Ghosts of Mars. Truly awful. Even Memoirs was somewhat clever. I, for one, like Vampires.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man.

Ghosts of Mars

I haven't seen Village of the Damned (rumored to be among his worst), but I thought Ghosts of Mars was pretty indefensible.

Christine is awesome, and I liked Starman. I haven't seen Memoirs of an Invisible Man, and I couldn't make it through Vampires (although the first like five minutes are great before the movie gets really boring).

Mild spoilers for Prince of Darkness below.

The basketball and hang-gliding parts of Escape From L.A. are worse, but there were elements of it I thought were at least sort of pleasing, including some of Russell's performance, the very ending, and Steve Buscemi/Bruce Campbell/Valeria Golina.

I liked most of Prince of Darkness, although my memory of it was that a lot of it was spent with half the living holed up in one room and that Chinese dude on the other side of the wall, and I remember thinking it was a pretty silly conflict that they were just trapped in rooms not doing anything. However, the transmission was really brilliant -- I love that as much as I love a lot of Carpenter's best work. I just think that concept of a shared mental broadcast warning from the future is really awesomely creepy.

Hey, it was creepy sounding enough for DJ Shadow to sample it.

I have to say Escape from L.A., for the reason someone else mentioned. I was the same movie in a different state. It also had some of the worst f/x for a big-budged movie I've ever seen. I just remember there being a shot of a shark trying to attack Snake's underwater ship and the shark and the ship looked like something out of Tron. It also had really cheesy dialogue and action, like someone was doing a bad impression of Carpenter. I really couldn't stand that movie.

Ghosts of Mars. I mean, really?

Village of the Damned...what a boring waste

Memoirs of an Invisible Man, by a zillion miles. Terrible movie. And Chevy Chase is one of those guys that sucks in everything.

Memoirs of an Invisible man.

Vampires. Wow, did that movie suck. And I blind-bought it. :yack:

There is a lot of hate for some of his movies that i actually enjoy. I think Memoirs of an Invisible Man is pretty entertaining, and the same goes for Prince of Darkness. I was hugely disappointed with Escape from LA, but Kurt Russell was good in it even though the rest was of it was a mess. For me his worst movies boil down to Ghosts of Mars which is just a rehash of Precinct 13, Body Bags which is just a very poor Creepshow rip off and Vampires which i would probably put as the single worst as it took a half decent idea and destroyed it. Add to that poor characters, actors and a lame ass villain and you have a huge waste of anyones time.

Starman does not deserve to be on that list.

Not that I'm defending the movie by <i>any</i> means, but the shark that "attacked" Snake was supposed to be Bruce II from the Universal Studios tram ride. It wasn't supposed to look real.

Not voting, as I'm honestly not sure. I'll take everyone's word that Escape from L.A. is bad. I remember the surfing scene from either the trailer and/or the few minutes I caught on a TV broadcast, and all I saw was terrible matting.

Children of the Damned intrigued me with the mysterious beginning, but once the town's inhabitants woke up (hopefully, that's vague enough to not be a spoiler), I didn't care as much.

Starman was good. Great performances from Bridges and Allen. Always enjoy Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Maybe it's a guilty pleasure. And Vampires is a decent flick.

--THX

Fixed. You been listening to a lot of Iron Maiden lately or something? FWIW, I've always dug VotD. It's got a very creepy vibe going throughout the film. Not as bad as some people make it out to be.

Oops, you're right. My mistake. No Iron Maiden, might have been thinking too much about the children in the movie.

--THX

Without a question Ghosts of Mars.....Look at the title of the movie and Ice Cube in a Sci-Fi flick? C'Mon it can't get any worse than that?

I liked Vampires and it's sequel. James Woods as a badass Vampire killer was great.

Children of the Damned was also the sequel to the original 1960 Village.

Man, Vampire$ ruled. I LOVED that movie (and I thought it was better than the book in many ways).

I could never bring myself to watch Escape From LA because of my love for NY, so I can't really give that one my vote (but I presume it would win if I did see it) so I have to go with Ghosts of Mars.

Popcorntree is dead to me, BTW.

Village of the Damned. Saw it when I was 12-or-so. I didn't hate it. But it wasn't too good. Saw it on TV lately and thought it was just flat-out boring. Not enough fun and freaky Carpenter-esque stuff happening.

Regarding Ghosts of Mars and Escape from LA... If you really, really like Carpenter's personal style, you'd like these movies. I'd compare it to Scorseses's "Casino" and "Bringing Out the Dead" - where it's the movies that the directors wanted to make by themselves, for themselves - and I don't think they were thinking of the potential audience as much as they were thinking about how much they'd personally like the movie. They were 'exagerated' (or I guess you could call it 'selfish') examples of the directors' stylings.

I actually HATED Escape from LA when I first saw it. But now that I've seen a lot of Carpenters other stuff, I can really appreciate it's comic-y style. Something about the free-minded, masochistic surfer approach is really a lot of fun.

In spite of the aforementioned college guy in his late 30's, Prince of Darkness is an underrated effort from Carpenter. Plenty of regulars (Pleasance, Egg Shen, Jack Burton's sidekick), a fantastic score, and some truly unsettling moments (the ending!).

I haven't seen Vampires (except one rather hilarious scene where a priest gets his head punched off...saw it on HBO flipping channels once) or Ghosts of Mars (or Memoirs of an Invisible Man), but Escape from L.A. is spared from being bad for a few reasons. One, Kurt Russell. Also, the scenes with Bruce Campbell and Steve Buscemi are great. And Peter Fonda and Pam Grier show up too, plus the "Bangkok rules" scene is very badass.

However, it has some of the absolute worst CGI I've ever seen in a movie (even for 1996 standards!) and the movie is simply really, really stupid. I own it though, so...

The trailer for this was pretty damn brilliant, believe it or not:

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Yep, believe I saw that in front of Independence Day. Makes it look cool, as trailers typically do. Snake is cool, regardless of the rest of the movie. No matter how bad Escape from L.A. is, though, that Bangkok rules bit is great.

--THX

Now that you say it, I think I did too. Might've seen it before Twister and Mission: Impossible as well.

I actually like Escape from L.A. Sure it doesn't hold a candle to the first one, but I thought it was fun, and it has a wicked ending.