File this one under “horror shade.†Slasher auteur John Carpenter — who announced this week that he would be returning to the Halloween franchise to make “the scariest†tenth sequel — appeared on Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast to discuss his contributions to the genre, and the conversation soon veered into some trash-talking about other horror films that followed his seminal slasher movie. “One sprints from an organic idea and has a truly artist’s eye working,†he said. “And Friday the 13th, I feel, affects me as very cynical. It’s very cynical moviemaking. It just doesn’t rise above its cheapness.â€
Carpenter notes that the constant need to appease younger moviegoers didn’t help this influx of mediocre film copies: “That’s what the teenagers want to see. So they just started making them, cranking them out … most of them were awful.†Lust for money, too, greatly contributed — Halloween only had a budget of around $300,000, yet grossed a remarkable $47 million in the United States. “I think the reason that all these slasher movies came in the ’80s was a lot of folks said, ‘Look at that Halloween movie,’†he continued. “It was made for peanuts, and look at the money it’s made! We can make money like that.†Ouch. Words sharper than Michael Myers’ kitchen knife.