Want to know the best John Carpenter movies? How about the worst John Carpenter movies? Curious about John Carpenter box office grosses or which John Carpenter movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which John Carpenter movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
John Carpenter (1948-) is an American director, producer, editor, writer, composer and occasional actor. Carpenter is well known for his horror and science fiction movies. His IMDb page shows 117 credits from 1970 to 2016. This page will rank 20 John Carpenter movies…that includes his 18 full length directed movies and his two screenplays. Movies will be ranked from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. This page comes from a request from Ugarte.
John Carpenter Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
John Carpenter Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort John Carpenter movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort John Carpenter movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort John Carpenter movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort John Carpenter movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each John Carpenter movie received and how many Oscar® wins each John Carpenter movie won.
- Sort John Carpenter movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above John Carpenter Table
- One Halloween (1978) movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 5.00% of his movies listed. Halloween (1978) is easily his biggest box office hit.
- An average John Carpenter movie grosses $44.10 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 11 of John Carpenter movies are rated as good movies…or 55.00% of his movies. The Thing (1963) was his highest rated movie while John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998) was his lowest rated movie.
- One John Carpenter movie (Starman) received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 23.80% of his movies.
- Zero John Carpenter movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 0.00% of his movies.
- An good Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 5 Carpenter movie scored higher that average….or 25.00% of his movies. Halloween (1978) got the the highest UMR Score while John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars (2001) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About John Carpenter
- John Howard Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York in 1948
2. John Carpenter’s main influences growing up were westerns by legendary directors Howard Hawks and John Ford….as well as science classics like The Thing From Another World and Forbidden Planet. These fact might describe Steve Lensman too!
3. John Carpenter’s first full length directed movie was the cult classic…..1974’s Dark Star. Dark Star was about a space crew in deep space who take on an alien life form that grows and grows. Sound a little bit like Alien? Well…Dark Star stars and co-written by Dan O’Bannon. O’Bannon would later write Alien.
4. John Carpenter directed the first Halloween (1978) movie and wrote the second Halloween (1981). Since then there have been 8 more sequels….for a total of 10 Hallowen movies. Carpenter was inspired by 1974’s Black Christmas when creating these characters.
5. John Carpenter and Kurt Russell have made 5 movies together: One television movie….Elvis…and 4 theatrical movies. Escape From New York, The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China and Escape From Los Angeles.
6. John Carpenter has an unofficial Apocalypse Trilogy: 1982’s The Thing, 1987’s Prince of Darkness and 1994’s In the Mouth of Madness.
7. John Carpenter turned down the chance to direct: Zombieland, Top Gun, The Golden Child, Armed and Dangerous and Fatal Attraction.
8. John Carpenter has been married two times. He has a son, Cody Carpenter.
9. John Carpenter’s Personal Top 6 Movies: Named his six favorite films as 1939’s Only Angels Have Wings 1959’s Rio Bravo, 1941’s Citizen Kane, 1958’s Vertigo, 1974’s Black Christmas and 1966’s Blow-Up.
10. Check out John Carpenter’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Steve Lensman’s John Carpenter You Tube Video
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
I love Carpenter’s The Thing yet there is not another Carpenter movie that I even like a little. Thanks for a new director page.
Hi
A superb director who we never hear much of now. It seemed after Little China, his career seemed to go downhill. I absolutely loved The Thing, one of the best sci-fi movies ever, definitely a movie i can watch over and over again. Love Starman, Jeff Bridges performance is superb. These were movies that really deserved to do well at the box office, but for whatever reason, they just didn’t catch on.
The Fog is excellent, I wouldn’t be keen on Halloween. But he is definitely a talented guy. Interesting to read the movies that influenced him. You always find Citizen Kane in the mix.
Hey Chris….I think They Live was a pretty popular movie for Carpenter….it opened number one at the box office in the United States….not thinking many of his movies can make that claim.
The Thing is a proud member of IMDb’s Top 250 movies….somewhere in the 171 range…..it is the movie that is considered his masterpiece.
Halloween scare the heck out of me….a truly scary movie that gets it’s thrills without the gore…the mark of a good director.
Thanks for checking out our latest page. 🙂
Love his movies with Kurt Russell. They should do another one before it is too late. Starman is another favorite.
Hey Crura….I am right there with you about the Russell/Carpenter movies. Maybe they will make another movie….but soon they will both be in their 70s….not sure I want to see a Grandpa Snake Plissken running around….lol. Thanks for the visit and the comment.
Hey Steve
1. You got hate it when some uninvited Sturges are hanging around.
2. You are right, Carpenter only wrote Halloween 2 and The Eyes of Laura Mars….I will fix both errors when I get home.
3. I have seen 18 of his movies including 4 in theaters….4 in the theaters is 20% of his movies….not a bad % at all.
4. I saw Dark Star after seeing Alien….and I remember thinking Dark Star ripped off Alien….which was amazing considering Dark Star was years before Alien….lol.
One of the great cult directors of modern times gets his movie page, very nice indeed.
I thought I’d easily have watched every film on the list but I did miss one – The Ward, that passed me by and looking at the IMDB reviews it doesn’t look like I missed much. So I’ve seen 19 of the 20 listed.
Lots of favorites here – Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Escape from New York, They Live, Starman, Dark Star and Big Trouble in Little China.
There are two films on the chart Carpenter didn’t direct – The Eyes of Laura Mars and Halloween II.
I was a big Carpenter fan back in the 70s and 80s but I’d only watched one of his films at the cinema – The Thing – which IMO is Carpenter’s sci-fi-horror masterpiece, his best film and one of the few modern remakes that isn’t eclipsed by the classic original. Phil Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) is another.
I first saw Dark Star at a sci-fi convention in London back in the late 70s, loved it and I remember it was one of the first films I recorded off the BBC on vhs tape in the early 80s.
Looking at the trivia – 5 films with Kurt Russell, Snake Plissken became an iconic character, an anti-hero more popular than the movies he appeared in. He even has his own comic book.
Halloween tops the UMR and critics chart, made for just a few shillings it was hugely profitable and probably kickstarted the slasher horror craze of the 1980s.
Another top movie page Bruce, vote up!
psst I think I spotted John Sturges lurking around somewhere on the page…
Hey Steve Part 2,
5. I like you have not seen The Ward…,not thinking we are missing anything.
6. My other missing movie is Villlage of the Damned.
7. It is amazing how the Halloween franchise grew and grew. His original actually had very little gore.
8. Good memory of taping Dark Star…those were the days…a good video recording was like a treasure.
Thanks for the visit, the comment and feedback…..you are the man.