John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, musician, editor and composer. Although Carpenter has worked with various film genres, he is associated most commonly with horror, action and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s.
Most films of Carpenter's career were initially commercial and critical failures, with the notable exceptions of Halloween , The Fog , Escape from New York , and Starman . However, many of Carpenter's films from the 1970s and the 1980s have come to be considered as cult classics, and he has been acknowledged as an influential filmmmaker. The so-called cult classics that Carpenter has directed include the films Dark Star , Assault on Precinct 13 , The Thing , Christine , Big Trouble in Little China , Prince of Darkness , They Live and In the Mouth of Madness .
Carpenter is also notable for having composed or co-composed most of his films' music; some of them are now well-known, with the main theme of Halloween being considered a part of popular culture. He won a Saturn Award for Best Music for the film Vampires . Carpenter has released three studio albums, titled Lost Themes , Lost Themes II , and Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998 .
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16. January 1948
