The film score that inspired John Carpenter’s music career: “It was astonishing to me”
It’s a very select group to be part of, those directors who also score their own films.
Clint Eastwood has done so later in life for movies like Million Dollar Baby, and way back in the day, Charlie Chaplin also composed scores to accompany his early silent films. But above anyone, it’s fair to say that the most iconic example of these directing musicians has to be horror legend John Carpenter.
Not only is he responsible for some of the most skin-crawling movies in history, his usually synth-driven soundtracks have also sold in the millions, with the themes for the likes of Halloween and The Fog becoming creepy classics in their own right. But he didn’t just do horror; Carpenter has made fantastic movies throughout his career, including the brilliant sci-fi cult shocker They Live, Assault on Precinct 13, and the soon-to-be remade kung-fu hit, Big Trouble in Little China.
New Yorker Carpenter was fascinated with films from an early age, making his own 8mm movies before moving to California to enrol in film school. He dropped out in his final year in order to start work on a debut short film that would incredibly earn him and his colleagues an Oscar at the first time of asking.
It was called The Resurrection of Broncho Billy, and Carpenter was responsible not just for editing the film, but also writing and recording the music. The short film would eventually be shown for two years in cinemas around America, and that was enough to get him the backing to produce his first film, a science-fiction comedy he had begun at the university called Dark Star, and again, aside from directing, Carpenter did the music.
Then came Assault on Precinct 13, a movie with a budget of just $100,000 and the theme for which Carpenter wrote in just three days; a masterpiece of synth bass and drum machine that was ahead of its time.
His use of synthesisers became something of a calling card for his soundtracks, and he recalled hearing the machine for the first time in an interview with Synthhistory, saying: “I think I first heard it on [1968 instrumental album by Wendy Carlos] Switched-on-Bach long ago. And I mean, it was interesting. It’s not what I got excited about, but it was interesting. And I thought, well, you know what? This could turn out to be something here. But I don’t know if that was the first.”
He then talked about a cinematic theme tune that blew him away, noting, “I heard a movie score that was all electronic. It was called Forbidden Planet, and it was astonishing to me. Now, it wasn’t synthesisers per se, but it was a lot of relays and a lot of electronic stuff. So maybe that was the first.”
Forbidden Planet, which landed in 1956, was a proper game-changer in sci-fi. It had a young Leslie Nielsen in the cast, years before his Naked Gun capers, and came with a main theme full of odd, almost other-worldly noises cooked up by electronic music pioneers Bebe and Louis Barron. Looking back, it’s no wonder it went down as one of the standout sci-fi flicks of the 1950s. Light years ahead of its time, and hugely influential in the way space travel was shown on screen.
While Assault on Precinct 13 eventually found fame as an underground hit, it was Halloween in 1978 that really brought the director-composer to global attention, complete with the ultra-iconic Carpenter-penned theme tune that has anchored itself in popular culture. Starring a young Jamie Lee Curtis, it was made on a budget of $300,000 and brought in more than $70m at the box office, spawning 12 sequels up to 2022, with currently a new Halloween TV series in development, as well as yet another movie reboot.
Carpenter, meanwhile, followed Halloween with a string of hits including The Fog, Escape from New York featuring Kurt Russell, and 1982’s The Thing, a landmark horror that pushed the boundaries of special effects and which, unusual for the director to stick around only to the chair, featured a score by Ennio Morricone.
The Thing’s initial poor feedback affected Carpenter’s career badly, and although he had famous films with Big Trouble… and They Live, he never again had a major movie hit, relegated to the storied walls of cult success.
