China Syndrome

Big Trouble In Little China was never going to be easily pigeon-holed.

- WORDS: NICK SETCHFIELD

2 JULY 1986 Big Trouble In Little China was never going to be easily pigeonholed. Even director John Carpenter reached for the hyphens as he sold it to the press. "It's an action-adventure-comedy-kung-fu-ghost-story-monster movie," he revealed, pausing for breath as he bolted the genres together.

It was nearly an even stranger brew. The original screenplay by Gary Goldman and David Z Weinstein was set in the 1880s and collided ancient Chinese mysticism with classic Hollywood gunslinging. WD Richter - writer of 1978's Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and director of cult fave The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension - was hired to haul this wuxia Western into the 1980s.

"His reasoning was that Rosemary's Baby worked because it was a modern-day film about ghosts, demons and the underworld," Carpenter told Monsterland magazine. "Instead of a truck driver, there was a cowboy [in the original script]. So you had to believe the Western, then you had to believe Chinatown in the Old West, then you had to believe the mythical demons and heroes and villains. Richter said, 'Look, that's too much to believe. That's asking way too much.' And he's right!"