If you've ever wanted to look up some news about a film, be it a piece of casting info or movement on a long-awaited sequel, the odds are better than not that you made your way to Dark Horizons. And that means you've certainly read the work of Garth Franklin, the site's Sydney-based founder and editor-in-chief, and our first guest of 2016.
Created in January 1997, the now-19-year-old Dark Horizons is now legally able to drink, drive and vote in Australia. But more importantly, it was one of the first real places on the internet to get film news from, and it remains one of the few must-read movie sites anywhere on the web. That's a helluva run, and it's a testament to Garth that the site continues from strength to strength.
Given Garth is someone who writes about every franchise, every release, every film from Hollywood and around the world, we were very curious to find out which filmmaker he would he want to discuss on our show.
The answer? None other than one of cinema's true masters of horror, John Carpenter!
Although John Carpenter's work is too diverse to refer to him as simply a horror filmmaker, you can't actually talk about modern horror without talking about Carpenter. After his first film, the seminal science fiction comedy Dark Star (1974) and his second, the legendary action thriller Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), Carpenter cemented his place in pop culture with the terrifying Halloween (1978), the film widely credited with bringing the slasher sub-genre into the mainstream.
As if his first three films hadn't done it already (and they had), Carpenter - who, we note, celebrates his 68th birthday tomorrow! - proved himself adept at any genre he turned his hand to, from the action sci-fi of Escape From New York (1981), to the science fiction romance of Starman (1984), to the high-comedy fantasy of Big Trouble In Little China (1986). If his filmography included only half the classics they do, he'd still be lauded as one of modern cinema's most influential visionaries.
But which of these Carpenters is the one that won over Garth? Was it the horror Carpenter, the science fiction Carpenter, or the comedy Carpenter? Or perhaps all of them combined?
We look forward to finding out on January 31, when the first Hell Is For Hyphenates of 2016 is released!
