He is one of the greatest genre directors, as people like to say with a hint of contempt, and his career spans half a decade. We had to do a Rewind episode for John Carpenter who, in addition to directing classic movies such as Escape from New York, Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13, is also a composer. So it’s with both horror and delight that this Rewind focuses on five of Carpenter’s masterful soundtracks. Let’s go!
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
We’re kicking things off with a dark action thriller. Assault on Precint 13, as the title suggests, tells the tale of a night of terror for the cops at a police station taken by storm by a horde of villains with murderous intent. The film has an electronic score composed by Carpenter and his accomplice Tommy Lee Wallace. It uses analog synthesizers, mechanical rhythms and eerie sound effects. The anxiety-inducing ambience of this low-budget score was highly innovative in 1976, as it came two years before Alan Parker’s Midnight Express, whose electronic soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder won an ©Oscar and paved the way for all kinds of electro film music, from Tangerine Dream (hugely influenced by Carpenter) to Thomas Bangalter.
Two major themes are used: the main theme that is reprised several times and a second, more serene theme that accompanies the few calm scenes during this thrilling feature film. A lot of random electronic sounds and some synthetic percussion when the mysterious gangs that carry out the assault advance into the night are also included. Carpenter admits that the old-school equipment used caused a number of technical problems:
We did everything with ancient technology, and it was hard to get the sounds we were looking for. It was a long and complicated process to find simple sounds!
Among the inspirations for this anxiety-inducing soundtrack were Lalo Schifrin’s theme from Dirty Harry and Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”. Ten years later in 1986, rapper/producer Afrika Bambaataa used the film’s main theme for his single “Bambaataa’s Theme (Assault on Precinct 13)”, a hip-hop take on a sound that would enjoy a second life as an instrumental for breakdancers and DJs.
Halloween (1978)
Rewind 2, two years later. Carpenter made horror film history with Halloween. With its multiple sequels and reboots (currently 13, two of which were directed by Rob Zombie), the franchise is well established, and is closely tied to its signature theme, once again credited to John Carpenter. The director set about composing the theme and its variations after a test screening, at the end of which viewers deemed the film “not scary enough”. Instead of the symphonic orchestras and gothic atmospheres usually associated with horror films, Carpenter opted for simplicity, with a minimalist piano theme. He later claimed to have created the theme in an hour, the rest of the score having been composed and recorded in three days.
It may seem like an exaggeration designed to make this cult movie, which launched the slasher craze, even more legendary, but the film’s low budget supports this claim: 21 days of shooting in all (some TV series have more time!) with little-known actors, apart from Donald Pleasence, Carpenter’s third choice after the rejection of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, who had just starred in the first Star Wars.
It was the first role for Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, who starred in Psycho), who was just 20 at the time of filming and who returned to the saga several times until the ultimate sequel Halloween Ends in 2022, when she was 64. A fun fact about the look of Michael Myers, the mute serial killer who embodies absolute evil: his white mask is actually that of William Shatner, Captain Kirk from the Star Trek series, painted white and slightly customized!
In addition to the instrumental score created by Carpenter, the Blue Öyster Cult classic “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” can be heard on the radio in a scene in which one of the victims is driving to their babysitting gig. The song was released two years earlier and was used again in numerous horror films.
If Halloween has acquired such importance in the history of horror films, it’s because it was the template for the modern slasher, at least in the USA, because in Italy, Mario Bava’s grandiose and nihilistic A Bay of Blood was the forerunner of the genre. All the codes of the modern slasher are present in Halloween: the concept of the last survivor, the death of “impure” protagonists (those who take drugs or have sex) and, of course, the musical theme that follows the antiheroes, in this case the indestructible serial killer Michael Myers.
Escape from New York (1981)
Rewind 3, and we’re changing the ambiance with a story that is halfway between science fiction and political fiction, with a slightly larger budget (even though it is nowhere near Spielberg or George Lucas level) and a perfect cast. We’re talking, of course, about Escape from New York, for which Carpenter collaborated with sound designer Alan Howarth and guitarist Tommy Lee Wallace. Howarth had worked two years earlier on the first feature film in the Star Trek series, and would play a major role in finalizing the soundtrack for Escape from New York.
Although Carpenter was still the main composer, creating melodies with his synthesizer, Howarth boosted these sounds with various high-end electronic instruments such as the ARP (a range of synthesizers created by Alan Robert Pearlman, hence the name), the Prophet-5 (an analog synth released in 1977) and the brand-new drum machine from Linn Electronics. The latter was the Linn LM-1, one of the first drum computers to allow programming that included acoustic drum sounds (it would be one of the major elements of 1999, Prince’s revolutionary double album).
In the film, you can hear a brief excerpt from “La cathédrale engloutie” (The Sunken Cathedral), a piano composition written by Claude Debussy in 1910. Another interesting detail: a song written by Nick Castle, who co-wrote the screenplay with Carpenter and is none other than Michael Myers’ interpreter in the film Halloween! This musical comedy-style song, “Everyone’s Coming to New York”, is sung by Ernest Borgnine, who plays Cabbie, a cab driver. It features the prophetic line:
This is hell, this is fate, but now this is your world and it’s great !
Strangely enough, Carpenter and Howarth’s two references for the score were Tangerine Dream and The Police. The final credit on the record is “Music by John Carpenter in association with Alan Howarth.” For the shoot, Carpenter’s biggest problem was finding a location that matched the theme of the movie: a futuristic New York devastated like a Vietnam War zone. CGI was still a long way off, and the budget made it impossible to build studio sets.
