Carpenter, John Howard (1948- )

US director of horror and science-fiction films. He showed a great deal of promise from an early age, winning the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Live Action) in 1970 for The Resurrection of Bronco Billy. He then made his mark with Dark Star (1974) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), and is still best known for his highly influential horror film Halloween (1978).

His subsequent films include The Fog (1979), Escape from New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Christine (1983; adapted from a Stephen King story about a vindictive car), Starman (1984), They Live (1988), Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), Escape from LA (1996), Vampires (1998), and Ghosts of Mars (2001). He composes his own film scores, adding to the atmosphere of menace that often haunts his movies.