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Too often we associate the terror of a horror film from the onscreen violence, blood-letting, elaborate fatalities, dingy settings, etc. What goes overlooked a lot of the time is the musical score of a horror film, an emotional avenue that not only augments a picture as a whole, but cuts right down to the basic of human emotions. Horror scores, more than any, hold the arduous task of reflecting the fears and uncertainty in the characters of the narrative and much stock has to be invested in them in order to pull it off effectively. Here now, is our list of the 20 best all time horror scores. Since they all tend to kick so much derriere - we’ve gone ahead and alphabetized them instead of ranking them by superiority (it’d be pretty difficult to do so) Enjoy!
The Beyond (Fabio Frizzi) – Fulci smartly goes back to the well with help of Fabio Frizzi for his 1981 masterwork The Beyond. Honestly, this might be in my top two or three of our list. It has such a banging baseline and a choral accompaniment that it’s a piece of music I look forward to playing on my own from time to time, independent of the film itself. When the march-like drum-roll kicks in I feel like getting my dance on, don’t you? It’s perhaps an unheralded score, as is the film, which never saw an uncut version in
Cannibal Holocaust (Riz Ortolani) - Out of our entire list, this is definitely my favorite. Independent of the movie itself, Ortolani's composition is nothing short of gorgeous. I can seriously listen to this track all day with my eyes closed, it's that divine. Then given the context in which the piece is played, how it is used, when it is used - the song only amplifies the emotional resonance of the film as a whole. To juxtapose such brutally graphic onscreen violence with just a simple, bone-cuttingly beautiful score - a crazy synthesis is formed that leaves the viewer pretty entranced. It lulls you into submission, and before you realize it, you can't look away from the screen. It violates your senses in the most effective way a horror score could ever dream of doing. Absolutely brilliant!
Carrie (Pino Donaggio) - What starts off shrill and unrelenting, Pino Donaggio's score for Brian De Palma's Carrie flips halfway through to give us a moving, sympathetic song to identify with the troubled title character. If De Palma is Hitchcock's successor (he unabashedly bites his style), then there's no doubt Donaggio is De Palma's Bernard Hermann - higher praise you could not garner. Due to Hermann's untimely death, De Palma lucked out when a friend referred him to Pino (a collaboration that would endure for over 15 years). How anything could be more horrifying than Piper Laurie's performance is baffling, or that it even needed any extra help shining through, but there's something both scary and sad in Pino's work: a brew that mirrors Carrie's life perfectly.
City of the Living Dead (Fabio Frizzi) - Long time Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi is clearly one of the greats, and you need look no further than his original music for City of the Living Dead to suss that fact. Here he hooks us with a captivating keyboard riff that is almost resembles an acoustic guitar sound, then he injects the piece with a maddening high-keyed melody that at once sounds freaky and awesome. The a startling kick-drum pops in, repeated every 8 beats or so to great effect, then a full assortment of drums sounds drop in and you got yourself a full fledged musical party. As if Fulci needs any more directorial extolment, dude sure knows how to snag top flight composers and juice is films up with the tightest sounding music, horror or no.
Deep Red/Suspiria (Goblin) - We could have easily separated these two as different ranking entities, but both Goblin scores kick so much ass we thought we'd combine them and boost its overall standing. Deep Red has easily one of the dopest baselines out of our entire list, layered with a momentous Exorcist-like piano melody that's just as cool as it is intriguing. Suspiria on the other hand starts off ethereal and somewhat fabled, and then becomes textured with odd drowned out whispering and a ritualistic drum sound that just sort of builds in your brain until there's nowhere to escape. Then suddenly, the score turns into a high paced rock-operatic with moody synthesizers and what sound like mechanical hazard-signals. Then all of the above is strewn together for ample effect.
The Exorcist (Steve Boeddeker, 2000 reissue) - elegant, hypnotic, downright terrifying - Steve Boeddeker's melodic score is pretty innocuous on its own, but when set against the backdrop of little Linda Blair yakking up green vomit and whatnot - it takes on a life (death?) of its own. Actually, Lalo Schiffron was slated to originally score the film, but director William Friedkin tossed the reels out on the street, dubbing it "fucking Mexican marimba music." Friedkin then used classical compositions by Krzysztof Penderecki and some originals by Jack Nitzsche, both used very sparsely in the film. It wasn't until 2000 that Boeddeker attained most of the credit, though it seems the most garish and haunting sounds in the film come from Mike Oldfields' Tubular Bells. Truly stunning stuff!
