Georgia Review Killing Space: The Dialectic in John Carpenter's Films Author(s): Robert E. Ziegler Source: The Georgia Review, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Winter 1983), pp. 770-786 Published by: Georgia Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41398593 Accessed: 17-10-2017 22:51 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Georgia Review is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Georgia Review This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Robert E. Ziegler Killing Space: 'The Dialectic in John Carpenter's Films IT there is safe to regulate in the house. our alternating Doors opening impulses and toward closing sociability on their hinges and inti- are there to regulate our alternating impulses toward sociability and inti- macy, the summons to adventure and the appeal of sameness and consis- tency within. Likewise in our hometown or community, with its familiar landmarks, its streets bordered by the homes of neighbors, we experience a sense of space that is domesticated, that still contains and houses us. Yet security in our places of refuge can be obtained only at the price of the fear we harbor in our minds. Cartographers of the imagination, we build a sanctuary, but only by positing outside its walls a threat of chaos can we enjoy the stability we long for. In our insistence on structure, we sub- divide the world, resolve it into tracts that correspond to our own emo- tional landscapes. Toward us, on the near side of the boundary, things stay where they are and people move in their accustomed orbits. But on the far side, rules give way to randomness and incoherence. Destructive, elemental forces obscure and overwhelm our human need for order. Ex- isting then beyond our skill at mapping out man's motivations and be- havior is this terra incognita. And what we seem to fear above all else is the breaching of the walls that separate the unknown from the known, the coming of the stranger to our midst. If thresholds, as Gaston Bache- lard affirms,1 are sacred things, then the theme of many of John Carpen- ter's films is the violation or profanation of these junctures. In his works, the line used for marking our at-homeness in the world and our anxiety at what may lie without loses its ability to oppose and becomes instead a place of confluence. That which people have consigned to the outside and 1 Gaston Bachelard, ha Poétique de l'espace (1957; rpt. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), p. 200. [770] This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ROBERT E. ZIEGLER 77 1 the darkness crosses back over. Their guilty m wanted responsibilities- all the buried side o again through walls and back into their house There are houses, too, meant to quarantine unknown. Law-abiding, normal citizens re madmen are known to be confined to asylu Yi-Fu Tuan remarks, the function of penal an less to punish or rehabilitate the criminal t architecturally clearer terms the distinctio conform and those who threaten to disrupt cellular view of society, we try to counte establishing systems of containment and source of our anxiety in the same way we d For as long as there are unpredictable ind invisibly out there, the agencies entrusted wi cannot work effectively. What we are most a institutions of authority, our prisons and p embattled outposts on civilization's edge, and might themselves be turned into places under John Carpenter, the explorer of these fo his fascination with hostile space and its belea posure as a boy to science-fiction pictures. University of Southern California Film Sch started work on his first major full-length Kubrick's 2001. Yet even here the encounters o storms of asteroids, the engulfing of the shi uselessness of the voyagers' technology to their own security, point toward the themes While primarily acknowledged as a maste Kentucky-born Carpenter has in his mid-thir prolific artist. He has turned out works on su exploration satire ( Dark Star , 1974) to the oc loween, 1978; Tèe Fog , 1980; The Thing , 19 ground societies of criminals and gangs repre the future ( Assault onPrecinct 13, 197 6; Esca He has written a television screenplay on t another film script that eventually was made Carpenter attributes the indifference with 2 Yi-Fu Tuan, Landscapes of Fear (New York: Panth This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 772 THE GEORGIA REVIEW were received to their lack of generic definiti to accepted film conventions. While Assault and became a kind of cult piece in Great Br release of Halloween that Carpenter attained t joys. With Halloween, called at the time the m movie ever made, Carpenter earned his repu budget films that proved to be enormously su Because of