John Carpenter

[Underscore]

What are your opinions on this man as a musician ?

I personally love everything he has done. Although a lot of his music sounds a bit dated given that he used a lot of synthesizers, but for me theres no denying on what wonderful effect his music has brought to his movies.

A Carpenter film would not be a Carpenter film without his music. I mean can you just imagine Halloween without his simple theme ? And thats what I love about his scores - the simplicity. On the commentary of my DVD of Prince of Darkeness, he mentions film scores generally fall into two catagories; Mickey Mousing (large iconic themes ala John Williams) and Underscoring. Carpenter falls into the latter.

 

[Frederik Magle]

I've always liked his originality - even when he is not original

There's something special about his films, and not least his music. One of my favorite "scores" by Carpenter is the one from "Escape from New York" - the main titles are so minimalistic, yet haunting in a strange way. However, I do thing having seen the movies is requisite to appreciating most of his music, but that is not necessarily a bad thing in the case of film music.

 

[Magnum]

I was a little surprised to find how little he has done recently, but think it must just be that he made some classic soundtracks for a specific genre in a specific era.
I would also guess that his work for the countless 'Halloween' movies have made him a very rich man indeed! My favourite however is the same as Frederik the theme to 'Escape from New York' Very simplistic but very much in tune with the actual storyline.
Magnum