SOURCE: Carpenter, John, Tom Milne, and Richard Combs. “The Man in the Cryogenic Freezer.” Sight and Sound 47, no. 2 (spring 1978): 94–98.

In the following interview, Carpenter discusses his cinematic influences, the Hollywood film industry, and his body of work.

After the 1960s, when younger American filmmakers seemed to be turning increasingly to Europe for inspiration, have come the nostalgic 70s and a return to the old Hollywood. It can be no accident that three of the decade's most commercially successful movies—The Godfather, Jaws and Star Wars—were not only genre pieces (albeit elephantised), but made by directors who had already established themselves more or less in critical esteem.

Like George Lucas, John Carpenter (born Bowling Green, Kentucky, 1948) is a graduate of the University of Southern California cinema department who has made the grade after a debut in science fiction. Unlike Lucas, Carpenter seems less concerned with updating the old...