Halloween , Carpenter has also and blamed for initiating a whole series of mo which young women are stalked by mindl violence is glorified for mere purposes of ex Carpenter's films rarely appears gratuitous. some measure of critical attention, it is for th haunts the minds of many modern men: the f ment that comes when the places in which th opened up and the unknown let in, when their suddenly invaded and disrupted by the anon outside their gates. Untamed open space beyond the threshol the first arena of discord and confusion. Exclud guaranteeing citizens protection in exchang are renegades and outcasts who occasionally ba destructive purposes. They live and operat combat zones and ghettoes adjacent to our n of their encroachment is ever with us. Yet wi cushion against their impact, we delude oursel protected against these sociopaths and in medi Electric lights reveal to us our families and us that what we see is here, is known and ceivers, and television sets neutralize our unea lowing us to be unaffected by news of strife happens, though, when technology fails, when screens go dead? With the loss of our media we are confronted once again with the threat become a force of nature, a source of prim Thus in one of Carpenter's early films, it is down an ice-cream vendor and a little girl and doned police station on the outskirts of An Thunder," the name of the youth gang carryi This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ROBERT E. ZIEGLER 773 einet 13. "This is a siege, a goddamned s Bishop before he and his remaining staff di of incoming automatic weapons' fire. To rules to be suspended and the social fabr lines to be down and the electric power c he has no choice but to open up the jail prisoners are kept, so all can join togeth emergency prevails, the chaos in the st anarchy within. For a time the police th and the convicts are set free. The transition from crime drama to th penter to develop further the theme of the into people's lives of an uncontrollable, mal at pains to explain the success of Halloween at a budget of $300,000. Carpenter himself little.3 Yet the similarity with his earlier w years earlier, in Assault , the destabilizing e human face, its most easily labeled feature in cars, pointing rifles indiscriminately at d They never spoke, never expressed a rea Nor was there any racial or ethnic link bet and Mexicans, alike only in their being d urban terrorists simply to disturb the p Anonymous and having nothing, they soug and undermine the comfortable routine themselves and what they had. Yet criminals and crime are often seen ourselves. They are the stuff of impersona vice stories. In Halloween , however- and th film's success- the danger is brought mu 3 James Stevenson, "Profiles: People Start Runn 1980), 42. 4 Even in Carpenter's first full-length film, Dark Star , space was not portrayed as an ex- citing last frontier, a source of new discoveries to be reconnoitered and explored. Instead, it confines the four bearded, blasé astronauts to the scout ship's living quarters where they spend their time discussing surfing, arguing, and reading comic books. Or it becomes, as in Assault , like the street gang's turf: just one more arena of pointless wandering and indiscriminate destruction, as they punch up readings on their ship's computer to help them find more unstable planets to blow up. In Carpenter's bleak satire, space ceases to be open and inviting and is trivialized, shrunk to the level of another arcade video game or shooting gallery. This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 774 THE GEORGIA REVIEW the only night when doors are opened casu identity is deliberately obscured, when con pleasurable and even self-induced. On Hallo recognition and concealment becomes a game. around as super-heroes, skeletons, and witches they are, and, paradoxically, it is their mas harmlessness. In Halloween , the act of ritual reversal of our expectations as the killer, di cherubic, blonde, and fair-skinned boy, stab sister. It is he who wins the prize for the mos querade. The point made in the film is that ev into neighborhoods and homes, its inner dar its foreignness of aspect, can reach its prey t most shocking trick in Halloween , therefore, innocence, the monster counterfeited as a chil Years later, the film then shows, on the fif crime, the terror brought to Haddonfield w western, middle-class community is depict self-contained suburban haven, on the surf from such free-fire zones as Anderson, Cal parent, uneventful calm is simply a facade, ano which an unknown menace can be introduced. to a vague, disquieting memory of a lurid m ago remains to haunt the minds of Haddonfiel landscape of the town is blighted by the h former residence, long left