Split Picks: John Carpenter's 'In The Mouth of Madness' Vs. 'Vampires'

Split Picks continues its look into the four American titans of horror. After discussing Tobe Hooper last week, John Carpenter takes his turn in the spotlight. Filmmaker Steve Collins and actor John Merriman join Craig to talk about Carpenter in the '90s. Steve brings In The Mouth of Madness (1994); John brings John Carpenter's Vampires (1998). They talk about Carpenter's attraction to distilled evil on film, how the lovably average working man powers his films, and how his simplistic soundtracks power his films. John, Steve, and Craig pick their ideal spinoff-films from characters introduced in In The Mouth of Madness on their way into the heart of Hobb's End. On Vampires, they break down the pairing of James Woods and Daniel Baldwin as vampire-hunting stars, they contemplate a few of its miscalculations, and how the film is the closest we have to a Carpenter Western film.