In the Mouth of Madness in 4K

In person: Dr. Gay Yuen, board chair of the Friends of the Chinese American Museum

In the small coastal California town of Antonio Bay, an old local is spinning tales of a ghostly fog to children on the beach, evoking terrors from 100 years earlier. As the clock strikes midnight, the fog and its vengeful spirits return, once again wreaking havoc. The Fog is seen as a welcome return to the horror genre for Carpenter after the monumental success of Halloween (1978). John Carpenter directs Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, and John Houseman through the haunting of Antonio Bay.

Quantum physics Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong) tasks his students with their most unusual assignment yet when a Catholic priest (Donald Pleasence) uncovers a strange and ancient substance in a monastery. As the young scientists investigate, dark entities descend upon the church, bringing representatives of Satan to the Earthly plane. John Carpenter wrote, directed, and co-scored Prince of Darkness as the second chapter in his Apocalypse Trilogy, which begins with The Thing (1982), and finishes with In the Mouth of Madness (1995).

Captain Voyeur

A restless computer technician grows obsessed with a female coworker and secretly spies on her, treating his voyeurism like the duties of a masked superhero/villain. This short, made while John Carpenter was a film student at the University of Southern California, is rife with plot and filmmaking techniques he would later incorporate and improve upon in his slasher masterpiece Halloween (1978).

Vampires in 4K

Based on John Steakley’s novel of the same name, John Carpenter’s Vampires is the master of horror’s sole foray into the realm of vampirism. The film may be full of style and tropes influenced by classic Westerns, including a setting in New Mexico, but the heroes brandish wooden stakes and crossbows instead of rifles and six-shooters. Jack Crow (James Woods) leads a team of grizzled, Vatican-sponsored vampire hunters who seek to exterminate Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), the first vampire, now on a quest to gain immunity from the sun. Balancing action and one-liners with scares and gore, all set to a Carpenter score, Vampires is a fresh, contemporary take on the classic monsters of Universal and Hammer horror fame.

Adapted from Stephen King's 1983 novel, John Carpenter's Christine follows bullied high schooler Arnie (Keith Gordon) and his growing attachment to his sentient car. As Arnie transforms into a revenge seeker, blindly loyal Christine abets Arnie in hunting down bullies and questioners of the bewildering relationship. The '58 Plymouth Fury is also, seemingly, indestructible, reverting to mint condition whenever tarnished, thanks to the work of Academy Award-nominated visual effects supervisor Roy Arbogast (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977). This cult classic is the perfect blend of King's thriller and Carpenter's unique take on the supernatural.