Seductive Sounds of Terror – Ten Favorite Horror Scores

So, some time back I put out a list of ten “songs of the summer,” all original songs written/recorded for 80s horror flicks that just said, “summer” to me. At the time, I excluded horror scores from the list as that really could be its own post. And now it is. This post here.

What is it about them that’s so addictive? I mean, film music can be perfectly enjoyable from any genre if the composition is strong, but there is something about music orchestrated to both pull you in and set you on edge that is really compelling for me. One of my jobs (proofreading translations) is very detail oriented and I very often put on music from some horror film while I’m doing it. I need energy and focus, but I can’t be distracted by words, and the drive, playfulness, and bite of a good horror score always hits the spot, keeping me moving, but also alert. Plus, they just put me in a good mood.

So, for this list, again, I’m setting myself some rules (which I might also let myself break). I’ll only include full scores. There are so many really rocking themes that stand on their own, but for which I’m not really familiar with the whole score they’re from (or sometimes, a whole score wasn’t even written – but there is one great theme), so while I love, for example, the main themes to Gremlins, Rosemary’s Baby, The Psychic, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Chopping Mall, or just about every John Carpenter movie, I’m not going to put them on this list.

Also, I’m going to try to stick to a one per composer/director rule, but that will be hard, particularly in terms of the Italians and, again, John Carpenter, so we’ll see how well I do with this one.  Anyway, here, in no particular order, are my ten favorite horror scores. Enjoy!

Candyman (1992) – Philip Glass

We may be starting with my favorite. Philip Glass is a modern, minimalist composer and his score is, at once, quite spare – a few instruments, mostly the organ, and a chorus, building repetitions of simple themes, while being at the same time grand, romantic, mournful, gothic, and full of dread. The pulsing repetitions become claustrophobic, though the themes being repeated can be quite pretty, and there is an edge of something unresolved stretched across the composition. There are no stingers to accompany jump scares, but it is unsettling, uncanny, and beautiful – the perfect accompaniment to the film’s central themes. I pretty much think this film is a masterpiece, but I don’t know how true that would be without this tremendous music to raise its effect. Also – I’ve been using the music box theme that kicks it off as my ringtone for at least the last fifteen years.

Daughters of Darkness (1971) – François De Roubaix

Sensual and atmospheric, the music here fluctuates between an erotic early seventies groove, a languid, classy waltz that implies something much older and aristocratic, and this hypnotic spookiness that seduces, but still has a bit of an edge. There are themes that repeat, but often with different instrumentation, or carrying a slightly different vibe. It is all playful, varied, and also pretty steamy. And it just works so well in the film, helping to build the enveloping atmosphere of the whole piece.

Dracula (1992) – Wojciech Kilar

This was the first film score that I ever bought, so enamored was I with Coppola’s rich, romantic, colorfully extravagant interpretation of Stoker’s story. The music is grandiose and monumental to the point of being intimidating. Kilar’s score is a building storm of orchestral power, driving and intense. Subtle it is not, but neither is the film, and I think they make a perfect pairing. Also, I haven’t found confirmation of this anywhere, but I feel like it includes a really interesting musical reference to the 1922 score to Nosferatu, the granddaddy of vampire cinema. Listen to the first track, “Thema I” or the penultimate track, “Nosferatu saugt Ellen und stibt im Morgengrauen” and see if it doesn’t feel familiar.

Phantasm (1979) – Fred Myrow & Malcolm Seagrave

Phantasm has one of the most iconic main themes in the genre, living in my head in close proximity to Carpenter’s theme for Halloween, both eking maximum effect out of a really small handful of notes. But that is only the beginning. The rest of the work, featuring a wide and eclectic array of percussion instruments and gloriously atmospheric synthesized soundscapes, is just as creepily inviting and sublimely weird. It ranges from alien discordance to a disco funk, from gothic spookiness to avant-garde pandemonium, all matching the film’s home-spun idiosyncrasies beat for beat.

City of the Living Dead (1980) – Fabio Frizzi / The House by the Cemetery (1981) – Walter Rizzati

Ok, so I’m breaking a rule here as this Sophie’s choice between these scores to two entries in Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy is just too much for me. (The Beyond is good too, but these two just blow me away.) They are for two films from the same director, but at least the composers are different, so that’s something. But they are equally compelling, and well suited to their respective flicks.