abandoned but sti that he who feels endangered attracts danger, beckon to intruders. As long as there are th imagine how a neighbor's house had once be everyone is compromised. The haunted hou people's troubled minds- all call for the av Haddonfield, the bogey-man is more than j fears. On this night of Halloween, the houses in the town no longer give protection and containment. With the parents gone out for the evening and the children transfixed by the horror movies on tv, some girls who are baby-sitting make appointments with their boyfriends in the homes of their employers. Coupled with the intermittent flow of trick-or-treaters, this unusual traffic makes the public's access to these normally private This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ROBERT E. ZIEGLER 775 places even easier. As these residences an casually thrown open to all comers, the sen sonal space is lost, the autonomy of home a for contact between people are progressi Michael Myers, his former home in Had sanctuary in the asylum lost to him on the has no place that he can call his own. It i is drawn out by the dim awareness of the that reigns on Halloween. If Myers is a homes and bodies with his knife, this role by his status as an exile. Forbidden him is ev as he hears a voice resounding in his bra every house a stranger, in the institutio to others' ostracism of him with a compuls in where others feel most centered and secu As in Assault, the custodians of public sa Dr. Loomis (the resident psychiatrist fro particularly powerless to normalize the b charges. The walls of the asylum are not en the sheriff's pedestrian good sense and h enough to keep him out. Whereas evil ha little boy, impersonating good, this presen human form and thus defies both its capto by the film crew simply as the "Shape,"6 t an individual with a name or history than sonalized, destructive source of energy tha the corpse-like mask it wears, the "Shap familiar prankster, but instead evokes hor of the human face. At the end, although the forces of or prevail, the illusion of their triumph is truder, skewed by knives, its eye goug repeatedly by Dr. Loomis and driven by th story window, is thought finally to be dea 5 In Halloween //, it is the innocent who are left safety of their homes and public sanctuaries. Thu masked assassin, knocks insistently but futilely on Haddonfield hospital, here not an asylum for the in madness lurking on the outside in the shadows. 6 Paul Scanlon, " 'The Fog': A Spook Ride on Film, This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 77 6 THE GEORGIA REVIEW But once the baby sitter and the doctor descend to empty of ammunition into the monster's body, they discover was the bogey-man, wasn't it?" Laurie asks in disbeliev a matter of fact," says Loomis, "it was." Thus evil in C can never be destroyed, but only dissipated. Like the gang it can be driven for a time from homes and buildings, and banished to the night. But when one incarnation va materializes to replace it. As a potential threat, its functio uncharted space; as an active, hostile force, it again bec assumes another form to pursue its urge to get back in w protected. At bottom, there is no effective way to stop it In The Fog, the disruptive killer force belongs even mo to nature. It no longer arises from an outcast social group from an abnormality of mind as in Halloween , but bec of open space itself: the air. More nebulous and insubst disappearing "Shape" or "Street Thunder" retreating t fills the atmosphere and filters through the most impenetr fog moves around," Carpenter relates. "It glows com ways, through window panes, through your clothes. story of the shipwrecked sailors and their implacable re conversion of dark powers into a vague climatological characterizes another landmark in Carpenter's topography normally presumed to be familiars of a house, inhabitan confines of place, are again let loose, consigned to spa down into a kind of ectoplasmic vapor, acquiring an abi that makes them even more insidious. Here it is the beach or shoreline that is the first th crossed. No longer a line that separates the interiors of from a dangerous urban wilderness outside, it is instea preexisting landscape to which a human meaning is att generalized to become dry land, a solid surface on wh establish his communities, his sense of rootedness and p ocean, on the other hand, as those who live in seaport tow is a locus of chaos and confusion, a liquid medium whic and dissolves. Yet, whereas its waters are normally con and sand, its waves beating on the shore like a stranger The Fog the sea generates a deadly mist that gives it ne enables it to overrun its bounds. "It's moving faster n 7 Scanlon, pp. 42-43. This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 2 ¿ jg 8 Л1 M 4-» M O (A S <« u 2 •sil <« u 2 8 .