I am beginning to wonder whether John Carpenter's Halloween, indeed a rather good film, was merely a lucky shot. In my modest opinion, no trick he pulled after that ever worked or proved much talent. Well, I haven't seen two or three of his films, and In The Mouth of Madness is not that bad, but Escape from New York, The Fog and Prince of Darkness are key examples of how to turn an interesting idea into a dull finger exercise. I never understand why Carpenter says he would have performed best in the old studio system, for it is unlikely a company like RKO Pictures or MGM could have used one like him.
Village of The Damned is in this sense a typical Carpenter film: boring, predictable, useless. Characters are incredibly flat, no suspense is built up whatsoever, the effects are insulting -yet not in a funny way- and so is the silly climax.
There is no use at all in Kirstie Alley's character. What is she doing there? She plays very badly anyway, and who can blame her? I bet she was not too happy with that final shot of her lying on a table, which is only one sample of the photographer's lousy work. Linda Kozlowski is sympathetic, and some scenes with her little boy are nice, but that cannot safe Village of The Damned from well-deserved oblivion.
Maybe Carpenter and his crew suffered from a giant blackout while doing this remake. But then, that must have been the case with most of his films.
Village of The Damned is in this sense a typical Carpenter film: boring, predictable, useless. Characters are incredibly flat, no suspense is built up whatsoever, the effects are insulting -yet not in a funny way- and so is the silly climax.
There is no use at all in Kirstie Alley's character. What is she doing there? She plays very badly anyway, and who can blame her? I bet she was not too happy with that final shot of her lying on a table, which is only one sample of the photographer's lousy work. Linda Kozlowski is sympathetic, and some scenes with her little boy are nice, but that cannot safe Village of The Damned from well-deserved oblivion.
Maybe Carpenter and his crew suffered from a giant blackout while doing this remake. But then, that must have been the case with most of his films.