Going chronologically, City of the Living Dead is sometimes mysterious, sometimes rocking, and always eerie. Frizzi is really one of the best in the game, so it was hard to choose just one piece of his, but in the end, I just can’t get over the gothic, incessant atmosphere of this one. It’s a great space to dwell in, with strange, distorted sounds that still retain musicality, with a kind of implacable lurching towards the grave, and with a guitar solo on one track that seems exactly like something David Gilmore of Pink Floyd would have produced.

The score for The House by the Cemetery works in a similar mode, but stakes out its own ground. There is a creeping dread here mixed with a kind of enraptured nostalgia. The second track, “I Remember,” I could listen to all day. There is an emotional tension that pairs so well with this gory, gorgeous film of nightmare logic and the wicked Doctor Freudstein.

The Burning (1981) – Rick Wakeman

This one, very simply, just rocks! Rick Wakeman, a keyboardist for the band Yes (i.a., Owner of a lonely heart) really soars here. It swings between a lyrical beauty appropriate to the natural setting of this summer camp set slasher and a stomping synthesized rock sound, effectively intense in underscoring the film’s mayhem and murder. And it all just sounds so cool and weird. There are sounds here that only a synth could make, which are not trying to imitate anything that came before, which are odd, but really work in the film. And aside from the film, as a standalone album, it is all just so much fun.

Suspiria (1977) – Goblin

This is another impossible choice. I could have just as easily listed the score for Profundo Rosso or Tenebrae, but I am only allowing myself one Goblin scored Argento flick. And the film showcases the music so well. The opening sequence is a prime example: Suzy arriving at the airport, with the music swelling each time the doors open, letting in both the sound and the storm, the main theme implying the violent threat of this black forest fairy tale setting she is so vulnerably walking into. She goes through the automatic doors into a raging storm, at once entering a world of magic and threat and cool, weird melodies accompanied by creepy voices singing “la, la, la, la”. Goblin’s music is sometimes delicate, sometimes darkly enveloping in its creepy awesomness, and sometimes discordantly disquieting (while ironically being pretty loud), really setting nerves on edge. But the overall effect is glorious, absolutely integral to the film, and a perfect complement to Argento’s technicolor visual assault, all resulting in an effective, delirious, addictive sensory overload of a movie.

The Fog (1980) – John Carpenter

“11:55, almost midnight. Enough time for one more story. One more story before 12:00, just to keep us warm.” This is another nail biter of a choice. I doubt anyone else has crafted so many recognizable, iconic themes, particularly while working with a pretty contained palette, but I think this is my favorite. Endlessly atmospheric and catchy, he laid down the perfect foggy sound for his old fashioned fireside ghost story of deadly revenge rolling in from the sea. There is a fragile sense of loss to the compositions, a palpable dread, and the hook of fascination that pulls you in even as you tremble – a delicious, doom-laden auditory treat.

The Wicker Man (1973) – Paul Giovanni and Magnet

Again, I feel like I’m breaking my own rules as I hadn’t intended to include anything featuring songs with lyrics, but I just can’t leave this out, and with its folksy, historical charm, it is also a nice counterpoint to some of the other music on this list. The scoring, all based in traditional Scottish, English, and Irish music, really sets the stage for our visit to Summerisle, and perfectly gives voice to its inhabitants as they undergo their fiery celebration. And the songs that are sung, such as “Gently Johnny,” “The Maypole Song,” or “Willow’s Song” are such a significant aspect of how we see the life of the village – boisterous and lusty and joyfully pagan. As long as you’re not an overly religious and sexually repressed police sergeant investigating a missing child, it is unbelievably inviting. The first time I saw The Wicker Man, I hadn’t known what to expect and I was puzzled to discover that it’s kind of a musical, but now the sung portions are something I look forward to every time.

A note: I couldn’t find a clip with the whole soundtrack on Youtube, so the video above is just the first song. However, you can follow this link to a playlist that includes the full soundtrack.

Day of the Dead (1985) – John Harrison

This was another tossup – Harrison’s work for Creepshow is great, but the rising dread set to a sometimes calypso beat that he worked up for Romero’s third zombie outing just stands the test of time. We have the sustained tension fitting for this claustrophobic bunker setting, we have militaristic marches following the aggression of the army guys, and we have an essential weirdness well suited to the unknowable nature of the living dead. And somehow, even through the musical trepidation, there are odd notes of lightness and play. Some compositions really maintain an interesting tension and/or a balance between a bass-y low-end relentlessness and airy notes dancing about on top of it all. And it is just so effective in the film itself, which is of course the point.

Well that’s that. I hope this music serves you (whoever you may be) as well as it does me. May your hours in front of the computer be groovier – and more ominous.