ü3 ^ S л| «ï.âî xHr м 1 J! *o g îj* 3|i .23^ 831 0 Ü ^ о sil g я 8 §1* •lì 1 ® * ;.|ž ig»! С ^ g О u I"5 S • 8| e я ь. e 5« This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 778 THE GEORGIA REVIEW down Tenth Street," Adrienne Barbeau as the disc jo warning to her listeners. "Stay away from the fog! " The ogy's inability to hold at bay the darkness reappears, as lighthouse, the source of sound and vision linking the in tonio Bay together, can do no more than send out h bulletins advising citizens that they are no longer safe. Most importantly, because the fog is endowed with in memory- "water mixed with night is an old remorse tha as Bachelard affirms8- space no longer is just where mal now harbors sinister intentions. Each door and windo orifice belonging to this gaseous atmospheric killer. As i muffles noises, and blocks out sound, the "Fog" conve ness of what is seen into an oppressiveness that deafens, men off from one another. What lies beyond the thresh of the monster. In The Fog , space internalizes and conf is alive. When space engenders claustrophobia and the prison,"9 can security still be purchased at the price of ing the making of Assault , Carpenter mentions a recur films: that of "people trapped in a place."10 Beleaguer against criminals, lunatics, and weather, they work to r of space's openness and promise by building even big centrating in ever greater penal centers what frightens fuseness. With danger always lurking at the doorstep safeguarded only when the outside is surrounded enti "Breaking out is impossible. Breaking in is insane," re advertising one of Carpenter's more recent films, Escape And, in effect, assaulting the embattled precinct and es Island penitentiary are but two terms of the same di peatedly in Carpenter, of getting in and getting out. olis is a breeding ground for crime, with muggers, mur outs lurking in the streets to prey on innocent civilians, is to flee the city for the suburbs, to emigrate from An 8 Gaston Bachelard, UEau et les rêves (1942; rpt. Paris: Jose Corti, lated from the French by the author. 9 Bachelard, La Poétique , p. 199. 10 Stevenson, p. 50. "My personal fear-fantasy? Being trapped, tr in all sorts of things. I seem to make films about people eventually where there's no further escape, confronted by whatever is after thal, "Rated H for Horrors," New York , 13 [13 Feb. 1980], 54). This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ROBERT E. ZIEGLER 779 field. But even there a man is not assured o requires that the city, the habitat of outla their incarceration. Also in Escape , media ing for contact between all men, is used veillance. Those not guilty of wrongdoin ing, fingerprinting, and compiling data on futuristic watchtowers- electronic monitor to keep an eye on those inside. Subjects of civilians play the roles of potential guard these films feel trapped, it is because th their own anxieties and fears. Society's i the criminal results in a feeling of entrapm victims. But paradoxically, as more crimina ing civilians feel less at ease. In Escape , the upholders of the law reso process of infiltration of their own. They or "moles" like the infamous Snake Plissken and bring out alive the President after his crucial world summit meeting. As in the York are not particularized by standard become a function of their role and station world, and they cease to act as people wi alities. Thus, in his exercise of feudal powe his title of The Duke. And while The Duke intelligence resides with his cerebral cou within the fortress confines of the public cape routes from the island and manuf expensive, chandelier-adorned limousine scended to the level of their instincts, ar priately, live underground where they c ken, with the hooded cobra tattooed on de guerre that suggests his deadliness an ophidian phallicism and potential for Hauk calls him by his family name, Plis me Snake." Most importantly, once the inside is with its social order disintegrated into cha and reason find they can no longer dict world gone insane. Upheaval, violence, an This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms <Л Xi и (D ¡2 s? £ fc Š.S D С ^ -CO w Ö 'S- я S •S |Ž. 2J£ «со j: « « J3 ^ «Ой P£iS О О -s * Э S S* I * § s * « 2 ^ «Г « и ? -P be S» л .S to «2» 4 g S 3 s $* < BÕ 8 .2 'S -S 8 bû С ¿J ш ьр 0> С о ш rt С ел ч 5! ^ rt О X ел ч & 5! ^ с X * а О ĚŤ*73 с *9 •? с О л aá| « W с л « W 5 ° J ^ о ° « У в .а .