John Carpenter

John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor and composer. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his career, he is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction films from the 1970s and 1980s.

Almost all the films in Carpenter's career were critical and commercial failures, with the notable exceptions of Halloween (1978) and Escape from New York (1981). However many of his works from the 1970s and the 1980s such as Dark Star (1974), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), The Thing (1982), Starman (1984), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and They Live (1988) are now seen as underrated cult classics, while Carpenter is now acknowledged as a major and influential artist in film history.