It’s been a long time since John Carpenter made his way on stage to perform in front of a crowd. The master of horror for filmmaking is also a master of film scores. He’s done work on his own films like Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China, Halloween, and plenty of other classic scores. He recently started a small tour kicking off in New York before heading to Los Angeles for a residency at the Belasco Theater. He has two more dates left on October 31st and November 1st. The October 31st date will also be live-streamed on Veeps, which you can buy a ticket for, here. If tickets are still available for the Halloween and November 1st dates, you can grab them here.

There was no opener and they kicked off exactly an hour after the doors opened for the show. They took the stage with the excellent “Wake Up” from They Live. Here’s what the full setlist looked like thanks to our friends at Setlist.fm.

John Carpenter Setlist The Belasco, Los Angeles, CA, USA 2025

For fans of Carpenter and his music, this was a dream come true of a setlist. Not only were he, Cody Carpenter, Daniel Davies, and the rest of their band shredding the soundtracks to some of his most excellent movies, but they were showing clips from the movies behind them. It was a sonic attack on your senses that included visuals, fog, lights, and much more.

Lost Themes, Classic Scores, New Music, And More

I’ve never been to an all-instrumental concert before. I’ve seen Star Wars In Concert at the Hollywood Bowl, but even that had some sort of dialogue in between the songs. Here, we got some small snippets from Carpenter between songs, but really this was all focused on the music. The entire band was on their A-game, ripping through classic tracks like “Pork Chop Express” from Big Trouble In Little China, “In The Mouth of Madness” from the movie of the same name, and the highlight of the night with “Escape From New York”.

The songs that they played from Carpenter’s newest albums, Lost Themes 1-4 were also fantastic. It’s easy to see that these tracks could fit right in as movie scores for films that didn’t get made. Capping off the night was “Christine Attacks (Plymouth Fury)” from Christine. Carpenter kicked off the song with one ask of the audience, that they drive home safely tonight, “because Christine is out there somewhere”.

Overall, as a massive John Carpenter fan, this was about as close to heaven as it gets. A room full of fans screaming along as the opening notes of the Assault on Precinct 13 theme echo throughout the room is awesome. If you get the chance to see this show in person (or even with the online stream), you need to. The band surrounding John and his music is an absolute delight.

If you’re in the mood for a show that only John Carpenter and his music can put on, he put on a hell of a performance in Los Angeles.

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