Search - John Carpenter :: Choice Cuts: Wicked Sounds Of Horror (Film Score Anthology)

The fundamental concerns of the horror genre haven't changed much since the '70s: have an audience identify with the innocent protagonist, introduce a menacing whatever, and then scare the bejesus out of viewers. The oeuvre's score has always been a key ingredient to its success, and the best music has risen above mere cliché. This loosely Halloween-themed collection (bookended by--what else?--director John Carpenter's jittery synth themes from Halloween) gathers a motley, occasionally suspect (Carpenter's synth bolero for Escape from New York and its industrial rework for Escape from L.A. are infectious, if not exactly genre correct) collection that documents the surprising variety of music that's underscored modern cinematic terror. The tracks here range from Eurocentric orchestral (Pino Donaggio's Carrie), neopastoral gone quickly bad (Nicholas Pike's "Sleepwalkers," Marco Beltrami's Scream, Christopher Young's Urban Legend) to chilling modernism (Howard Shore's Crash, Michael Kamen's The Dead Zone) to the lovably cheezoid electronics of John Carpenter and Dick Maas's killer elevator music from The Lift. --Jerry McCulley