Full Moon Features head honcho Charles Band has launched Charles Band’s Full Moon Freakshow, a podcast in which he interviews colleagues and collaborators from 50 years (and over 350 movies) in the industry. The B-movie maven’s inaugural guest is none other than John Carpenter.
You may not realize that the two share history. Carpenter edited Band’s first movie, the 1973 spoof Last Foxtrot in Burbank. Carpenter was working on 1974’s Dark Star — his USC student film that grew into his feature debut — at the time when a friend told him about the editing position.
“You gave me my first job in the movie business, as an editor. I learned how to edit 35 mm film working on your movie,” Carpenter explains, having previously only worked with 16 mm. “It was quite an experience.”
Carpenter edited the film under the nom de plume John T. Chance, taken from John Wayne’s character in the 1959 western Rio Bravo. Carpenter used the same pseudonym once more: when he edited his next film, Assault on Precinct 13, in 1976.
Carpenter shares a humorous anecdote about cinematographer Tom Cecato. “He decided he was going to direct the cutting. So he showed up in the editing room. I just ignored him. I kept working and he finally went away,” he says with a laugh.
Band ashamedly buried Last Foxtrot in Burbank for decades, but he recently made it available to stream for the first time via Full Moon and Amazon Prime. He’s noticeably excited to reminisce about it with Carpenter and has no problem poking fun at its shortcomings.
The trailblazing filmmakers’ careers intersected several more times over the years. Irwin Yablans’ Compass International Pictures distributed both Halloween and the Band-produced Tourist Trap. The films were shot in the Los Angeles area at the same time, and Carpenter and Band visited each other on set. (Carpenter has no recollection of this, but Band recalls seeing Steadicam for the first time on the set of Halloween.)
And that’s not all. Band started the first independent home video company, Media Home Entertainment, through which he licensed and distributed Halloween on VHS for the first time in 1979. Carpenter also met with Band during his Empire Pictures days in the mid-1980s to discuss working together, although it never came to fruition.
Although not a gamer like Carpenter, Band is ever the entrepreneur. When he saw his son playing Atari, he had the clever idea to license horror movies for video games. Band launched Wizard Video Games in 1983 with two titles for the Atari 2600: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween.
Buyers at the Consumer Electronics Show did not share Band’s vision. “I could not sell one. Back then it was big department stores. They said, ‘These are for kids. You can’t think we’re going to carry a game about a guy who’s knifing other characters. The video game business is about children, it’s not about horror.'”
The few retailers that did sell the games often kept them behind the counter, making them available only upon request. As a result, they would be Wizard’s only two video games.
Needless to say, Band was ahead of his time. Horror now occupies a sizable chunk of the video game market, and copies of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween are highly sought after by collectors. During the podcast, Band presents Carpenter with a vintage advertisement for the games.
Candid and lighthearted, the conversation lasts close to 40 minutes. They discuss Big Trouble in Little China (Band’s favorite Carpenter movie), the most difficult actors they’ve worked with, Carpenter’s musical renaissance, David Gordon Green’s Halloween sequels, and Band’s Evil Bong franchise.
You can listen to Charles Band’s Full Moon Freakshow on all major podcast platforms, or watch the video edition exclusively on the Full Moon Features app.
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