineaste of the highest order, fond of Hollywood classics, and even a few notable surrealist satires from Europe. Carpenter may have been influenced by monster movies, but, if given his druthers, he’d rather tune into TCM or the Criterion Channel.