THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 29, 1995 TAG: 9504290041
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
AFTER 17 MOVIES in the ``scare the yell out of them'' genre, John Carpenter is not afraid of things that go bump in the night.
His director's credits include ``Halloween,'' ``The Fog,'' ``They Live,'' ``The Thing,'' and the recent ``In the Mouth of Madness.'' His latest is ``Village of the Damned,'' a film seemingly designed to prove that children's ways are not innocent.
It is surprising, then, to hear him say that he feels there are things that can be ``too rough'' in current horror flicks. After the slashing terror of ``Halloween,'' the little film that virtually began the modern slasher sequels, you'd think he'd be an ``anything for a thrill'' type director.
The wiry man in jeans and sneakers only agreed to do ``Village of the Damned'' after the script was reworked to remove some of the more gross scenes.
``They wanted the children to be electrocuted in a swimming pool,'' he said. ``I reasoned that no one was going to want to watch this.''
He does manage a gigantic explosion as the finale - an explosion that effectively wipes out the threat of the offsprings of aliens who landed in the town and impregnated all the women.
The original 1960 movie has become a cult classic and was a big hit when it was originally released in the Cold War era. Based on the 1957 novel ``The Midwich Cuckoos'' by John Wyndham, the film suggests that an ominous threat from outside has taken over the innocence of children.
The kids, bleached to the roots, mesmerize and muddle their parents with eyes glowing with bizarre, and fatal, demands.
Carpenter figures that the theme of the new version is ``indifference to violence'' by children. ``What if you realize your kids don't care?'' he asked. ``What if they don't know right from wrong and violence means nothing? Look outside, man. Take away the scary eyes and it can still be scary.''
Carpenter, who was born in upstate New York but grew up in Bowling Green, Ky., says he was nurtured by movies like ``War of the Worlds'' and ``Destination Moon.''
``As a kid, I took them deadly serious,'' he said, sitting in the Regency Hotel in Manhattan days before the opening of ``Village of the Damned.'' ``In the 1960 version of `Village,' I developed this huge crush on one of the girls. I was only 11. I wanted this girl to take me off and zap me any way she wanted.''
He hated the sequel, ``Children of the Damned,'' which came out in 1962. ``A United Nations movie about children? They were going for `War and Peace.' You couldn't have any fun with that.''
The son of a college music professor, he has composed the music for most of his films, including this one. After a stint at Western Kentucky University, he was accepted at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema.
``We had lecturers like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles,'' he recalled. ``They made you want to rush out and make movies.''
He made ``Halloween'' on a budget of $300,000. It earned more than $75 million. His subsequent films were less sensational, but even the unsuccessful ones, like ``Big Trouble in Little China,'' have become cult favorites. He's thinking about making a sequel to ``Escape From New York,'' again starring Kurt Russell, to be called ``Escape From L.A.''
He even gave himself a role in ``Village.'' He's the man on the telephone in a brief, but key, scene. ``My acting name,'' he laughed, ``is Rip Haight. I get a billing in the movie - the very last billing. I once played a dead guy in a TV show. It was the worst thing I ever did. I had to get up at 4 a.m. and let this makeup guy work on me. You stretch your skin and let him paint on it. Then he blow dries your face. I prefer directing.''
He said the challenge of ``Village'' was working with kids. ``They were a lot of fun, but they weren't at all evil. The head little girl kept singing songs from `The Sound of Music' when we weren't filming. I had to keep saying to them, `Focus, focus.' I think the turning point came when they learned to march in unison. That's when they became a team - an evil team.''
He didn't even mind stage parents, who were on the set in force. ``They're necessary. You need the parents around. Otherwise, I would have to have become their father. That's a scary thought. Two girls, sisters, played boys in the film. I bet you can't spot which ones. And we didn't use wigs here. In the original film, you can spot the bad wigs. We bleached the kids' hair.''
As for his own fears, they don't include creatures from outer space.
``I've never seen a UFO, so I don't believe in them,'' he said. ``In the 1980s, I studied physics. I learned that it doesn't really make sense that aliens would be here. They'd have to travel backward in time to get here.''
He says current movies don't scare him much. ``When they scare people, they make money. When they don't, they don't. It's that simple. Filmmakers scare me only because of their lack of emotion. I see a movie and I realize that the director didn't care a thing about how it was made. That scares me. That's a real horror movie.'' ILLUSTRATION: Universal City Studios color photo
Scene from "Village of the Damned"...
Photo
John Carpenter says horror films can be ``too rough.''
by CNB