WATCH OUT BEHIND YOU: favorite music from horror films?

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Halloween music threads, threads about composers of horror film music...but no thread dedicated solely to what I would call the most important part of a good horror film.

My favorites:
- All of the wild Goblin-centered Argento soundtracks
- Blue Sunshine soundtrack
- Friday the 13th (has really awesome delayed vocal effects along with
the requisite strings)

And for one that has good sound design, but not much of a soundtrack:
Sector 9

― trees (treesessplode), Thursday, 13 July 2006 05:30 (nineteen years ago)

Halloween 3- J.Carpenter

― sim (simbo), Thursday, 13 July 2006 05:39 (nineteen years ago)

I've always liked John Carpenter's "Hallowe'en" - which MX-80 Sound covered (after paring it down to 3:21). But really, nothing compares to Bernard Herrmann's "Psycho" score, with all those shrieking shivering strings. MX-80 should record a condensed version of THIS score. (Not much of a stretch: They'd already done Herrmann's "Theme From Sisters")

― Myonga Von Bloody (Monty Von Byonga), Thursday, 13 July 2006 06:26 (nineteen years ago)

opening theme to satan's children by leadfeather (i think) is amazing low-rent synth burbling. i'm sure it was just some dudes with access to a community college music lab but it's pretty cool. the movie is fairly ridiculous and from what i recall has lots of homophobic weirdness going on.

psychomania
suspiria of course (goblin's best stuff)
gli occhi freddi della paura by morricone
tomb of the blind dead by anton garcia abril (ominous murk)

― GOD PUNCH TO HAWKWIND (yournullfame), Thursday, 13 July 2006 09:23 (nineteen years ago)

Apoteosi del Mistero from City of the Living Dead isn't very scary, it is however very catchy. Morte Macabre did a good prog cover.

Also the music from Cannibal Holocaust. It's inexplicably happy and pastoral and doesn't seem to have much relation to the low-budget carnage on screen, but I quite like that, it gives the film an interesting surreal atmosphere.

I seem to remember the first Nightmare on Elm Street having a genuinely spooky 80s synth thing.

― Fiery Jacques (fieryjacques), Thursday, 13 July 2006 09:32 (nineteen years ago)

*texas chainsaw massacre - electronic concrete noize skree that has never made it to legit cd
*dawn of the dead - the whole s/t, inc the library music as well as the goblin stuff - super evocative 70s desolation and throb
*the shining - awesome modern classical slice'n'dicing that again has never made it to cd (rights probs?)
*the thing - morricone does carpenter - glacial synth lurk
some of james bernard's hammer film scores - pastiche romanticism for heaving bosoms
*the original Omen score by Jerry Goldsmith - beyond parody
*the exorcist - forget abt tubular bells, check out jack nitzche's tinkling 'home made' electronics + glass drone on the S/T alb

― Ward Fowler (Ward Fowler), Thursday, 13 July 2006 09:48 (nineteen years ago)

I don't know if this counts as a horror flick, and I also don't know if this counts as music either, but I always liked the industrial sounding sound effects in "Eraserhead".

Also, It's been a while, but I think that it was "Evil Dead 2" that had this cool piano music in the closing credits, I could be wrong though.

― xgurggleglgllg (xgurggleglgllg), Thursday, 13 July 2006 09:55 (nineteen years ago)

The Beyond, Fabio Frizzi, is one of my favourites. It's pretty unsettling and creepy, and it works super well in isolation from the film. It's a perfect fusion of strings, synth and vocal (mellotron or similar?), bizarre pulsating melodrama, and it has that kind of weird glorious feel of inexplicable terror. It's the perfect horror score for me. Quite uplifting, I find. I needs me some more Frizzi.

― myopic_void (myopic_void), Thursday, 13 July 2006 10:16 (nineteen years ago)

WICKER MAN!!!

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 13 July 2006 10:42 (nineteen years ago)

Assault On Precinct 13 has a great John Carpenter soundtrack...(the title track of which was memorably covered by Afrika Bambataa, of all people, in 1985 or so)...

― hank (hank s), Thursday, 13 July 2006 11:23 (nineteen years ago)

I remember in the original Night of the Living Dead, there being these spacey theremin sounds that I thought complimented some of the scenes well.

A personal favorite of mine is in Plan 9 from Outer Space, the scene where Tor Johnson is coming out of his grave. The music is just so dramatic, and he's making that face he makes throughout the entire movie, it makes me laugh every time.

