The Hateful Eight includes three pieces linked to Morricone’s music for The Thing. Their reuse brings western and horror closer together, but they should be distinguished from the new score and from the release history of those compositions.
Which three pieces appear, and where they come from
The music credits for The Hateful Eight identify Eternity, Bestiality, and Despair as Ennio Morricone compositions from The Thing, John Carpenter’s 1982 film. That identification makes it possible to separate the earlier material from the music written for Tarantino’s western. These are not three new themes composed by Carpenter for The Hateful Eight, nor a complete soundtrack moved from one film to another.
The phrase “previously unreleased outtakes” is imprecise. Some of the music created for The Thing was not used in the same way in its final cut, but it did circulate on soundtrack releases. A composition can be absent from a film and yet have been available on an album for years. Confusing those states creates the impression that Tarantino uncovered three recordings no one had ever heard, something the publication history does not support.
It is also necessary to distinguish the original recordings from later reinterpretations. There are albums that reconstruct music from The Thing and bring together contributions by Morricone with material by Carpenter and Alan Howarth. The fact that a release announces pieces used in The Hateful Eight does not automatically mean that that specific recording is the one heard in the film. The composition title, its author, and the source of the master are related facts, but they are not identical.
The three pieces are not part of The Hateful Eight’s main album in the same form in which they are credited in the film. The commercial album selects music, songs, and dialogue for its own listening experience. That is why someone looking for every sound from the feature film may not find them by going only through the track list. The absence of a piece from that album does not contradict its presence in the film credits.
Horror enters the western through music
The connection with John Carpenter’s cinema has a recognizable narrative basis. The Thing and The Hateful Eight bring together a group isolated by a frozen environment, forced to coexist with a threat whose identity is unclear. The comparison does not turn Domergue’s gang into a literal creature or claim that both stories work by the same rules. It describes a structure of suspicion that makes the musical closeness relevant.
Eternity contributes to the atmosphere of setting up and being exposed to the outdoors; Bestiality is associated with violent eruptions, including the poisoned coffee effect; Despair appears in the final phase of confrontation and negotiation. Those placements make it possible to observe different functions without assigning the pieces a single mechanical emotion. The material is integrated into new actions and takes on a meaning that depends on Tarantino’s characters and editing.
The reuse does not need to be consciously recognized in order to have an effect. A viewer unfamiliar with The Thing can still experience unease, density, or threat without identifying a quote. Someone who knows the earlier film adds a memory of confinement and distrust. That double reception is one of the possibilities of preexisting music: it works as sound within the new work and, for part of the audience, as a link to another cinematic experience.
Kurt Russell’s presence in both films strengthens that association for anyone who notices it, although his characters are not equivalent. The music does not prove a fictional continuity between them. It connects different works through a shared sense of threat and isolation. The western retains its conflicts of race, justice, reward, and rescue; horror contributes a way of making coexistence seem less and less safe.
How the earlier material coexists with the new score
The original score by Morricone for The Hateful Eight gives the film its own identity. The 1982 pieces are inserted into that whole, not replace it. The continuity can rely on low registers, tense textures, and a preference for sustaining anticipation. That compatibility does not mean everything was composed with the same original intention. The edit brings together material born for different contexts and decides where it is useful.
The time difference also helps explain Tarantino’s selection process. An existing composition does not arrive in a scene as a closed meaning. Its duration can be shortened, its entrance can coincide with a different action, and its relationship to dialogue can change. The final effect belongs to that new placement. Morricone’s authorship remains, while the cinematic function is redefined in another film.
The history of Morricone and Tarantino includes precisely this coexistence between admiration for an earlier catalog and a desire for new music. The Hateful Eight does not completely abandon the selection method that characterizes the director. It combines that method with a more extensive collaboration with the composer. That blend explains why the soundtrack can sound coherent while still preserving heterogeneous origins that are worth identifying when studying it.
The link to The Thing is more precise when stated at that scale: three credited compositions, an affinity of confinement and suspicion, and a new function within the western. There is no need to call already published pieces unreleased or to attribute Morricone’s music to Carpenter. The reuse is interesting for what it makes possible in the new film, as well as for the recognition it offers to those who remember where it comes from.
Back to the The Hateful Eight guide.