Original Score Composed by Ennio Morricone except * Music by John Carpenter in association with Alan Howarth

Limited edition of 1500 copies

BUYSOUNDTRAX Records is proud to announce the release of a new recording for the 1982 horror classic, THE THING - MUSIC FROM THE MOTION PICTURE, featuring music composed by Ennio Morricone for the film directed by John Carpenter.
For this new recording, the music has been produced and arranged by Alan Howarth and Larry Hopkins.

The music for The Thing was composed by the great Ennio Morricone.
Prior to The Thing, director John Carpenter had gained a reputation as a director who also composed the music for his own films and had begun collaborating with sound designer and fellow composer Alan Howarth on the music for his films.
Working with a larger budget at his disposal, Carpenter was able to hire one of his musical idols to score the film.
The movie's final soundtrack, though, would be a combination of both Morricone and Carpenter's sensibilities.
Characteristically, Morricone did not compose his score to picture. He composed many pieces of music inspired by the film he'd watched and by the directions he'd received from Carpenter.
The music would be edited to fit the film as Carpenter wanted.
During the post-production process, Carpenter decided he needed more music for the film and worked with collaborator Alan Howarth to produce some additional electronic music.

The original 1982 soundtrack release for The Thing featured Ennio Morricone's score for the film, including a wealth of music that ultimately did not get used in the film.
For this new release of music from The Thing, the music has been produced and arranged by Alan Howarth and Larry Hopkins, to include newly recorded renderings of the Morricone music (including recreations of the tracks not used in the film) and Howarth has also provided new performances of the music he produced for the film with John Carpenter, making their premiere appearance on this album.
The music is presented in a sequence closer to film order.

Alan Howarth, in addition to being a composer, is an accomplished sound designer and editor, having worked on films such as Star Trek and many others.

John Carpenter's The Thing is both a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film of the same name and a re-adaptation of the John W. Campbell Jr. story "Who Goes There?" on which it was based. Carpenter's film is more faithful to Campbell's story than Hawks' version and also substantially more reliant on special effects, provided in abundance by a team of over 40 technicians, including veteran creature-effects artists Rob Bottin and Stan Winston.
The film opens enigmatically with a Siberian Husky running through the Antarctic tundra, chased by two men in a helicopter firing at it from above.
Even after the dog finds shelter at an American research outpost, the men in the helicopter (Norwegians from an outpost nearby) land and keep shooting.
One of the Norwegians drops a grenade and blows himself and the helicopter to pieces;
the other is shot dead in the snow by Garry (Donald Moffat), the American outpost captain.
American helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell, fresh from Carpenter's Escape From New York) and camp doctor Copper (Richard Dysart) fly off to find the Norwegian base and discover some pretty strange goings-on.
The base is in ruins, and the only occupants are a man frozen to a chair (having cut his own throat) and the burned remains of what could be one man or several men.
In a side room, Copper and MacReady find a coffin-like block of ice from which something has been recently cut.
That night at the American base, the Husky changes into the Thing, and the Americans learn first-hand that the creature has the ability to mutate into anything it kills.
For the rest of the film the men fight a losing (and very gory) battle against it, never knowing if one of their own dwindling number is the Thing in disguise.
Though resurrected as a cult favorite, The Thing failed at the box office during its initial run, possibly because of its release just two weeks after Steven Spielberg's warmly received E.T.The Extra-Terrestrial.
Along with Ridley Scott's futuristic Alien, The Thing helped stimulate a new wave of sci-fi horror films in which action and special effects wizardry were often seen as ends in themselves.

Cast:
Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, Donald Moffat, Joel Polis, Thomas G. Waites, Norbert Weisser, Larry J. Franco, Nate Irwin

Director:
John Carpenter