Larry Hopkins – John Carpenter's The Thing (Music From The Motion Picture)

Fans of the film's eerie dark droning "interludes", such as the opening titles sequence followed by the spacecraft hurtling toward Earth, have been waiting decades for the John Carpenter/Alan Howarth portions of the soundtrack to surface. The official Varesse Sarabande (which followed the original US MCA releases) only contained some of the Ennio Morricone score (which includes parts unused in the final film) for this cinematographic masterpiece.

This limited edition 2015 "The Thing" soundtrack is a great accompaniement to the Ennio Morricone score which compliments it quite well, although die hard fans of the original film will no doubt realize that both the previously unreleased "score" (pieces on this disc entitled "Main Title", "Burn It", "Fuchs", and "To Mac's Shack") as well as the Ennio score pieces (such as "Despair", "Solitude", "Wait", and "Sterilization" for example) are in fact re-makes/re-interpretations by Alan Howarth and Larry Hopkins. This is very noticeable on the main piece "Main Theme - Desolation", which was entitled "The Thing: Humanity Part 2" on the original Morricone score, which is a good attempt at re-creating the infamous theme, although anyone who has an ear for musical and sound details will in fact notice immediately that the version on this disc is a remake.

The same goes for all other pieces on this "expanded soundtrack"; both the Morricine score as well as the aforementionned "interlude" drone moments are modern re-creations by Howarth and Hopkins. However these are very good re-makes and any die-core fanatics of the the film will be able to notice the subtle differences between the film's original audio bits and the versions on disc.

In conclusion, this disc is not the final official complete soundtrack score to the film, but is an excellent, if not necessary, accompaniement to the original Morricone score. It does finally allow the fans of the film's never-before released droning moments (originally by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth) a good audio source (even if these are remakes and not the originals) for those bits which have never been officially released for the past 33 years.

(note: I was able to find a new/scealed copy off of Amazon at a fraction of the usual asking prices on eBay and other similar sites. However after ordering my copy, the seller mentionned this was his second to last copy)