Friday the 13th (Harry Manfredini) - When most of us think of the soundtrack or background noise in Friday the 13th, we immediately think of the chilling "chi chi chi, ha ha ha" montage that has since been lampooned many a time. First off, according to Manfredini himself, those sounds are actually the syllables "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" - as abbreviation to "kill kill kill, mom mom mom." Either way, we don't believe those reverberations would be nearly as effective without the jarring crescendo of crashing strings and slowly drawn out bits of near silence that incur a false sense of security. It's a nice blend of musical busyness and desolation to keep a filmgoer on edge throughout. Not for nothing, but Manfredini's lively disco-dance track to part III (3-D) is pure gold.
Halloween (John Carpenter) - Described by Carpenter himself as perhaps being scarier than anything in the actual film, his hauntingly basic high pitched refrain is as memorable as any on our list. What Carpenter does here is create a sense of dread through repetition, and we come to identify his striking chords with an impending sense of true doom. From the opening to closing credits, Carpenter inundates us with the score in away that is damn near as inescapable as Michael Myers himself. Credit carpenter for working within the strictures of his budget, composing the score in a mere 4 days in the rare 5/4 time signature (a rhythm he learned from his father). Extra kudos goes to Carpenter for creating something even the musically disinclined can figure out on a piano (like myself).
Hellraiser (Christopher Young) - Rather epic in scope, if you told us that it was a Danny Elfman score for a Tim Burton film, we wouldn't be shocked. As it is, Christopher Young's original score has that transcendent horror/science fiction sound that branches out from all too familiar horror themes. It comes as no wonder then that Young was nominated for a Saturn Award back in 1988 for his work in Clive Barker's Hellraiser. The score just keeps gaining and growing, finally crashing into an apex of demoralizing madness, at the same time embodying a sense of serenity. It's pretty strange to think that the industrial band Coil originally produced the soundtrack, one that studios spurned and Barker referred to as "the only group whose music made my bowels churn."
Jaws (John Williams) - How can you forget the sharp, jaggedly piercing bombardment of low-pitched strings just before the giant great white eats humans for lunch? I know I can't. John Williams, in what would be a long lasting collaborative career with cinema-king Steven Spielberg, punctuates the violence of the film with instrumentation as biting as Bruce himself (the well documented nickname for the mechanical shark). An interesting tidbit: Williams conducted the orchestra at the 1976 Academy Awards, and when it was announced he won for Best Score, he jaunted from the orchestra pit onto the stage where he collected his statuette before quickly darting back down to the pit to continue his conducting duties. Now that's well deserved!
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (The Dickies) - More of a kick ass theme song than a true film score I suppose, but The Dickies titular rock rendition is no less impressive. From the wicked opening riff of shred-metal to the quintessential '80s lyrics, The Dickies elevate Killer Klowns from Outer Space from rote b-cinema to bona fide cult status. Just put it this way, the song is fuckin' hard! Written by Leonard Philips and produced by he and Ron Hitchcock, it's like a twisted carnival tune with screaming wa-was and amps jacked to volume 10. I mean, what more do you need than a lyric screeching: "time to take a ride on a nightmare merry-go-round, you'll be dead on arrival by the likes of a killer clown" - followed by a face-melting electric solo? Yeah, thought so!
New York Ripper (Francesco De Masi) - Rounding out my top three personal favorites along with Ortolani's Cannibal Holocaust and Frizzi's The Beyond - Fulci does it again, this time turning to Francesco De Masi for this hypnotic lyrical ode which so damn beautiful it might conjure a tear or two depending own your mood. It's slow and simple, the trumpet weeping into pure bliss. Of course, the film itself is also one of my all time favorites and the theme song is in large part responsible. Who am I kidding, when you have a Donald Duck quacking maniac and a GILF beating off in public, not to mention "Morales' silver toes", you don't really need anything else. I love the roiled whodunit aspect of the plot, even more so the mysterious, unresolved conclusion. A true classic!
The Omen (Jerry Goldsmith) - Not your typical film score, this has an indigenous chant-like dirge that in many ways is the most unsettling of any (at least equal to) on our compilation. The Latin chant is as follows: "Sanguis bibimus, corpus edimus, tolle corpus Satani" which translates to "drink the blood, eat the flesh, raise the body of Satan." Like Hitchcock to Bernard Hermann, director Richard Donner gives much of the credit of the films success to composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose absence would have made the film much less scarier. With well over 200 screen credits to his name (big and small), Goldsmith earned his only Oscar for his work on The Omen, though don't be surprised if you see his name pop up again on our tribute.
