"It Seemed Very Much A Gimmicky Idea:" Why Clint Eastwood Passed On This 1970s John Carpenter Thriller

Clint Eastwood turned down the chance to star in the bizarre 1970s thriller Eyes of Laura Mars, penned by a young John Carpenter. After his debut Dark Star failed to find an audience in the early 1970s, Carpenter turned his hand to screenwriting. He penned many specs during this time, including Escape from New York.

As a director, few can touch John Carpenter’s movie run from the late 1970s through to the 1990s, where he made back-to-back classics like Halloween and The Thing. Carpenter also wanted to work with stars of Clint Eastwood’s caliber, but the two never collaborated despite several efforts on Carpenter’s part.

It’s ironic that probably the closest Eastwood came to fronting a John Carpenter horror movie was one where the latter acted as screenwriter only. Eyes of Laura Mars is a lurid 1978 chiller where the тιтular fashion pH๏τographer mysteriously gains the ability to see through a serial killer’s eyes.

The film was a decent hit, nabbing over twice its production budget with a $20 million box office haul (via Box Office Mojo). Eyes of Laura Mars was an effort to make a classier slasher, but reviews were largely mixed, with several critics finding it shallow.

Clint Eastwood Pᴀssed On John Carpenter’s Eyes Of Laura Mars As He Found The Idea “Too Gimmicky”

Eastwood didn’t have the vision for Eyes of Laura Mars

Faye Dunaway doing a pH๏τo shoot in Eyes of Laura Mars

In Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson’s Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood, 1979-1983, Eastwood discusses several projects that slipped through his fingers. One of these was Eyes of Laura Mars, where the studio offered Clint the chance to direct and co-star as the lead detective character when Barbra Streisand was attached to the тιтle role.

This was back when Streisand was talking about doing the film and playing the part. It was a model then who saw all these things and it was a great excuse to wear a lot of clothing and stuff. But it seemed very much like a gimmicky kind of idea.

While there are a few Clint Eastwood slashers in existence – including his directorial debut Play Misty for Me – it’s not a genre he’s returned to much. He may have felt that Eyes of Laura Mars was already a little close to Play Misty for Me tonally, but it sounds like the premise itself was the main concern.

After Steve McQueen and Barbra Streisand dropped out of it, Clint Eastwood and his then-girlfriend Sondra Locke took over as the stars of 1977’s The Gauntlet.

In general, Eastwood is quite old-fashioned and traditional when it comes to his directing work, and eschews “gimmicks” he feels distract audiences from the story being told. A slasher movie where he would have to film several sequences from a killer’s POV just wouldn’t have been to Eastwood’s taste as a director.

John Carpenter Tried To Work With Clint Eastwood Many Times

Clint Eastwood didn’t want to Escape from New York

Closeup of Clint Eastwood looking offscreen in Pale Rider

Thanks to the success of the Dirty Harry movies, Eastwood became one of the biggest movie stars on the planet during the 1970s. This coincided with his move behind the camera, and it became typical to either find him directing his own projects or having a large amount of creative say in how they were made.

When he first penned the screenplay for Escape from New York in the 1970s, Carpenter pictured Clint playing Snake Plissken. However, by the time the film was made in 1981, Eastwood was far outside the budget range of the dystopian action thriller.

Kurt Russell has since admitted he’s imitating Clint Eastwood in Escape from New York…

After replacements like Charles Bronson were considered, Kurt Russell accepted the role. While the man himself may have pᴀssed on the project, Russell has since admitted he’s secretly playing Eastwood in Escape from New York. From the raspy voice to the cool demeanor, Snake is essentially a futuristic take on Clint’s Man with No Name.

When Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China was poised to do battle with Eddie Murphy’s similarly themed The Golden Child in 1986, the director wanted to recruit a major star, too. Carpenter’s first choices for his fantasy epic were either Jack Nicholson or Clint Eastwood, but both turned it down.

Once again, Russell became Eastwood’s replacement as the lead of Big Trouble in Little China. Instead of imitating Clint again, Russell used the film to test out his best swagging, blowhard John Wayne impression; the results are delightful.

John Carpenter Hated The Final Version Of Eyes Of Laura Mars

Carpenter has all but disowned Eyes of Laura Mars

Carpenter made a healthy living as a writer while he tried to get his directing career off the ground, which included selling his spec Eyes to Streisand and her then-producer/boyfriend Jon Peters. Carpenter had next to no involvement after handing over his script, and did not approve of what it became.

Carpenter was clearly proud of his original Eyes of Laura Mars screenplay, feeling it had a great hook for a slasher/horror movie. The final film bore little resemblance to what Carpenter wrote, including adding a twist ending that reveals the killer is somebody close to Laura, which only opens up several plot holes.

In an interview Carpenter gave to The Guardian in 1994, Carpenter underlined how the filmmakers behind Eyes of Laura Mars failed to understand his, umm, vision for it. Carpenter pictured using the newly invented panaglide camera (which he used for Michael Myers’ POVs in Halloween), only to learn from the movie’s producer that they messed this part up.

After learning they hadn’t sH๏τ the POV scenes with a steadycam, Carpenter then asked if they filmed his original finale. This involves Laura (played by Faye Dunaway) having to hide from the killer while only being able to see through his perspective.

‘Well, did you have the killer attack her and she was defending herself by hiding and seeing through his eyes?’ ‘No, we didn’t do that either.’ I can’t help ya. That was Jon Peters, by the way.

Despite Eyes of Laura Mars having developed a cult fandom in the years since (James Wan used it as inspiration for his 2021 horror movie, Malignant), Carpenter doesn’t seem to have warmed to it. He had a clear vision for how it should have been executed, but the final film fell short.

John Carpenter’s Vampires Resurrected His Original Eyes Concept

Vampires became a stealth Eyes remake

Sheryl Lee's Katrina stands in a doorway looking unimpressed in John Carpenter's Vampires

The glossy Eyes of Laura Mars and Carpenter’s savage horror Western Vampires couldn’t be more different tonally, but the latter gave Carpenter a chance to dust off his original Eyes premise. A key subplot in Vampires involves a Sєx worker named Katrina (Sheryl Lee) being bitten by a powerful vampire and being able to see through his eyes.

This remote viewing leads to several creepy scenes where Katrina is forced to watch this creature slash through victims, which the vampire hunters (led by James Woods’ Jack Crow) then use to track him down. While not a huge part of Vampires overall, it gave Carpenter a chance to show off his original plan for Eyes of Laura Mars.

Source: Box Office Mojo, Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson’s Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood, 1979-1983, The Guardian/YouTube