Watch the magnificent music video for John Carpenter’s ‘Big Trouble in Little China’
While John Carpenter‘s filmography is often dominated in discussion in terms of its brilliance by the likes of Halloween, The Thing, Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York, one film that is sometimes not given its due credit is Big Trouble in Little China.
That’s not to say that the 1986 fantasy action comedy is not examined, but that upon its release, it was an utter critical and commercial failure. Since then, however, the film starring Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun and James Hong has become something of a cult classic.
Big Trouble in Little China tells of a truck driver Jack Burton (played by Russell), who must help his friend Wang rescue his girlfriend from a criminal organisation in San Francisco’s Chinatown. However, upon entering the famous district, they discover an ancient sorcerer who requires a woman of Wang’s girlfriend’s description to release him from an ancient curse.
It was Big Trouble in Little China that left Carpenter feeling disillusioned with the state of cinema in Hollywood after its critical and commercial failure. Following Big Trouble’s difficult release, Carpenter returned to independent filmmaking. He said in a later interview: “The experience was the reason I stopped making movies for the Hollywood studios. I won’t work for them again. I think Big Trouble is a wonderful film, and I’m very proud of it. But the reception it received, and the reasons for that reception, were too much for me to deal with. I’m too old for that sort of bullshit.”
If the film wasn’t wacky enough, then perhaps its soundtrack was. Carpenter was known for providing his own music for his films, often to excellent use. For Big Trouble in Little China, Carpenter got together with his band The Coupe De Villes (featuring Tommy Lee Wallace and Nick Castle – the latter of whom played Mike Myers in Halloween) to record an entire score.
Carpenter had been keen to avoid the stereotypical soundtracks that had been used in American films about Chinese characters – “chop suey music”, as he once described it. Instead, Carpenter wanted to use a synthesiser-heavy sound combined with good old-fashioned rock music. The results are brilliantly odd, particularly for the film album’s title track.
Check out the music video for ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ below. It’s a wonderfully wacky piece of work, true to the tone of Carpenter himself and the film, and it is simply brilliant to see the legendary director singing along to his tune.
