John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi horror classic The Thing is one of the few films he directed but didn’t score. Venerated Italian composer Ennio Morricone provided the creepy orchestral score to Carpenter’s bleak, paranoid, alien gorefest.
Morricone’s traditionally orchestral approach was quite different from the sort of electronic scores that Carpenter had been doing for his earlier films such as Halloween, The Fog, and Escape from New York.
This week fan site, House by the Video Store, uploaded a video answering the question, “what would The Thing have been like if John Carpenter had scored it?”
The video includes a few scenes from the film, overdubbed with selections from Carpenter’s amazing 2015 release Lost Themes. Lost Themes was my hands-down top pick for favorite album of 2015. It’s nine tracks of music that could have easily come from any of Carpenter’s classic films. Sure, it all sounds kind of ‘80s, in that retro-futuristic kind of way, but Carpenter is a master of the craft, and I’d put that album up against any electronic score from the golden age of grindhouse.
The best album of 2015.
In the video, some of these scenes work better than others, but it’s a pretty good indicator of what The Thing would have been like with a Carpenter score. In my opinion it makes the movie a bit grittier—less horror and more exploitation. Morricone’s original score is perfect for the film, giving it the atmosphere that elevated it to its status as one of the all-time creepiest films of the ‘80s, but Carpenter’s music here fits well. All-in-all, this is an interesting experiment, but I’ll stick with the original.