He is Hollywood's most renowned sci-fi/horror filmmaker. But director John Carpenter is also one of Hollywood's most talented film composers. The son of a Western Kentucky University music professor, he has composed the dramatic scores for sixteen of his nineteen previous film productions, often performing them as well on digital instruments.
Carpenter composed the score for his film, John Carpenter's Vampires, which set a box office record for the biggest Halloween opening and the film's DVD stayed on top of the best seller charts for weeks. Vampires, like his previous Escape From L.A. (the sequel to his 1981 sci-fi adventure Escape From New York), continued his history as triple threat filmmaker, composing the score as well as writing the screenplay and directing.
After winning an Academy Award for his 1970 short subject, The Resurrection of Bronco Billy (completed while a film student at USC), he directed a series of low budget, critically acclaimed movies, including Dark Star and Assault on Precinct 13, each of which he scored the music. John Carpenter personally helped return the horror genre to box office prominence and cutting edge artistic expression with the smash success of his 1978 thriller, Halloween, for which he composed the score as well.
Following Halloween, the master of horror scored the music for his film, The Fog. In 1981, Carpenter continued exercising his composing genius through music to Halloween II (directed by Rick Rosenthal), as well as Escape From New York. Yet again, in 1983, he scored two more films, Christine and Halloween III: Season of the Witch.
His motion picture scoring/directing credits also include Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Prince of Darkness (1987), They Live (1988), Body Bags (1993), In the Mouth of Madness (1995), Village of the Damned (1995) and Ghost of Mars (2001).
Current Discography:
