John Carpenter’s First Student Film, Captain Voyeur, Discovered at USC

Steve Barton   |  

Oct 26, 2011

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Everyone starts somewhere, and some pretty bitchin’ news has come that John Carpenter’s very first student film, Captain Voyeur, has been found at USC. Even cooler? It bears some resemblance to the 1978 classic Halloween (which just celebrated its 33rd anniversary yesterday)!

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film has been found in the archives at the University of Southern California and will be restored with the help of a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Carpenter wrote and directed Captain Voyeur for an introductory film class at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 1969. About eight minutes long, the black and white film has visual and thematic ties to the writer-director’s 1978 classic Halloween, according to Dino Everett, the archivist who discovered the preprint materials in a negative at USC’s Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive.

“‘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.”

Films saved through NFPF programs are made available to the public for on-site research and are seen widely through screenings, exhibits, DVDs, TV broadcasts, and the Internet. More soon!

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