We expect masters of horror to have macabre childhoods, but John Carpenter's story begins with a violin, a music professor father, and a bullseye on his back in 1950s Bowling Green, Kentucky. This deep dive follows the chronological life and career of a fiercely independent, multi-hyphenate artist who survived brutal studio rejection, redefined genres on shoestring budgets, and found his purest expression by returning to music.

We cover the lonely kid dissecting monster movies and making 8mm claymation shorts, dropping out of USC in his final semester, the 60,000 dollar Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13 edited under the name John T. Chance, and the 300,000 dollar Halloween that grossed over 65 million with actors in their own clothes and a synthesizer score built because he could not afford an orchestra. Then we examine the 1982 rejection o ...