VOTD 4/22/2024

 John Carpenter: The Fog OST (Waxworks)

Purchased used at The Attic

I have to admire John Carpenter. Consider The Fog: he directed, so-wrote, and created the soundtrack music. I see under imdb.com that he also appears as an uncredited extra. (Of course he does.) There are few others who can probably boast all of those roles in a single film, and who at Carpenter's level of fame?

Carpenter has scored many of his films, in that generally keyboard-driven creepy minimalist style for which he's known. Most famous would doubtlessly be his theme for the original Halloween. It's closer in spirit to the use of an excerpt from Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells as the theme for The Exorcist than, say, Goblin's prog rock of Deep Red  and Suspiria, or even Fabio Frizzi's music for City of the Living Dead and The Beyond. I read somewhere recently that Mike Oldfield has been told countless times how creepy his music is for the opening of the that film; he said in so many words he just wanted to create pretty music. 

I find it interesting that when Carpenter solicited Ennio Morricone to compose the music for The Thing, the score turned out to sound like a very good Carpenter score. What discussion there might have been between the two men, I don't know. Morricone was shown to sometimes be prickly when directors made too many demands on him for the style of music they wanted.

So here's The Fog. Not Carpenter's best film, but far from his worst. (Whatever that might be.) Great cast: Ha Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, Tom Atkins (Pittsburgh's own!). The first thing you hear on the LP is John Houseman delivering a brief monologue. Who doesn't want to hear that? 

The music is fine if also not Carpenter's best. I'm sure some would find his pieces a little boring, but I'm okay with a bit of musical creeping dread. The problem I find, which I surely have expressed in previous blog posts, is one of editing. It's pretty rare to listen to a soundtrack album start to finish, and have every minute of it be engaging. Inside the film it may all be perfectly fine, but as a separate listening experience, it's more than is needed. 

Nonetheless, I'll again express my admiration for Carpenter's gemsamkunstwerk. As the director, he'd already have his hands someone in all of the production, from casting, staging, camerawork, costuming, and other visual elements. Add to that the writing and the music composition, it's definitely his vision, like it or not.

I like these boutique-level soundtrack labels, specifically Waxworks and Mondo/Death Waltz. But that's an expensive habit, they don't come cheap. I mean, individually they're not so bad, but if the average for a single LP is maybe $30? That adds up. And there are reasons these LPs are so expensive: new, original artwork, often gatefold covers, and often multicolored vinyl variants. This one's pressed in a foggy white-on-teal. 

This turned up used, and I did't have any Carpenter on hand, so what the heck. 

"It's not the fog, but what the fog brings."