For weeks, the production team searched for a strategic site. The location finally chosen was St. Louis, Missouri, not far from the Mississippi River, where entire neighborhoods had been devastated by a huge fire in 1976. Another production trick: the purchase, for a symbolic dollar, of the old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which became the 69th Street Bridge in the film. It was sold to the US government for the same amount once filming was finished. The reason for these legal and financial acrobatics? To ensure that the government would not be held liable for any accidents that might occur during the shoot!
The result is one of Carpenter’s great successes, and the opportunity for him to shoot with action film and soul legends: Isaac Hayes portrays “The Duke”, Donald Pleasance, returning three years after Halloween, is the President of the United States, Lee Van Cleef is the chief of police and Kurt Russell is Snake Plissken. Russell almost missed out on this role, as investors would have preferred Charles Bronson or Chuck Norris. At the time, Russell was considered to have little credibility, having just come out of a series of comedy films produced by Disney.
Fun Fact 1: the movie features Season Hubley in a small role. At the time, she was married to Kurt Russell.
Fun Fact 2: the (uncredited) narrator is none other than Jamie Lee Curtis.
Christine (1983)
Rewind 4, and we’re going back to the fifties with Christine, an adaptation of one of Stephen King’s bestsellers, hot off the press in 1983. The story is that of a car designed in 1958, the Plymouth Fury, which we see being built in the first images of the film. From the moment of its conception, the car seems to have an evil consciousness, causing various accidents on the production line. Its nefarious influence on the film’s hero, the young nerd Arnie Cunningham, played by Keith Gordon, brings him to a tragic and murderous end.
Christine’s soundtrack is twofold: a score written and performed by John Carpenter & Alan Howarth, and a series of rock classics. Throughout the 110-minute film, we can hear Little Richard, Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Johnny Ace, Dion & The Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, Bonnie Raitt, The Rolling Stones and even ABBA with “The Name of the Game”. The featured song is “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood & The Destroyers, a menacing blues tune that perfectly matches the “personality” of this diabolical red car.
The original score by Carpenter, who worked with Alan Howarth again, sometimes seems like a remake of his previous soundtracks. Fans will notice snippets of The Fog, Halloween and Escape from New York. It wasn’t until 1989 that Varese released a CD of the film’s original score, thirty minutes of instrumental music that complemented the other CD of rock songs heard throughout the movie.
23 different cars were used during filming, only one of which escaped the scrap heap. Once restored, it was put up for sale and bought by a collector. The film was a box-office success, grossing an estimated $21 million, and received positive reviews from the critics. But Stephen King made his disapproval of the adaptation of his novel clear in a 2003 interview given to promote Dreamcatcher, another of his novels adapted for the screen and directed by Lawrence Kasdan:
It so happens that I’m probably the contemporary novelist with the most film adaptations… And I don’t say that to boast, it’s something that both amuses and amazes me. Several honorable adaptations have been made over the last thirty years… And the best of these have generally been devoid of the elements that have made me a success: science fiction, fantasy, the supernatural and horror. Books that included these elements generally became films that were either unnecessary or downright embarrassing. Others – I’m thinking in particular of Christine and Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining – should have been good, but… well, they weren’t. They turned out to be rather boring. And as far as I’m concerned, I prefer it when it’s bad than when it’s boring.
You read that right: Stephen King thought that Christine and The Shining were boring movies. This just goes to show that authors are not always the best judges of their works… or their adaptations.
They Live (1988)
And to conclude with a fifth and final Rewind, They Live, one of Carpenter’s most political films masquerading as sci-fi. Carpenter’s last directorial effort of the 1980s, this movie set in a dystopian future is an adaptation of a short story written in 1963 by Ray Nelson: Eight O’Clock in the Morning. It features a hero played by wrestler Roddy Piper. The plot? Earth has been invaded by aliens who manipulate humans whilst concealing themselves, but Nada (the hero) discovers “special” glasses that reveal the truth…
The director explains how it is a metaphor for consumerism in the “Reaganomics” years:
The premise of the film is that this ‘Reagan revolution’ is being led by aliens from another galaxy. Free enterprise from outer space has taken over and is exploiting Earth as if it were a third world planet. And as soon as they’ve exhausted its resources, they’ll go and destroy another planet. I sat down in front of my television again, and quickly realized that everything you see is designed to make you buy something… All they want is our money.
The Synclavier, Oberheim SEM-4, Emulator 2 and inevitable Yamaha DX7 (with 80s sounds that have aged considerably since the last century) are a few of the machines used by the Carpenter/Howarth duo to accompany this feature film, which shares a few similarities with the Wachowskis’ Matrix.
Although American critics were generally negative at the time of its release, They Live quickly achieved cult status, and its influence has been significant in the fields of design and street art: for example, Shepard Fairey, the man behind the “Hope” poster for Barak Obama’s victorious presidential campaign in 2008, claimed to have been directly inspired by Carpenter’s film when creating his slogan OBEY, which has since become a streetwear brand. Further proof, if it were needed, of the creative power of John Carpenter, the maverick of American genre films.
Unfortunately for his fans, Carpenter hasn’t directed a movie since 2010’s The Ward, which starred Amber Heard, Johnny Depp’s ex-wife. Fortunately, John hasn’t retired yet, and although we won’t be seeing any of his work in film, we can hear his contribution to the soundtrack of Death of a Unicorn, a dark comedy starring Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega, due for release at the end of 2024. This time, John is no longer with Alan Howarth but has two co-composers, guitarist Daniel Davies (who collaborated on Carpenter’s Lost Themes and Lost Themes II albums) and his son, Cody Carpenter. At 76, John Carpenter has not yet retired, nor has written his last note.
