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Theme from Psycho (1960)- Bernard Herrmann

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Theme from Psycho (1960)- Bernard Herrmann

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https://youtu.be/qMTrVgpDwPk

There is no sound more formative and fundamental to horror-movie scintillation than the screeching strings in the shower scene in Psycho. Composer Bernard Herrmann had logged film credits no less formidable than Citizen Kane and The Day the Earth Stood Still, but it was his work with Alfred Hitchcock that was the most resounding. He started a run on Hitchcock's prime period with films such as Vertigo and North by Northwest, but Psycho stuck the most thanks to its searing intensity and mysterious moods. It's clear that something is not quite right from the start, when the movie opens in a by no means horrifying mode – and the unsettled, suggestive orchestral music is why. Famously, Hitchcock had wanted the scene with the murder in the shower to transpire without music, just Janet Leigh's screams and the sound of water running down the drain. Herrmann proffered something else. Those strings – forcibly played, seemingly sounding in an alien frequency – have freaked people out ever since.

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Halloween Main Theme (1978)- John Carpenter

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Halloween Main Theme (1978)- John Carpenter

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https://youtu.be/pT4FY3NrhGg

In 1978, when nascent “horror master” John Carpenter made Halloween, the slasher flick that upended the genre for the next decade, he was 30 years old but still running things like a college student, doing everything himself. He co-wrote the script, directed the actors and wrote one of the most chilling, minimal scores in all of horror. Taking inspiration from Goblin’s eerie Suspiriamusic and Bernard Herrmann’s expressionistic Psycho score, he built tension from the onset with a rattling piano melody for the main theme, played in 5/4 time, a rhythm he learned as a teenager from his music-professor dad on bongos. “In thrillers or horror films, you’re trying to create suspense,” he told Rolling Stone of his minimal approach. “Think of the Jaws theme. It’s two notes. It keeps you in suspense.” Other sections of the score contain what he calls “cattle prods” – piercing keyboard stabs to make moviegoers jump – as well as sparse, descending piano lines, contemplative melodies and fuzzy, off-kilter discord. The main theme would get drastic facelifts throughout the series and it would be adopted by hip-hop artists like Dr. Dre and Notorious B.I.G. but it has always maintained an uneasiness rooted in its scary simplicity. “It has to be because I’m playing it,” Carpenter once said. “I have minimal chops as a musician.”

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House Of 1000 Corpses Theme (2003)- Rob Zombie

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House Of 1000 Corpses Theme (2003)- Rob Zombie

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https://youtu.be/9d28Jbx7q9Q

"House of 1000 Corpses" is the final track on Rob Zombie's second solo album The Sinister Urge. The song was used in the 2003 horror movie of the same name, which was written and directed by Rob Zombie. The song features audio clips from Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. Although the song runs for 9:26 on the album, the song itself only runs for 6:26. There is about a minute of static noise and then a hidden song titled "Unholy Three" (starts at 7:45) which occupies the remainder of the track. This is the second time Zombie has made extended pieces of music, the first being the 11-minute "Blood, Milk and Sky", released under Zombie's previous band, White Zombie.

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https://youtu.be/pOd-sMD3yZ4

Before filmmaker Dario Argento began work on Suspiria, his nightmarish and gory 1977 portrayal of a dance school that is hiding a sinister secret, he needed music that would set the mood. He'd previously worked with Italian prog-rockers on Profondo Rosso, so he read them his Suspiria script and gave them three months to write a soundtrack that would make the film's witchy theme linger with audiences and could be utilized on set to establish the tone of the film. They experimented with instruments atypical of soundtracks at the time – tabla, bouzouki, Moog synthesizer – and came up with the movie's iconic, chilling music-box–like main theme, as well as tense exercises in rhythm, dissonance and bizarre funky prog, before ending on the original LP with its creepy "Death Valzer." Over the years, the music has become horror canon and would give horror-soundtrack reissue label Death Waltz its name.

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Chariots of Pumpkins from Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)- John Carpenter

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Chariots of Pumpkins from Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)- John Carpenter

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https://youtu.be/9A4DyC_p9ms

You can trace synthesizer sophistication in the early Eighties by how John Carpenter and Alan Howarth's Halloween themes changed with each sequel. For 1981's Halloween II, the iconic theme got baroque with a little bit more synth-pop, and for 1982's Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the theme is a screwed smear of dread that doesn't even touch on the original's famous melody. It's fitting for an installment that doesn't feature Michael Myers and was originally penned by sci-fi fatalist Nigel Kneale (writer of Quatermass and The Stone Tape, a horror movie all about acoustics) involving Celtic rituals, Stonehenge and space. Other tracks similarly reimagine Carpenter and Howarth's sparse style: rushes of electronic noise on "Starker and Marge"; metal-on-metal murmuring on "Robots at the Factory"; and ambient burps on "The Rock." And the familiar Halloween melody gets contorted on Vangelis subtweet "Chariots of Pumpkins," a jittery version that turns theme into a jagged anxiety attack.

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Zombie Main Theme from Zombi 2 (1979)- Fabio Frizzi

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Zombie Main Theme from Zombi 2 (1979)- Fabio Frizzi

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https://youtu.be/If8XKo-D-ak

This sort-of sequel to the Italian release of Dawn of the Dead includes what may be the most memorable theme song from synth-horror master and frequent Lucio Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi – a dark electronic plod that makes Goblin seem light-hearted. But the soundtrack also spins in wild directions: noisy electronic gulps, goofy exotica, muffled disco, Reich-ian marimba, lots of frantic drumming and Mellotron moans that he calls "sound of the dead." "Lucio had a special relationship with music," Frizzi says in the liner notes to the Death Waltz/Mondo reissue. "He had a clear idea of what he wanted and a great way of walking me through it, something that every director should be able to do. He would explain to me what he wanted, telling me scene by scene how the music was going to support the picture. It was with Zombi 2 that I enjoyed a more direct and exclusive relationship with Lucio for the first time."

