When you need a dose of creatively entertaining horror, action, and scifi mixed together, you best go to John Carpenter, son! Here are six John Carpenter movies that Mutant Reviewers urges you to watch at some point in your life…

Halloween (1978)

From our review: “Halloween is a perfectly manufactured delivery system of fear. It’s basically a horror film in a cigarette form, and although I don’t smoke I’ll readily recommend you get hooked on this scare rush.”

Escape from New York (1981)

From our review: “Escape From New York was one of John Carpenter’s first babies, and his love for it shows in every decrepit sewer-dwelling scab that creeps down the street. It’s such a great idea (if preposterous) for a movie, and its lead so iconic that you can’t help but fall in love with it, even with the minimal production values present.”

The Thing (1982)

From our review: “I found everything delightfully creepy enough to say with pride that these sort of grisly horror cinema still holds up well today. People’s (and dog’s) heads splitting open to reveal nasty grossness are one of those things that is always somewhat unnerving.”

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

From our review: “In terms of pure ass-kicking-wok-soky-ness, you can’t beat his film Big Trouble in Little China. Chinese mysticism and good old California ultra-violence collide to form one of the most unique and memorable films you will ever see.”

They Live (1988)

From our review: “Nada, being the intellectual wrestling/construction worker that he is, deals with this new information in a calm, constructive manner. That is to say, he starts taunting the aliens on the street and takes up weapons to begin blasting them left and right back to slimy alien hell.”

In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

From our review: “It’s a great Halloween movie, and if you’re a horror novel junkie it’s the kind of movie you’d love because it’s the kind of movie where you get sucked in and can’t tell if reality is fiction or vice versa and see I sucked you into this sentence so it’s kind of the same thing except everyone who worked on ITMOM got paid lots and I’m five hours from my southern California home burning down, so that sucks.”