ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL

Clap your (giant) eyes on this first look.

John Carpenter’s ’80s classics The Fog, Escape From New York, Prince Of Darkness and They Live have all been restored to grace cinema screens once more before their release on EST, DVD, BD and 4K UHD.

Gleaming like never before, they thrill and chill as they always have, and perhaps viewers will now catch on to what Carpenter has always maintained – that the last two listed above, often overlooked, are among his finest.

“They Live was about Reaganism,” Carpenter tells Teasers, before pointing out its themes are more relevant than ever in the Trump era. “It’s stunning what’s happened to my country. But it’s always been there – I grew up in the Jim Crow south. Trump just brought it out. That’s the sad thing. I looked at the white supremacist stuff at Charlottesville last year and thought, ‘My God, the country’s in trouble.’”

As for the dread-drenched Satanic shocker Prince Of Darkness, which blends theoretical physics with theology to singularly scary effect, he now reveals another influence beyond the oft-quoted Quatermass movies and TV show. “A lot of it was inspired by that Dario Argento movie, Inferno. It was nuts. I thought, ‘I could do that.’ So I pulled out everything on that film.”

ETA | 26 OCTOBER–22 NOVEMBER / THE CARPENTER FILMS PLAY SELECTED CINEMAS, AND RELEASE ON HOME ENTERTAINMENT, FROM OCTOBER.