John Carpenter - pop suspense master

John Carpenter is best known as the creator of B-films with a strong horror, science fiction or fantasy element. He directs his films, plays a part in bringing the screenplay to life as well as taking small roles in his films, but here we take a look as his musical scores. Like his film style, Carpenter's film scores may also be described as belonging to the pop culture. His themes are simple and repetitive but can be extremely effective in setting the mood for his slick set pieces, and therefore play a part in creating his cult following. With a powerful visual style and relative lack of dialogue, the music itself and the mood it creates becomes a strong part of the overall experience. That Carpenter has used electronic music in his scores is no surprise given the pop nature of his thematic material.

Note that Carpenter got Ennio Morricone to score "The Thing" and Jack Nitzsche to do "Starman" and both in what might be called the Carpenter style! Most recognisable of all Carpenter's music must be eerie theme for "Halloween". The film itself has spawned a number of sequels with various directors and composers, most recently with John Ottman scoring the 20-year anniversary film "Halloween H20". Carpenter's minimalist style has also been borrowed on a number of films, see for example "Shaun of the Dead" scored by Dan Mudford and Pete Woodhead.

Films with soundtracks by John Carpenter:

• Dark Star
• Assault on Precinct 13 - pop action and music
• Halloween 1, 2, 3, etc., H20 - Although Carpenter's original theme was used for later films in the series, other composers put much of the incidental music together, e.g. Alan Howarth and John Ottman for H20
• Escape from New York - another pulsating score
• Escape from L.A. - with composer Shirley Walker
• Big Trouble in Little China
• They Live - with Alan Howarth again
• The Fog - effective mood setting
• Christine
• Prince of Darkness - another throbbing theme with Alan Howarth representing the threat of evil
• In the Mouth of Madness
• Village of the Damned
• Vampires

Recommendations:

Here are some essential albums of the film music of John Carpenter:

• Escape from New York - available at Amazon.com in the US or Amazon.co.uk
• Halloween II - available at Amazon.com in the US or Amazon.co.uk

See also the "Halloween" CD which has a good selection of Carpenters work. We have not been ble to find Sheet Music for Carpenter's music, but the theme from Halloween is relatively easy to pick out on the piano with its 5 beats in the bar.