& J5 о Я *Й < •8 с « а £ £ с « Е.2 а This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ROBERT E. ZIEGLER 78 1 in communication, so that after the forces of diplom are infected by their contact with criminals, it becom them to stay in touch with other law enforcement figures. In The Fog , the mist-enveloped radio station di casting. In Assault, the telephone repair crew sent to lines is ambushed by the gang, their bullet-riddled bo overhead from poles and wires. In all cases, once the inn the media they use break down; their messages get lo Even in Escape , the value of the President's life is s value of the prerecorded address he is carrying to d ford Summit. Representationally in the film, there is n beyond the island prison and its walls. Yet discussion curity officials, the President, and his staff make c mestic lawlessness was being gradually absorbed in tiary, the possibility of international strife occurrin of another world war still posed a threat. So while th escapes the hoodlum legions of The Duke, it is too late w that he can no longer function as a world spokesma peace. For during the bloody crossing of the 69th St all were more concerned with dodging mines and avo The Duke, Snake switched the tape containing the P for one that Cabbie used to play on his car stereo. Th when the communiqué is scheduled to be aired, there is ment on the peaceful use of nuclear fusion power b "Bandstand Boogie," thus deflating the myth of Preside wisdom in one blow. Degraded by association to the l show host Dick Clark, the President finds his status just another media celebrity or pop culture impresario. cludes with Plissken unspooling and discarding the Pr the inference intended to be drawn is clear. Despite t can be compartmentalized, with bad men set apart fr coexistence of these two worlds makes retaining a sa of mind impossible. For as long as there are thresho and order, madness and logic intersect, the integrity of and his ability to advance them are easily subverted. is invaded, the shoreline overrun by fog, once the bo of nightmares and into people's living rooms, they themselves the world is secure. Even if the President is liberated from New York, he has seen and undergone too much by way of violence and This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 782 THE GEORGIA REVIEW bloodshed for his alleged beliefs not to have remained b While he is there in person at the end, his message is e him, stolen following his experiences with the conv Literally at a loss for words, the President finds the pre to represent, to speak for others, stripped away. In Carpenter's most recent work, a remake of H classic film The Thing , the space in which events un forbidding. Stationed at a scientific research base in tion of Antarctica, the men of Outpost 3 1 have but their lives to be endangered. As in Carpenter's first ful Star , it is the openness and emptiness of space that cau Yet in The Thing one sees becoming even clearer the by Carpenter between the oppressiveness of safety felt orientation one experiences on venturing beyond the lim ing and living space. Inside the camp, when all goes well, there exists betw precarious balance of camaraderie and tension. But with drawing daily nearer, the men must learn to tolerate th must exchange protection from the killing cold for freedom to move about unhampered. Barricaded be lated metal walls, with supplies of food, whole blood chine parts stored away, each man has made himself a v in a self-sufficient prison. Nothing material is lacki ness of their quarters is always there to threaten th being, in the same way that the cold is always there to body weight by robbing them of calories. Both psychologically and physically diminished, they fore even more essential to stay in touch with others, or the station at McMurdo. In The Thing , as elsewhere of a tenuous communication line is crucial in preventin ing off their axes. Whether it be the link-up of Dark St Center down on Earth, the telephone connections i Anderson, the Antonio Bay broadcast booth, or the inte set up around New York, the means of getting word is all that keeps those living on the fringe in contact w is the only thing that stops them from becoming vi isolation. In The Thing, , the scientists have a helicopte for their occasional forays outside the confines of t tractors, the communications center, and even dogs This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms « ři -5 тз 2 ři к- н £ « к- н g £ « i ел •S С i ел о ■8 el Но- ё friíT ^ •§ « л § 8 <-> О вл-& ^ о С d-Sö l'Si % •î % - eu 8 © ^ X и © ^ « «« ♦: S -S о •Heß- t3 С t3 з gì ° E *-» с < -о .s с bo « э « ■* « 1 э л 1 « О Чн л О ° 8Z -Šč-g jb?