Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Carpenter Omission

Gregory Burkhart's 8.12 Fearnet piece about the musical work of John Carpenter discusses at a medium-length the director's "Ten Best Film Scores". He talks about Halloween, The Fog, Escape From New York, but he makes one glaring omission, in my mind, and that's Carpenter's bassy, progressive synth theme for Assault on Precinct 13
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Essentially a zombie-action movie, Assault centers around a cop (Austin Stoker) and a prisoner (Darwin Joston) fighting off wave-after-wave of crazed South LA gangsters, who more or less act as self-sacrificing zombies who climb through windows, make a lot of noise and are seemingly unconcerned about the consequences of staring down the barrel of a shotgun. 
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But it just simply amazes me that Burkhart could overlook that driving theme which is ingrained in the film's structure and mood. I remember watching the opening titles and hearing that score for the first time and thinking, "this is gonna be something special."  
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Yet Burkhart, for whatever reason, excludes it from his list in favor of Vampires ('98) and Ghost of Mars ('01)???
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(I did a John Carpenter top ten list last August, almost to the day, and I put his Assault on Precinct 13 score #1.)

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