John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors. Like many horror fans who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I fell in love with his visual aesthetic. Moreover, I was taken by his keen understanding of tension-building tactics.
Just like his legion of loyal fans, Carpenter was raised on a steady diet of films that spoke to him. The Halloween director recently sat with the lovely folks at Criterion and shared some of his influential favorites.
Among Carpenter’s top ten Criterion releases is the noir thriller The Killers. Carpenter had the following to say of the 1946 effort:
“All of Robert Siodmak’s films are great, but I really love his version of The Killers. It’s just fabulous. I love watching Burt Lancaster; he was the greatest. What an actor . . . and also a very nice man. His chemistry with Ava Gardner is unforgettable.”
The setup for this John Carpenter favorite goes like this:
Two hitmen walk into a diner asking for a man called “the Swede” (Burt Lancaster). When the killers find the Swede, he’s expecting them and doesn’t put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator (Edmond O’Brien), on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede’s past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman (Ava Gardner) who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man (Albert Dekker).
The Killers has an unexpected origin story.
Fun fact: The first 20 minutes of The Killers are based on an Ernest Hemingway short story of the same name that first appeared in Scribner’s Magazine. The balance of the film, however, departs from the source material and originates from the mind of the film’s screenwriters. Anthony Veiller takes the sole credit here. However, John Huston and Richard Brooks reportedly each took an uncredited pass.
If you enjoy film noir and feel compelled to check The Killers out after hearing of Carpenter’s reverence for the picture, you are in luck. You can find the film streaming on Prime Video (as of the publication of this post).
That’s all we have for you at this juncture. Please keep an eye out for more exciting recommendations from the top names in horror as we succeed at uncovering them. Also, be sure to follow @DreadCentral on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter (stop trying to make X happen) so you never miss one of our informative updates.
Categorized:News
