Halloween III - Director: Tommy Lee Wallace, Soundtrack: John Carpenter and Alan Howarth
I like the others. I’m a Halloween fan. Well, I’m a fan of the first three films. I don’t really watch them after that. I don’t need to watch Halloween 54 - I’ve got a fair idea of what will happen in that: there’ll be a man in a mask and he’ll stab someone - but the first three are great. I love the score to Halloween because it’s off… in 5/4. It’s unnerving when you listen to it. Halloween II I love and I released that and that’s sinister and really dark. Listen to that with the lights off and it’s pretty fucking mental but Halloween III is just this weird experimental, tonal record. Warp could have released it in their hey day. ‘Chariots Are Pumpkins’ is like this incredible krautrock cosmic disco which just sort of glides. And the way it starts with all those weird synth flashes and tones. Such a weird soundtrack. And it’s the best film outside of the original in that series and it’s the best soundtrack. Alan and John were doing stuff that no one else was doing. You could play them out now in nightclubs and people would be like, “What the fuck is this man?” And that to me is something that is amazing and stands the test of time. John says that they didn’t really know what they were doing and they were learning with each successive score. They just used to mess with things. They weren’t musicians. It’s one of my favourite Halloween films, as in the day itself. I’ve got four films that I watch every Halloween and this is one of them. John oversaw The Fog project and he’s helped us with the mastering of Assault On Precinct 13 and given us sleeve notes. He’s cool to work with and he’s a fucking legend. It blows my mind that I get mails from John Carpenter!