Soundtrack.Net - Movie Soundtracks and Film Scores

Master filmmaker John Carpenter - who has brough audiences thrills and chills in 18 memorable motion pictures - now puts his unmistakable imprint on John Carpenter's Vampires. The mythology of vampirism is a subject matter the famed director has long wanted to bring to the screen.

Carpenter, an esteemed graduate of the USC Film School who has pioneered new directions for Hollywood over the past quarter century, personally helped return the horror genre to boxoffice prominence and cutting-edge artistic expression with the smash success of his Halloween in 1978.

Born in Carthage, New York and raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Carpenter was captivated by movies, especially westerns, as a youngster. The son of a college music professor, he attended Western Kentucky University, then enrolled in the University of Southern California's School of Cinema.

After winning an Academy Award for his 1970 short stubject The Resurrection of Bronco Billy (completed while a film student at USC), Carpenter directed a series of low-budget, highly commercial and critically acclaimed movies, including Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13, and Halloween, which earned over $75 million worldwide on a budget of just $300,000 - still the highest percentage of earnings per dollar spent.

Following Halloween, he established his reputation further with such genre hits as The Fog, John Carpenter's They Live, Prince of Darkness and Christine. He is also a first-rate action director, evident in such productions as Escape From New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China.

His motion picture credits also include the comedy-thriller Memoirs of an Invisible Man, the psychological horror film In the Mouth of Madness, the sci-fi love story Starman, which earned Jeff Bridges a Best Actor Oscar nomination, and John Carpenter's Village of the Damned, the terrifying remake of the classic 1950s horror story. For the small screen, Carpenter directed the thriller "Someone's Watching Me," the acclaimed biographical mini-series "Elvis," and the Showtime horror trilogy "John Carpenter Presents Body Bags".

As a screenwriter, Carpenter's first hollywood credit was The Eyes of Laura Mars. He has also written orginal screenplays for Halloween II, The Philadelphia Experiment, Black Moon Rising, Meltdown and the TV western "El Diablo", which won a CableAce Award for Best Screenplay.

In 1996, Carpenter directed, wrote and composed the music for John Carpenter's Escape from L.A. (the sequel to his 1981 sci-fi adventure Escape from New York). A highly regarded musician, he composed the dramatic score for John Carpenter's Vampires as well as for 15 of his 18 previous film productions, generally performing them as well. He recently scored a videogame, Sentinel Return, for Psygnosis.

Carpenter, ever the film student, is a scholar on the works of director Howard Hawkes. He recently taught a master class on the great filmmaker at the British Film Institute, and, along with his wife, is preparing a biographical documentary film on him. Meanwhile, two biographies on John Carpenter are in teh works in France.

Carpenter is married to Sandy King, who has produced several of his films.