John Carpenter’s 8-minute student film Captain Voyeur gets restored by USC

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

Wow, you ever heard of this one?!?

In 1969, almost a full decade before unleashing Michael Meyers on us in HALLOWEEN, Carpenter submitted to USC an 8-minute student film called CAPTAIN VOYEUR. Word is the film has a strikingly similar style and tone of Carpenter’s iconic slasher film, and now it seems the university is dusting off the short in prep for the world to see it.

True talk. Word is, with the aid of a grant from the National Foundation of Film Preservation, USC will restore CAPTAIN VOYEUR. Pretty cool for all us Carpenter fans, wouldn’t you say? Dude hardly directs anymore, and when he does, it’s usually inferior to his early work. Maybe CAPTAIN AMERICA will prove opposite. Perhaps even cooler, USC has yet to alarm Carpenter of the find!

In the words of THR, here’s what the film entails:

Captain Voyeur follows a man at a boring computer job who eyes a woman at work and follows her home. He dons a mask and attempts to kill her but is shot by his co-worker.

Nice! Not only is the film framed through the POV of the stalker, a la HALLOWEEN, there’s even a part in CAPTAIN AMERICA where the stalker places a pair of glasses over his mask, much like Meyers in the opening of HALLOWEEN. Pretty cool shite!

Carpenter’s early muse, Jamie Lee Curtis