The Music and Movies of John Carpenter
Sounds Good!
By the time I first became aware of John Carpenter I’d already seen a few of his movies. I’d seen Big Trouble In Little China, certainly and most of They Live and of course Christine – which I really just watched as “a Stephen King film”, paying no attention to who made it.
But the thing that announced Carpenter to me was my first screening of Halloween.
It’s probably the Carpenter film I’ve seen the most now (or it’s tied with They Live). Halloween is a legendary horror film, famous for its long tracking shot in the opening sequence, and for its music (the score by Carpenter). Famous for not really showing any blood at all but for containing so much suspense and some good frights, its tension building across the first two-thirds of the film – the obvious horror tropes that have come from the film see it as some sort of template, but actually it turned a lot of those tropes on the head. The horny teenagers came out more in Friday The 13th, a film that is basically a Halloween rip-off.
Carpenter’s Halloween – which he has never returned to as a director – is a towering horror franchise. The filmmaker has been on board with some of the other entries into the series as producer, writer and composer. He’s also been very critical on the series and turned his back on it completely for a time. But it lumbered on, like its white-faced protagonist, slow-stalking to appear quickly and from out of nowhere in the consciousness.
I love the original Halloween – and many of the sequels, but not all. I even love Halloween III: Season of the Witch. This is the one where they abandoned Michael Myers altogether and started a whole new story, hoping to turn the concept of “Halloween” into an anthology franchise, with a different story arriving each year in time for the Halloween festivities. It was abandoned as soon as Halloween III failed and Michael Myers was back for 4 and 5 and for resurrections and reboots and is on screen right now in Halloween Kills – the latest in the second lot of reboots.
The reason I love Halloween III though is for John Carpenter’s soundtrack. Yes, the man wanted nothing to do with the film but he turned up to compose the music.
And this notion of Carpenter the Auteur, Carpenter the filmmaker who is also a composer, has forever interested me. He has worked with other big-name composers, two of the biggest in Ennio Morricone (The Thing) and Jack Nitzsche (Starman) and each time he basically made them sound as much like John Carpenter as he could.
But what a run of movies this idiosyncratic filmmaker created across the late 1970s and 1980s.
He might have lost his way somewhat in the 1990s and 00s – it happens – but there are still some gems there too.
I’ve been revisiting a bunch of Carpenter films. I still have a couple to see to collect the set – but I went back and watched early short films and I reminded myself of why I love They Live and Halloween so much. I cracked up at the absurdity of Big Trouble once again and I watched Starman for the first time right through. Finally. A rather gorgeous film – a romantic drama that is also a sci-fi film. This is Carpenter’s great magic.
Sure, he’s a master of horror. But his really special trick is in how he twists the genres to suit himself.
Dark Star is science-fiction as satirical comedy, Assault on Precinct 13 takes the tenets of a western and applies them to a gritty street thriller, via an action film. It also features one of cinemas great taboos – a child shot at close range, for no reason. Well the reason is actually very clear. He wants to show us a real evil bastard; a cold-hearted killer. It’s 45 years old and it’s still a screen-moment that endures and shocks.
The Fog is a wonderful ghost story, The Thing feels ripe for Covid-19 conspiracy theory paranoia, Escape From New York and Escape from L.A. and They Live with the wise-talkin’ tough guy vigilantes, playing by their own rules. Funny and savagely satirical and of course these films all brim with action.
Beneath them all the steely pulse of Carpenter’s bubbling synth scores.
They Live is everything. A mad piece of sci-fi existential horror that is the ultimate comment on capitalism.
The last film Carpenter has made is The Ward. From 2010. I had never watched it until about two weeks ago. Good wee film. Stands up well. His blatant return to horror after going off-track with silly vampire blood-baths (Vampires) and lazy ghost stories that don’t quite stand up (Village of the Damned) – but still, if you’re a fan, there’s something there in them.
After The Ward, Carpenter decided he wouldn’t be making a movie again. Too hard. Not enough money. The bottom fallen out of the market. No trust. The financers he needs aren’t there anymore. He can’t weave his magic on a zero-budget. Even though that’s how he first created his magic (Dark Star, Halloween).
Fair enough though.
And so he reinvented himself by fluke. His son and godson teased him out of retirement and took him on the road to perform the soundtrack music live. So many of Carpenter’s themes have been sampled in hip-hop and dance music, have been remixed, have been the template for a whole new generation of film-score composers, and for ambient/minimalist music makers that are bedsit-creating scores to imaginary cinema.
After that he started releasing albums – they re-recorded some of the themes, they made an album of “the Lost Themes” and then a second volume, most recently a third. It’s unlucky that all of these pieces were ever written for actual movies, but they’re in that style. It’s believable to think they could layer in under the sorts of images Carpenter once made.
I love the films. But I love the music even more. And it stands on its own. He’s even been able to prove that – by playing as a concert-act.
Well, tomorrow (Tuesday, October 26) I’ll be doing one of my regular music-feature spots on RNZ, I’ll be talking about the music of John Carpenter. So watching the films, and reading this great book has been essential prep – and a joy of its own anyway. But the real magic is in listening to the music I think. Something I do all the time of course. Carpenter will be my top artist on Spotify this year, that’s for sure.
But I also came away from my movie-binge loving The Thing and The Fog far more than I remembered, newly in awe of Precinct 13 and still in love with Halloween, Escape From New York and They Live. I found new favourites in Starman and Dark Star and I dug deep into the TV movies (Elvis, Someone’s Watching Me) and the screenplays (Eyes of Laura Mars). What a prolific genius.
So I’m curious to know, are you a Carpenter fan? What’s your favourite film? And what’s the most re-watchable?