Shock Value: John Carpenter, Dan O'Bannon and How USC is Responsible for Halloween — shocktillyoudrop.com

It was as if Jason Zinoman had uncovered horror’s Da Vinci Code, the genre’s undiscovered artifact that’s secretly been responsible for so much that’s come after it.  In early 2010, the New York Times writer was hard at work on Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, his meticulously reported examination into how Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, George A. Romero, and Brian De Palma permanently changed the horror landscape in the late 1960s and early ’70s. One of Zinoman’s focal points was Dan O’Bannon, Carpenter’s friend at the University of Southern California’s film school who’d go on to write Alien (1979) and write/direct Return of the Living Dead (1985). After extensive interviews with Zinoman, O’Bannon passed in December 2009 from Crohn’s disease. Zinoman attended the genre legend’s memorial; while there, O’Bannon’s widow, Diane, told Zinoman about a box of old 16mm films made by O’Bannon over the years, which she’d found in a closet. Diane gave Zinoman two of the films, both of which O’Bannon had made during his days at USC: Blood Bath and Judson’s Release, the latter directed by O’Bannon’s film school buddies Terence Winkless (who’d later co-write Joe Dante’s The Howling) and Alec Lorimore (who’s now an Oscar-nominated documentary producer).

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