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It starred his soon-to-be ex-wife Barbeau, Ernest Borgnine and Kurt Russell, who had been his Elvis in the TV movie.

Carpenter and Russell established a long-lasting friendship. In 1982, Kurt starred as an Army scientist in Carpenter's remake of the 1940s sci-fi horror movie, "The Thing." In 1984, Kurt was a space being on Earth in, "Starman", and in 1986, Russell again did a Carpenter film, "Big Trouble in Little China." That movie proved to be the only box office dud Carpenter would experience to that time.

Throughout his film career, Carpenter, with his musical family heritage, always composed, and often performed the music in his films. He was particularly fond of harking back to themes from old horror movies, and his music was very effective in shaking up audiences, particularly in slasher thrillers like the "Halloween" series.

Carpenter scaled back his work as the 2000s brought him white hair and the years eemed to tone down his ambition to shock. His films, including, "Ghosts of Mars", "Village of the Damned" and "Vampires" brought him adequate income, but the critics were tiring of his overly-hammy films and weak remakes, and many ridiculed his later works.

He participated in assembling a 2004 TV program for the Showtime Channel, called "Masters of Horror", that reviews and discusses his work, as well as that of other directors and producers of the genre, some as far back to Carpenter's inspiration from 1930s. It ran for two seasons, and then was cancelled because of poor reviews and poorer viewership.

Now, at age 60, is John Carpenter a Hollywood horror has-been? Not if there's just one more "Halloween" sequel left in him.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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