It is with ever so slight meh that i tell you about the once film-making maestro that is John Carpenter's latest project, Fangland. Meh because i can't remember the last time I saw one of his films where it wasn't my overall impression during watching it. In fact, I just checked. It was memoirs of an invisible man, eighteen years ago.
So now he is "returning" with Fangland, an adaptation of the novel by John Marks which sees Evangeline Harker travel to modern day Transylvannia to interview crime boss, arms dealer Ion
Torgu. Torgu, she finds is involved in crime far more atrocious than she imagined. The book takes a modern slant on the dracula legend with Evangeline being found with no memory in a Transylvanian monastery it is left for her producers to wonder who has been sending e-mail's in her name and why there are huge boxes being sent to her home. And what is that strange audio track on the tapes she sent back?
The novel is supposedly very sharp, witty and a clever satire of the media (Marks produces CBS's 60 Minutes). Hilary Swank is pencilled in to star but no formal contract has been signed, most likely just a holding deal. The weight of Swank will ensure more serious attention to this than Carpenter himself could muster nowadays (his last big names were Daniel Baldwin and Ice Cube).