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Venus Principle from Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)- Popol Vuh

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Venus Principle from Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)- Popol Vuh

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https://youtu.be/84otkt5xdRE

Popol Vuh were to Werner Herzog what Goblin were to Dario Argento, and Nosferatu: The Vampyre was possibly their greatest collaboration. Herzog’s psychedelic and often surreal take on the classic vampire story would have floundered without the correct use of musical cues, and Florian Fricke’s spacious Eastern-inspired motifs are memorable and absorbingly eerie. In fact, Herzog pushed Fricke to raid the archives for his darkest material, and the resulting selection of tracks combines Popol Vuh’s early electronic experiments with a number of their later more organic works.

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The Rat Slice Quartet from Hellraiser (1987)- Christopher Young

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The Rat Slice Quartet from Hellraiser (1987)- Christopher Young

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https://youtu.be/i1lIOe7vi0o

Though he'd already done the soundtracks for such Eighties slasher fare as The Dorm That Dripped Blood, Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge and Trick or Treat, Christopher Young firmly established himself as a top-shelf horror composer in 1987 with his symphonic score for Clive Barker's directorial debut. Barker had originally engaged British industrial experimentalists Coil to do the film's soundtrack, but Young stepped in when the duo's work was deemed too edgy by the film's backers. Loaded with sinister strings, foreboding brass, heavily echoed grand piano and unexpected stabs of dissonance, Young's atmospheric score slowly builds in tone from darkly romantic fantasy to claustrophobic nightmare – then concludes by returning to its dreamy beginnings.

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Prince of Darkness Ending Credits (1987)- John Carpenter & Alan Howarth

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Prince of Darkness Ending Credits (1987)- John Carpenter & Alan Howarth

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https://youtu.be/NNdlJL8c17k

The dream team of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth came up with an absolute winner with their dread-filled soundtrack to one of Carpenter’s most underrated films. Hell, DJ Shadow even used creepy samples to stitch together his unfuckwithable Endtroducingalbum, so they must have been doing something right. In contrast to their most well known scores, the duo didn’t rely on catchy themes here, instead conjuring up a mood that aptly reflected the movie’s Satanic focus. Fan of weirdo FM sounds and wobbly synth pads? This one’s for you.

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Chopping Mall Main Theme (1986)- Chuck Cirino

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Chopping Mall Main Theme (1986)- Chuck Cirino

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https://youtu.be/ZITjjqPW900

Though the Eighties were bleeding with no-budget synth scores to B-movies, Chuck Cirino's jittery, propulsive neon soundtrack to a robot-led mall massacre stands exploding-head and shoulders over most. "I scored Chopping Mall in the basement of Shadoe Stevens' DJ recording studio," says Cirino in the liner notes to the Waxwork release. "At the time I was working for Shadoe directing the Federated Group TV commercials. So, when [director] Jim Wynorski asked me to score Chopping Mall, I took three weeks off from directing and plowed forward recording robot music."

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Plan 9 From Outer Space Main Title (1959)- Tyler Duncan

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Plan 9 From Outer Space Main Title (1959)- Tyler Duncan

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https://youtu.be/t9hiW8UiJrQ

Gordon Zahler is the name that was often credited with creating the soundtrack, however, this isn’t strictly true – Zahler owned a music production company called General Music Corporation and Zahler was responsible for curating a lot of the soundtrack, and not actually composing it.

Zahler used existing music library tracks from various other composers that he took from the ‘Impress Mood Music Library’, and the ‘Video Moods Music Library’. This practice of using music libraries to score film and TV productions at around this time was very common.

No record was kept of what pieces were used, and this lack of clarity and documentation has caused much speculation around the provenance of the pieces used in the soundtrack for ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space‘ over the years.

The main title theme for ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space‘ was actually a piece called “Grip of the Law” that was written for the Impress Mood Music Library by the composer Trevor Duncan. This track was used twice in the film – for the main titles, and for the chase through the graveyard later on in the film.

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Incubo from Nightmare City (1980)- Stelvio Cipriani 

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Incubo from Nightmare City (1980)- Stelvio Cipriani 

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https://youtu.be/0NRXDWC-3iI

Nothing about Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City makes much sense, from the lack of a consistent logic (its "zombies" run, wield weapons and sometimes look pretty normal), to its absurd story (men and women are exposed to radiation on an airplane and come out ready to kill) to its tendency to take the scenic route towards plot. Italian composer Stelvio Cipriani, also responsible for the eerie lounge jazz of Mario Bava's Bay of Blood, offers up a score as schizophrenic as the film, including Dracula disco ("Metropolis"), sad-boy beach balladry ("Solitude") and on highlight, "Sustain," a back-and-forth between coked-out synths and saxophone that sounds like a Mike Post TV theme

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Main Theme (1974)- Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Main Theme (1974)- Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell

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https://youtu.be/gPLZGyoFWEY

Grimy, outlaw country music spliced with gnarly musique concrète, the score or really, the soundscape to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre sits up there with Eraserhead as a rare moment where music, sound effects and other diagetic sound become indistinguishable. Metal scrapes howl like a free-jazz sax solo, rhythmic snaps and crackles recall fevered percussion and whirls of sounds caked with effects are redolent of the dubbiest of dub reggae. Constructed by Wayne Bell and director Tobe Hooper, it is background noise turned avant-garde soundtrack, foley work gone too far. A huge influence on bands like Animal Collective and Wolf Eyes, it's one of many expertly frightening elements that make The Texas Chainsaw Massacre so singularly scary.