Movies
John Carpenter Wrote a Script for ‘Judgment Night’
Director Stephen Hopkins dropped this fun little nugget at the Q+A following the 25th-anniversary screening of his Judgment Night at the ongoing Cinepocalypse film festival here in Chicago. According to the filmmaker, the producers had wanted to create a film in the spirit of The Warriors and had commisioned several screenplays. One of the writers: John Carpenter. No word on what it was about, but it’s interesting to think what would have happened if they moved forward with a Carpenter-penned version of Judgment Night.
The 1993 masterpiece, about four friends who get lost in the streets of Chicago on their way to a boxing match, boasted one of cinemas best ensembles: Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven, and Stephen Dorff, with Denis Leary making his feature debut as the film’s antagonist.
ALSO READ: Kevin Spacey and John Travolta Could Have Starred in Judgment Night
“I’d done Predator 2 with Larry Gordon and Joel Silver, who were partners at the time; shortly afterward, they had a very bitter split. Larry Gordon started his own production company called Largo [Entertainment], and I think [Judgment Night] was the first film to come out of that,” Hopkins told the audience at the Q+A.
“They’d actually been wanting to make this film for a long time, and there were all sorts of scripts, from people like John Carpenter and Gary Cunningham – different versions that involved bikers in the desert of LA, and things like that. I was given a lot of scripts, and it was quite a long process. We wanted to work hard to get it right, and not make it about something that wasn’t just about rape – a lot of these urban stories are about that.
“There were months and months of script meetings – there were rooftop motorcycle chases, but we ended up in a grittier vibe. It was interesting for me, because I’d only just made sci-fi movies at that point; I wanted to try something more realistic.” (Thanks to CoS for the transcription.)
Unfortunately, Judgment Night would bomb at the box office after being pulled from theaters following a widely publicized shooting. 25 years later, we can appreciate the classic it has become.
JUDGMENT NIGHT, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven, Emilio Estevez, Stephen Dorff, 1993, (c)Universal
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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