From ‘Psycho’ To ‘Suspiria’: The 12 Best Horror Film Scores Of All-Time

(d. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)

This is the grandaddy of all horror film soundtracks — the first orchestral score created specifically for a film, in fact, marking the end of the Silent Era — and it was composed by the mighty Max Steiner, a Viennese emigre whose overwhelmingly furious music, marshalled for full orchestra (paid for out of Cooper’s own pocket, there being no money left in the budget) bears traces of Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, and most prominently Wagner. His music shadows, underscores emotionally, and comments on all the incredible action on screen, and is as an important a character in the film as Carl Denham, Fay Wray, and Kong himself.

Where to stream King Kong (1933)

(d. Ridley Scott)

I first discovered the music of Greek composer / keyboardist Vangelis Papathanassiou in the early 70’s via his band Aphrodite’s Child (their 666 album is superb). His synth-heavy score runs the gamut from cosmic space cues to pounding Giorgio Moroder type grooves and fits the film like a glove. The smoky neo-noir “Love Theme” with bluesy sax obligato by Dick Morrissey glistens like a jewel–a modern “Laura”. There are fans who’ve created YouTube clips which repeats the full soundtrack over and over for hours on end.

Where to stream Blade Runner

(d. Jonathan Glazer)

A leading candidate for most baffling and artful science fiction film in the history of the genre, I recommend reading Michel Faber’s original novel to fully comprehend and appreciate Glazer’s rendition here, helped immeasurably by Scarlett Johansson’s brave and out of character performance, and Mica Levi’s astonishing electronic vortex of sound. A witch’s brew of slow-motion keyboards in suspended animation, mutant samples (Krzysztof Komeda’s “Expectancy” cue from Rosemary’s Baby), rabid noise, and real-time Bartok-ian violin bowings and scrapings takes Delia Derbyshire’s pioneering electronic compositions for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop one step beyond, adding a transgressive edge only hinted at previously.

Where to stream Under The Skin

(d. Dario Argento)

The incantatory, hypnotic 14 note main theme—a Pandora’s Music Box of chiming celeste, bouzouki flourishes, bass tabla hits, lunging synthesizers and whispered vocalese—was most likely inspired by Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” (appropriated as the theme for The Exorcist), as well as Ennio Morricone’s score for Argento’s first film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Italian prog monsters Goblin recorded the music in collaboration with Argento to a final cut of the film. The music gets scarier and weirder as the film unspools.

Where to stream Suspiria (1977)

(d. William Castle)

Gimmick-meister Castle’s finest hour — a hokum-free psychological scream fest with script by Psycho’s Robert Bloch, outstanding performances by Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor, and an insistently spooky score by Vic Mizzy (The Addams Family). The main theme— muted minor key guitar arpeggios, overlaid with a devilish filigreed harpsichord melody (not that far afield from Oliver’s “Food Glorious Food”) haunts me to this day.

Where to stream The Night Walker (1964)

(d. Ishirō Honda, 1957)

A militant call to arms by Godzilla composer Ifukube Akira, the first four notes of the main title theme anticipate Britney Spears’s “Toxic” violin sample by 46 years and perfectly sets up the sci-fi madness which ensues, pitching a multinational Earth Defense Force (the title of the film in Japan) against interstellar invaders from the planet Mysteroid. These aliens sport colorful designer spacesuits, pilot sexy manta-ray shaped flying saucers, sic giant metal robots on the human population, and have a burning need to mate with earth women. Their blaring battle theme recurs again and again—an earworm that burrows deep into the brain.

Where to stream The Mysterians

(d. Jack Arnold)

This score contains a real crackerjack—a majestic trumpet-driven descending noir-jazz theme, with a female voice wordlessly wailing in the background– the epitome of 50’s existential dread, and just the music to mirror the rapidly diminishing state of shrinking man Grant Williams. It’s been mistakenly ascribed to composers Hans J. Salter, Irving Gertz and Herman Stein, who all contributed to the main score–but in fact it’s an arrangement of an unknown pop song submitted by Foster Carling and Earl Lawrence, whose title and lyrics no one seems to recall. You can hear this theme at the top of the clip, and also Ray Anthony’s big band version at the end:

Where to stream The Incredible Shrinking Man

(d. Alfred Hitchcock)

Bernard Herrmann’s Shower Murder motif, from his stabbing and shrieking strings-only score (which he referred to as “black and white music”), ranks alongside Monty Norman’s James Bond Theme as probably the best known, most recognizable film music cue in all moviedom. As Hitchcock’s main composer for arguably his finest films (including my favorite Vertigo), Herrmann as a film music composer is the Gold Standard by which all other film composers, horror and otherwise, must be measured.

Where to stream Psycho

(d. James Whale)

Four years after the worldwide success of Universal’s famously stark and music-free Frankenstein, director James Whale was given a lavish budget for the sequel and hired émigré composer Franz Waxman to create his first ever Hollywood film score, one of the most memorable scores in film history, drawing heavily on the mittel-European romantic orchestra tradition. It was a score with profound echoes. Waxman’s “Bride” motif turned up as the first 3 notes of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Bali Hai” from their 1949 musical South Pacific, and much of his score was repurposed as stock music in Universal’s Flash Gordon serials.

Where to stream The Bride of Frankenstein

(d. Herk Harvey, 1962)

I caught this one of a kind mid-Western shocker by accident on late night tv in ’66, and it so terrified me that I had to sleep on the carpet in my sisters’ room that night as I could not bear to be alone. An indie that bears the influence of several European art-film auteurs du jour, it was filmed partially in the ruins of the Great Salt Lake Pavilion. A major part of the film’s eerie vibe is Gene Page’s sepulchral church organ score, probably inspired by Francis Seyrig’s solo organ score for Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad—a key influence on Harvey’s mise-en-scene. The score was later issued along with dialogue samples on Citadel:

Where to stream Carnival of Souls

(d. William Cameron Menzies)

The music to this indelibly nightmarish science fiction film—a fever-dream within an endlessly recurring fever-dream–is credited to Raoul Kraushaar but was apparently largely the work of composer Mort Glickman. The outstanding, unforgettable cue is a celestial chorus of male and female voices that wordlessly hovers over the picture commenting on the action like a swarm of fallen angels—possibly inspired by the offstage female choir in Gustav Holst’s “Neptune the Mystic” from The Planets (1918); also the mixed choir used so effectively in Vaughan Williams’s Flos Campi (1925). No official recording exists for this film score, sadly.

Where to stream Invaders From Mars

(d. Robert Wise, 1963)

Chillingly atmospheric post-Second Viennese School orchestral score by the highly regarded British composer Humphrey Searle (who also happened to be John Cale’s teacher at Goldsmiths College London around the same time as the film was produced). A famously monster-free film that creates an overwhelming sense of dread purely through the power of suggestion, Searle’s creepy music is integral to the impressive design– ranging from wistful childlike themes to full-on screaming onslaughts as the ghosts unleash their full power. He knows how to ramp up the frissons to the breaking point. An official recording was never issued, but most of the instrumental cues are here:

Gary Lucas is a legendary NYC guitarist, songwriter and composer who’s released 50 albums to date and toured all over the world. He loves old horror films and has live-scored many including the notorious music-free 1931 Spanish language “Dracula”. Learn more: www.garylucas.com