How watching a “low-rent wrestling circuit” in the 1990s convinced John Carpenter he was a musician
He might not have had a hit in a long time, but John Carpenter‘s impact on the history of cinema is undeniable, wherein the horror genre would be a lot less horrifying without him contributing some of the greatest scary movies ever to chill an audience to the core.
Then there are his action movies like Escape from New York and Assault on Precinct 13, which are groundbreaking and influential in their own right, but another area in which the eccentric filmmaker excels is movie scores, with the additionally talented musician having scored almost all of his own movies.
Hans Zimmer has often spoken about his love of Carpenter’s music and how it influenced his own work, where his prominent use of eerie synthesisers went on to inspire a number of bands who had nothing to do with the world of film.
Unfortunately, Carpenter doesn’t feel the love. In an interview with The Guardian, the man with one of the greatest moustaches in human history revealed he wasn’t aware of the impact his music has had on the electronic scene. When the interviewer asked him about artists like Autechre and Oneohtrix Point Never, he proclaimed to “have no idea who you are talking about”.
The only homage he knew of came from a very different place, admitting, “The only tribute I ever got was in some low-rent wrestling circuit. There was this Samoan SWAT team that came out, and they played the Halloween theme on a cheap boom box.”
The Samoan Sawt team, also known as The Headshrinkers, was a popular wrestling tag team in the 1980s and 1990s, with their most famous line-up made up of two wrestlers called Samu and Fatu. If you grew up with the WWF during the ‘Attitude Era’, then you’ll know Fatu as the thong-wearing, ass-jiggling behemoth Rikishi. There’s actually footage of them using the theme from Halloween, which Carpenter composed with help from his dad, on YouTube. They used it while they were working for World Championship Wrestling (WCW).
There is a long history of crossover between the worlds of wrestling and music. Without the involvement of MTV stalwart Cyndi Lauper in the mid-1980s, the company now known as WWE wouldn’t be the juggernaut it is today.
There are also countless examples of famous wrestlers using licensed music as their entrance themes, such as current legends Edge and CM Punk, who come out to ‘Metalingus’ by Alter Bridge and ‘Cult of Personality’ by Living Color, respectively. When Hulk Hogan became a huge mainstream star off the back of Rocky III, he would make his way to the ring to the sound of the film’s breakout hit, Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger’.
Perhaps the wrestling world was just doing the big man a favour. Carpenter cast WWE Hall of Famer ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper as the lead in his 1984 film They Live, whose performance as a man who must expose a race of aliens who have infiltrated earth society is a firm favourite among fans of the graps.