― xgurggleglgllg (xgurggleglgllg), Thursday, 13 July 2006 11:26 (nineteen years ago)

Speaking of Tubular Bells, has everybody heard the cosmic remix of it? Makes it into a funky disco number-- also Samoa Park's 'Tubular Affair' uses the theme.

― trees (treesessplode), Thursday, 13 July 2006 12:20 (nineteen years ago)

Frizzi on The Beyond is great, but his theme for Zombie/Zombi 2 is also pretty incredible. And several xposts, but I think that Alan Splet's Eraserhead work definitely counts as a horror soundtrack.

― mike powell (mike powell), Thursday, 13 July 2006 12:42 (nineteen years ago)

Not mentioned above:

"Psycho" (Hermann)
"Alien" (Goldsmith)
"Nosferatu" (Popul Vuh)
"Near Dark" (Tangerine Dream)
"Fearless Vampire Killers/Rosemary's Baby" (K. Komeda)

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Thursday, 13 July 2006 12:53 (nineteen years ago)

All four of the "Silent Hill" game soundtracks are excellent. The movie used various tracks from the games, but hasn't released a separate soundtrack, as far as I know.

― lumberingwoodsman (Chris Hill), Thursday, 13 July 2006 12:56 (nineteen years ago)

The eerie organ music in Carnival of Souls!

― eyesteel (eyesteel), Thursday, 13 July 2006 15:51 (nineteen years ago)

soundtrack from the exorcist... the music scares the creep out of me... unlike with the movie...gosh i laughed when i first saw it...

― bam psycho (bam_psycho), Thursday, 13 July 2006 16:57 (nineteen years ago)

i came in here to say 'session 9', which maybe is what trees meant?

that movie is awesome.

― gear (gear), Thursday, 13 July 2006 16:58 (nineteen years ago)

gear, you are right. it has been a few years since i saw session 9, but christ. what a great flick.

― trees (treesessplode), Thursday, 13 July 2006 16:59 (nineteen years ago)

Christ...how many of these classics have been redone in the last few years? 75%, maybe? Could it be any clearer just how unimaginative and clueless are Hollywood studio execs? I'll bet they've even got a Plan 9 remake in the works. HOLLYWOOD SUX!

― M. Agony Von Bontee (M. Agony Von Bontee), Thursday, 13 July 2006 18:05 (nineteen years ago)

Candyman -- Philip Glass

― Tronid K (tronidk), Thursday, 13 July 2006 19:23 (nineteen years ago)

Quatermass And The Pit (Tristram Cary)
Kwaidan (Toru Takemitsu)
Onibaba (Hikaru Hayashi)
Opera (for the heavy metal bits)

― Matt #2 (Matt #2), Thursday, 13 July 2006 19:45 (nineteen years ago)

Love Object (Nicholas Pike. piano and bowed bouzouki. beautiful)
La Chiesa (Keith Emerson, Goblin, and Glass, with Emerson tackling J.S. Bach and Glass tweaking his Candyman theme)
The Burning (Keith Emerson. terrible movie, fantastic score)
Inferno (Emerson again. too Omen-esque, but for once almost as good as Goldsmith's)
Creep (score by The Insects. great work wasted on a dreadful film)

I've always liked the scores for The Devonsville Terror (Ray Colcord, who mostly does TV music) and Dolls (Charles Band?)

the sound design for Session 9 is so exceptional because it was done by Climax Golden Twins.

― Ghost Bear Junior High Attendance Party (echoinggrove), Thursday, 13 July 2006 20:06 (nineteen years ago)

"I'll bet they've even got a Plan 9 remake in the works."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

― xgurggleglgllg (xgurggleglgllg), Thursday, 13 July 2006 20:21 (nineteen years ago)

You can't improve upon perfection!

― xgurggleglgllg (xgurggleglgllg), Thursday, 13 July 2006 20:22 (nineteen years ago)

Troll 2 -- Carlo Maria Cordio

― Tronid K (tronidk), Friday, 14 July 2006 01:43 (nineteen years ago)

I've alwyas loved Goblin's orignal socre for Argento's "Deep Red". It reminds me of neu! a bit.

― less-than three's Christiane F. (drowned in milk), Friday, 14 July 2006 05:53 (nineteen years ago)

oooh Haslloween music Tubular Bells The Fog music an the Wicker Man!

― Sugar Karis (Sugar Karis), Friday, 14 July 2006 11:13 (nineteen years ago)

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