¡ Ú н , Ú н ^ л* ¡ 4 « ce X о 4 « ce о -g ö «al ¿3 > 43 Сое O rt S 'S 8 U bõ В « 5 •- P R « ^5 •- P R SK « ^5 § R This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 784 THE GEORGIA REVIEW for getting messages outside. Yet all are destroyed by panic-stricken men themselves. This sense of being cu what reminds the men of their vulnerability. Remov from the outside world, they regard space not as the br habitation of their peers but as a wasteland filled with d to hem them in. In this way, Macready and his colleagues feel trapp questered in their compound- first against Antarctic against the tentacled, writhing creature that had at o prisoned in the ice. The creature's origins are never re the film; we only know that for centuries after landing mant underneath the glacial surface and then reemerg back in where it was warm. With the "Thing's" at 31, another one of Carpenter's most well-known mot sanctuary /jail. But here the last wall of defense is not t shell: it is the bodies of the men themselves. For once ready discover the ravaged remnants of the Norwegi they realize all too well that a building by itself is no the "Thing" away. With its ability to counterfeit the cells of anything it occupies, the "Thing" works like a far more subtle fashion. When it infiltrates the post, at first by simply causing in the men an aggravated case But then the dogs are driven to a frenzy. And the au tesque, misshapen corpse of one of the Norwegians speculation that causes each to be suspicious of the oth Blair, the scientist, later taken over by the creature, understand the way the "Thing" can penetrate an org and forge a copy of its host body's DNA and then, by take it over unsuspected. The theme of the invading here a hideous extreme as the cadavers of the victim within, show tendon-like appendages and cords protr flesh. The final threshold to be violated in The Thing beach or doorway but the cutaneous envelope of the implication is that the would-be interloper is not the on 'hind the walls of homes or prisons. Rather, anything lo side of one's skin becomes unknowable and dangerous hostile space begins. Abnormality and evil are so infe present in The Thing that, to exorcise their fears, t simply try to identify aggressors and then hold them This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ROBERT E. ZIEGLER 785 combat terror, they must resort to a terror of their o that end in the commission of a kind of mass prevent to determine the source of the malignancy or the alien's invasions, the men denounce their own acq or human simulacra. Unrecognizable and nameless, man's worst fears ily embodied in a creature like the "Thing," whose ness epitomizes all that lies "out there" and threatens and "Thunder," then in the "Shape," and finally in sense of evil has been externalized, first as a vague en then as a power that assumed a deceptive human gu amorphousness, their talent for mimesis, these for and control; thus their invasion of communities w complete. Yet, more than that, the night-enshroud condensation of dead men's revenge, the knife-wie the New York inmates labeled only by a number- al disenfranchised figures seem in Carpenter's work to s of the failure of psychology and social rules to assim give back to normal citizens their hoped-for peace here does not originate in space but comes rather f much assaulted in their homes or cities, the victims in more troubled in their consciences and haunted by th denied the gift of selfish ignorance and unconcern that those out there are not the only ones who thr the conclusion of The Thing, the few survivors start on their friends, incinerating them with torches, b means of killing off the "Thing," ends by blowin with dynamite and canisters of hydrogen. In their ins safety can be purchased only with their colleagues' themselves the alien's accessories. For them there is eradicate the threat, there must be no one left alive. If anything, in Carpenter the intruder appears to b one makes him so; he is anonymous because one ch him. Each menace represents a buried, unacknowl human psyche: an atavistic impulse, an unfulfilled res duty left undone. These ghosts of man's bad faith com that his happiness and freedom are illusions. Put out o they must inexorably return. The estrangement dr ter, then, is that of men estranged from one anot This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 786 THE GEORGIA REVIEW encounters in his film the traditional complement of male thugs, escapees from asylums, strange and hostile beings th other worlds. Yet he shows as well that the darkest side of one's own conscience wears not a mask but a familiar face. The greatest horror depicted in the films of Carpenter is that experienced by men who, when made to meet their enemy, confront not a grotesque inhuman killer but instead a likeness of themselves. This content downloaded from 139.102.65.13 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:51:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

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