Red Notes: Synthesizers & The Scoring of Horror
the poster for Zombie Holocaust (1980)
For decades, orchestral scores were pretty much the only way to score a film. The size of the orchestra varied. Whether it was Bernard Herrmann or Ennio Morricone leading a mighty ensemble in their iconic creations or the work of a soloist on a single instrument, film scores were traditionally built from different combinations of established musical instruments. The two-note motif in John Williams’ score for Jaws (1975) or Bernard Herrman’s dissonant, staccato strings imitating the stabbing of Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960). In the unique case of horror where the music can not only help create atmosphere or underline an effect but actually work with the image to create the effect, the development of artificial sounds created by synthesizers was as important to the genre’s development as any visual special effect.
Bernard Herrmann’s iconic theme for Psycho; rhythmically jagged, staccato, partially dissonant. I place it here as a counterpoint. The scores discussed in this piece would radically depart from this model.
The Moog synthesizer was the one-stop shop for horror score-making and looking at its resume, one can see why. For stories and themes dealing with the unknown, the otherworldly, the otherness which could threaten our existence, sounds that didn’t naturally occur in nature were an obvious fit. The various functions of this polyphonic modular synthesizer could evoke a range of eerie or threatening presences on screen. The disorienting screech of the oscillator, or what you get when you add a little delay to a hi or lo pass filter; its metallic buzzing could conjure up images of a wrong step into the room in the haunted house where the murders happened, a murky, bubbling pit somewhere in a dark forest, or the slow decent of a UFO. You get even more cinematic paydirt with any number of the Moog’s fixed band pass filters. The modulation of different bands ranging from 125 to 5600 MHz nicely supplies all the aural assistance needed to evoke an open doorway to Hell.
Of course, you’ll find the Moog used in all sorts of films since the mid 60’s from items as diverse as the Sydney Pollack comedy, They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (1969) to the pivotal Bond outing, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) to Beneath The Planet Of The Apes(1970). What gives the Moog a special home in horror movies is this evocation, this association in our minds of electronically created or “artificial” noises with those things that scare us. More than any other genre, horror can reach our collective unconscious using images that speak to our darkest fears and insecurities. No other genre can get its desired results by drilling into us so acutely. The most evocative and memorable scoring has always seemed able to get past what jump scares and dread atmospheres require and tap directly into the heart of horror itself.
The Moog’s fixed filter bank has been used so much, audiences probably don’t recognize it, despite its essential place in film soundtracks to evoke the otherworldly. The glowing of the Sankara Stones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), the entrance of Gozer The Gozerian in Ghostbusters (1984); these uses of the synth are employed strategically at the point when the hero's journey begins to bump up against the sublime, the ineffable. Something they as mere mortals can no longer understand.
Though perhaps over-discussed, it would be unthinkable not to at least mention Maestro John Carpenter’s spare piano-and-percussion theme for Halloween (1978). For the first Halloween sequel, Carpenter opened up his composition and replaced the piano with another synth for the melody, making his iconic theme now completely synthetic (thus inhuman), right up to the ending when the flame-engulfed body of Michael Myers hits the hospital hallway floor face down and never gets up. We get a close up of his mask and the flesh underneath it melting. It drips onto the parquet hospital floor to the strains of “Mr. Sandman” by The Chordettes. Their innocent-sounding, four-part beauty shop harmony plays like a tiny burst of sweet humanity and dry humor that illuminates Laurie’s journey from dark dead of night into morning. It also marks the end of the dreary, inhuman electronic score we’ve just had our nerves rattled to as the knife-wielding boogeyman begins to disintegrate before our eyes. As far as I’m concerned in terms of finality of this particular ending, the saga of Michael Myers and Halloween ends there.
The last gasp of sonic humanity suggested by the piano in John Carpenter’s iconic theme is snuffed out for Halloween II (1981) and replaced with a synthesizer, suggesting there’s now no question as to the monstrous, inhuman nature of the killer.
But where these films use them in brief as flourishes of style or for simply evoking moods, a film like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, uses a synthesizer to put those evocations to a more organic, visceral use. The 1974 score lacks any tuneful structure to serve as an emotional anchor and goes further than horror scores before it in shaping the atmosphere on screen and provoking disorientation and unease in the viewer. It’s layered with the sounds of characters and on screen objects to create an entire sonic landscape that serves the purpose of immersing the viewer in an unending nightmare. Director Tobe Hooper and his composer, Wayne Bell, knew what they wanted to achieve: a score that, like every other element of the movie, would diffuse and sidestep expressions of suspense found in conventional horror movies.