Phantasm (Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave) - An often overlooked piece of music, Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave's work on Don Coscarelli's Phantasm holds the noise of a quintessential horror theme. Sure it's a bit derivative of the Italian giallo scores and somewhat resembles that of The Exorcist, but damn is it good. The high pitched tones and elongated snares do a nice job of evoking a sense of dread and unease. The middle 8 of the track becomes a little reminiscent of what would become cheesy '80s harmonics, but shifting from that back to the unsettling rhythm of the beginning is a nice variation. The synth-bass that rounds out the end of the score is pretty killer as well, just think of the Tall Man roaming around with that shivering score in the background.
Poltergeist (Jerry Goldsmith) - Innocent, childlike and dreamy, Jerry Goldsmith is back at it with his score of suburban dread for Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist. Much like Rosemary's Baby (aesthetically) and somewhat hinged to The Omen (sentimentally), this score is dependent on our fears of children, either of them personally or for their safety. What begins with a pretty harp melody quickly becomes something a bit more melancholy when those all too precious kiddy lullabies start ringing aloud. It's a comforting score on its own, but given Carol Ann's whole story arc it actually becomes quite disconcerting. I've said it before, for my money it's Kane in part 2 that derives the most fright in the series - but Goldsmith's Oscar nominated work earns legitimate chills.
Psycho (Bernard Hermann) - Chalk another Oscar winning composer to our list, though Hermann was dubiously not nominated for one of his most salient film scores - that of Alfred Hitchcock's seminal horror effort Psycho. We're all familiar with the infamous shower scene, but try to imagine how effective it would be without those searing string arrangements. Originally conceived as a silent scene, Hitch was so impressed with Herman's work (who went ahead and scored it anyway), that he not only doubled the man's salary, he publicly lauded the Hermann by adding "33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music." High praise indeed! Looking back, it'd be hard to imagine the brutal shower scene in total silence, absent of Hermann's legendary work.
Rosemary's Baby (Krzysztof Komeda) - Now this one is just flat out cruel. Using the beautiful refrain of a mother's voice singing to her presumed newborn, Krzysztof Komeda''s work was made relatively easy after getting star Mia Farrow to sing the lullaby herself. Like the better scores on our list, this one has that innocent, likeable patina of sound yet we all know something sinister lies just beneath the surface. Also, this particular instance really holds narrative relevance and by having a mother's loving sing-along backdrop a film called Rosemary's Baby, there's an eerie intimacy that makes the film even more powerful. Not only was Farrow nominated for an acting golden globe, so was her collaboration on the original score with Komeda back in 1969.
The Shining (Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind) - When it comes to Kubrick, there's just no fucking around. So it comes as no surprise then that the master's foray into the world of horror (a King adaptation no less) would feature a ghastly musical accompaniment. Props to Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind for their original score: a hollow din that fits perfectly with the notion of isolation and the daunting labyrinthine mansion. Mix that with the sporadic gong sounds that play out in the background and the shit almost sounds medieval. In our opinion, the score is actually under utilized as Carlos and Elkind composed much more music that was never allocated in the film (far be it from us to question Kubrick, who the hell are we?), but Stan's classical cues still rule.
The Thing (Ennio Morricone) - How could we conduct a serious list of all time horror scores and not include Italian maestro Ennio Morricone? Well, we wouldn't - and believe us when we say this is no charity addition. Morricone's spare, momentum building work on John Carpenter's The Thing compliments the film extremely well. It kicks off with that unnerving electric bass note and gradually grows into something more complex, just like the film itself. When the bass drops out, we're left with some old time gothic Phantom of the Opera type organ sounds. Oddly enough, back in 1983 Morricone's score was nominated for a Razzie award, deemed on the shortlist of worst of the year. We don't buy that for a second, and we'll blame that dubious distinction for its current out of print status.
Zombi (Giorgio Cascio & Fabio Frizzi) - So how do you top an underwater zombie rape attempt followed by a zombie/tiger shark showdown? Hand the reins over to Giorgio Cascio and Fabio Frizzi to score the damn thing, that's how! No joke, the pre-80s low-fi synthesizer and glowering chord arrangements are straight up ruling. Then add the thudding heartbeat like back-drums and what sound like creepy wind gales - there's no wonder why this ranks high upon the pantheon of all time horror scores. An interesting bit of trivia not so musically related: the stunt actor who was supposed to film the underwater shark scene fell ill day of shooting and had to be replaced by none other than the shark's trainer. Who the hell knew shark trainers could act?
