Sacred Bones Music, out now

The Horror Master provides a retrospective of his movie scores with new versions of his monster hits.

Those lucky enough to watch John Carpenter on tour last year will already be familiar with the new versions of main themes, performed by himself, son Cody and Daniel Davies. Ostensibly used as a way to get people to listen to their new material from the Lost Themes albums, most of the Carpenter groupies were actually there to here Halloween and The Fog live. And what performances they were.

Purists might balk that the synth soundtracks don’t need the heavy rock guitar accompaniment, but I’m happy that both versions exist. The originals are more atmospheric, but the band versions are more suited for performance, with punchier tempo.

Unusually for an album that makes a point of stating a date range (1974–1998) it doesn’t follow any chronology, starting with 1994’s In the Mouth of Madness, concluding with 1983’s Christine, and mixing everything up in between. Not a problem to create a playlist from Dark Star to In the Mouth of Madness, but just a curious sequencing choice.

All of Carpenter’s movies are featured from the stated time period, excluding the Shirley Walker scores from Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Escape from LA, his TV movie scores to Elvis and Someone’s Watching Me or Carpenter’s co-written score (with Dave Davies) to Village of the Damned.

Highlights from the 13 tracks are of course Halloween, Escape from New York and Assault on Precinct 13, while Prince of Darkness and Christine are better than you might have remembered. Oh, and Morricone’s The Thing still sounds like the best John Carpenter score that he never wrote.

Verdict: Much imitated and rarely bettered, a cracking selection of John Carpenter’s greatest hits, and a must-have for your Halloween party playlist. 10/10

Nick Joy