Samhain project three: John Carpenter's Suburban Screams

“I made a little series. If you don’t like it, fuck off. If you do like it, I like you. So there you go.”- John Carpenter

Everybody knows John Carpenter is a legend whose body of work spans for decades, and singularly my cinematic hero and quasi-diety. Even some of his films that were regarded as poor or below average have been reconsidered over the years to become classics. I can say I liked all of them from day one.  I didn’t need “the time”.

They Live, Prince of Darkness, and even more recently Ghosts of Mars are among them.  They’re classics. Because they are classics. Not because of reevaluation,

Now he’s produced a television series on Peacock that is kind of a true crime program with more of a sinister edge to it. The show is called Suburban Screams and Carpenter only directed one episode which was the one I watched, entitled “The Phone Stalker”. 

Not particularly scary, not particularly compelling, and definitely not very well acted. The best thing about it is the music (by Carpenter, his son Cody, and godson Daniel Davies).  It is infinitely above the quality of most of your standard true crime docudramas that you see on cable channels, and sometimes even on network TV.  Its got that eerie Carpenter ring to it, and it definitely holds the project a little higher than some of the other stuff around it, and lends a spookiness to the proceedings.

The problem is the acting is not believable, the events have huge holes in them that don’t make sense, and it overall just doesn’t seem to work. I probably won’t indulge in the other five episodes, but I figure Mr. Carpenter has more than earned my respect and participation. 

Still, the show is an interesting concept, and I think with the right research, news articles, interviews, audio and video excerpts to back up the events, with less of the unconvincing dramatizations, the episodes could probably be effective if they are all of this ilk. 

But I also have a problem with these people saying that Mr. Carpenter‘s legacy has been ruined by this program. 

They can suck on a chili dog out behind the Tastee Freeze. 

There are other directors who have indulged in television works that weren’t much better than this, and they didn’t get accused of destroying  their otherwise terrific body of work. 

Viva Carpenter!