It does this by adding to the actual synth score (also a Moog or Minimoog if I’m not mistaken) a brilliantly foleyed arsenal of organic noises to the electronic and percussive soundscape; the whir of an outdoor generator, the clucking and screeching of chickens walking around in the house, the clanking of hanging metal tools used for breaking down slaughtered livestock, the clacking of bleached bones strung together and hanging from walls and ceilings like tribal wind chimes, the snicker-snack of knives and meat cleavers being sharpened, the buzzing of flies feeding on putrid offal rotting in the Texas sun, and of course, the primal screams and wails of Final Girl Marilyn Burns (the most exhausting, unforgettable screaming in movie history) along with the maniacal buzzing of Leatherface’s chainsaw. It all seems to melt perfectly into Hooper and Bell’s stewpot, creating an aural cacophony perfectly fused with the images on screen. Relentless and horrible. It garners the highest praise you can lavish on a horror soundtrack in terms of how well it’s doing its job: You barely notice it.
preceding the most harrowing hard cut to a silent credit sequence in movies
Knowing when NOT to employ music is just as important. There are nothing but screams and the roar of the chainsaw to be heard as Burns escapes her hideous captors in the back of a passing pickup truck. Leatherface, who went to the trouble to put makeup on his human skin mask for dinner, swings the chainsaw wildly in the air in frustration at having lost his victim (and furniture opportunity), spinning his whole body in concert with the chainsaw almost as if he were dancing with it. Then a hard cut to the credits played over no music. Music might have worked here but it clearly wasn’t necessary. In the context of what we’ve just seen, the silence is deafening. The sounds of hysterical screams and the chainsaw are still ringing in our heads as we inevitably watch all the final credits roll past. Hooper and Bell knew that you don’t reprise your score till after the final image, when the audience exhales. In this case, not at all.
Italian horror films exemplify this rule beautifully.
The finale of Dario Argento’s 1975 masterpiece, Deep Red is music-free as it leads into its astoundingly gruesome conclusion. In terms of craft alone, the last minute or so might be Argento’s crowning achievement. David Hemmings’ Turin-based jazz musician (a character none too far from his lothario Soho photographer in Blow-Up) has just learned the identity of the Knife-Wielding Maniac in the black leather gloves (a giallo staple). It’s not his friend Carlo but Carlo’s deranged mother Marta, who lunges at him with a meat cleaver.
It’s done with a POV shot, looking as if she were attacking the camera. He dodges her as she misses and busts the glass containing an awful (and crucial) painting that had figured into the story as a vital clue, artfully concealed by Argento. Hemmings is backed up against a cage elevator and Marta lunges at him again, this time successfully. Injured, he kicks her away and the pendant of her metallic necklace gets caught in the cage framework of the elevator. Hemmings presses the down button, and the elevator descends, pulling with it the pendant and then the necklace - along with Marta’s neck. As the elevator descends, the necklace becomes a kind of deadly garrote, severing Marta’s head in a detailed close-up. White cranial fluid oozes from her mouth in an image rhyming with one set in a séance at the beginning of the film.
All of this chaos is conveyed in 38 shots playing out over 35 seconds, which includes a 5 second stretch with twice the number of shots. It’s a virtuoso piece of film economy, perfectly conveying the manic action with breathless energy. But what happens next is where Argento’s mastery of film language adds a sublime flourish: he cuts to the blood-drenched necklace itself as it hangs from the elevator’s framework and still with no music, the camera travels all the way down the shaft with with elevator, staying on the necklace for a full 16 seconds until it reaches the bottom floor. This gives the audience a moment to catch its breath. The dry banality of the image, complete with the droning of the elevator’s pulley adds a darkly humorous tinge. This is what’s called The Argento Touch. Gory poetry, total chaos and then mundanity. It’s nothing short of a masterclass in the building and releasing of tension, with not one unnecessary shot or element.
Hemmings’ face is seen in the reflection of a glossy, vibrantly red pool of blood at his feet. Then it’s at this moment - the perfect moment - that Goblin’s synth rock theme slams up, just in time for the end credits, which in another inspired touch begin in Italian with the caption, “You have been watching DEEP RED.”
The extraordinary finale for Deep Red, from the realization of the true killer to her almost hyperbolically gruesome demise. A masterclass in economical storytelling, ending with a sublime tracking shot and the best music cue for a closing credit sequence you could hope for
Many music-savvy horror fans are especially fond of Italian thrillers from this period - lovingly called giallo - as a genre unto itself. Giallo soundtrack albums are highly sought after vinyl prizes. Varying greatly in tonality, structure, instrumentation and atmosphere, giallo scoring can be loungy, dissonant, soothing, hard rocking or any combination of these. Ennio Morricone’s orchestral contributions, unsettling and beautiful, with sporadic use of a synthesizer or his trademark addition of a soprano vocalist to moan along with the melody are striking and sometimes gorgeous in accompanying horror and other thrillers.
On the other end of the spectrum are Fabio Frizzi’s most notable scores for Lucio Fulci in his own catalog of nearly hundred features. His scores for Zombi 2 (1979), City of the Living Dead (1980) and The Beyond (1981) feature some of my favorite musical compositions in horror. They don’t always sound gloomy and foreboding. Some are fanciful and even catchy: there are moments in his score for Zombi 2 (retitled as Zombie for its American release) that you can imagine complimenting a light-up floor at Studio 54 alongside its Haitian drumbeats for the sight of undead flesh eaters rising from the grave.
Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (aka Zombi 2, 1979)
Like those ever-multiplying hoards, the Italian rock group Goblin has seen successive waves of new fans continue to rise up (with almost as many reincarnations as the band itself) as interest in classic giallo continues to gain traction. Their fusion of prog rock and traditional horror musical tropes would solidify their reputation as one of the greatest of all cinematic rock bands (they’ve been sampled by hip-hop artists almost as much as Morricone). Their upbeat, rich-sounding tracks build on what Hermann, Morricone and Carpenter had established. A baroque sense of presentation is characterized by catchy tunes, heavy on inviting guitar loops, throbbing bass lines, inventive uses of percussion and well-integrated synth lines - all arranged in time signatures most often utilized by free jazz ensembles.
Note below Goblin’s classic main theme for Dario Argento’s Tenebre (1982), one of the most recognizable bits of horror movie music out there. It pairs with its rock elements the traditional elements of orchestral scores from old black & white Hollywood horror productions, such as the pounding of a timpani drum or addition of a Hammond organ and its Universal Movie Monster-era minor chord progressions. I can’t forgive Nicolas Pesce’s Piercing (2018) for filching this track but I understand how hard it must have been to resist the temptation. It’s a track that cleverly incorporates different elements from various respective eras in the cinematic history of horror:
The extended version of Goblin’s iconic theme for Argento’s Tenebre. “Paoura, paoura, paoura, paoura....”
Every fan has their favorites in this vein from the late 70’s and early 80’s: Cannibal Holocaust (1980), Absurd (1981), Cannibal Ferox (1981), Seven Notes in Black (1977), Eaten Alive! (1980), The Church (criminally overlooked in 1989) or Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985).
I have mine. Two worth mentioning here: Nico Fidenco’s boldly experimental score for Marino Girolami’s Zombie Holocaust (aka Dr. Butcher M.D., 1980). It’s a sort of prefiguring of synthetic sounds that future experimental artists would make their defining sound. Check out Ensemble Economique and Demdike Stare for evidence of this influence - I can’t think of a horror score from this era as experimental as the one for Girolami’s film.
I also have a soft spot for Jay Chattaway’s score for William Lustig’s Maniac (1980). Considering the psychological nature of the depravity and brutality on display in that film, Chattaway - a classically trained pit conductor - chooses to go for a relatively sullen and low-key composition, lacking the detached, cold-blooded pulsing of Carpenter. It’s virtually electronic but surprisingly human, as if Lustig would have the nerve to suggest we feel sympathy for Joe Spinnell’s woman-carving, Oedipal psychopath. In that sense, the innovation of the score is not technical, but conceptual, daring in the manner in which it’s employed, even as it goes from melancholic to schizophrenic over those 87 deeply upsetting minutes.
Jay Chattaway’s surprisingly melancholic theme for William Lustig’s Maniac. Side note: Siskel & Ebert explicitly advocated people not to go see Maniac on their show in 1980. It may have been partially due to the way the scenes of intense violence were being sensationalized by the theater companies and certain circles of the press. Despite the strong cultural backlash at that time against pacifism, feminism and homosexuality - partially manifested in misogynist slasher films that studios, distributors and theater chains exploited for their trashiest elements, Maniac stands out for going further in putting us in the mind of its slasher main character. And it has a number of other merits that put it above most films like it from this period. There is, however, an undeniable and unforgivable contempt for femininity and the female body in much of Reagan-era horror and in terms of the sleazy marketing strategies for this movie, I don’t think Siskel & Ebert’s comments can be entirely dismissed as the scorn of elitist prudes.
It's a bit of a shame that there hasn’t been more innovation in the area of scoring horror in recent years. With the nostalgia factor of projects like Stranger Things or the endless rehashing of any number of stale franchises, composers have had to go to the same wells for their creations. I’ve always admired Japanese horror scores for defying this. Japanese composers are less afraid to experiment. My favorite Japanese horror scores strikingly fuse the natural with the unnatural or 20th century instrumentation with things like 19th century koto and flute compositions (Ringu [1998] or Ju-On [2002] are the first that spring to mind). Or the wailing of a baritone male voice to accompany a sparse drumbeat, like you’d see in a Japanese Noh performance. But in Japan, there are no established rules for scoring material depicting Yōkai, or any horror subject for that matter. Why in Audition (1999) does director Takashi Miike add the sound of a roaring big cat when the sack containing Asami’s current victim begins thrashing around in the background while she’s on the phone with her next victim in the foreground? Because it’s too good of a touch. It’s a throwaway, but it jolts us without fail. Up until then, we had no idea it was going to be this kind of movie.
Audition
Searching for innovation, one has to do what dedicated horror fans do: go local, go indie, go small. Low-budget efforts, sometimes not theatrically released, are the most promising avenues for interesting new discoveries. The synth rock duo, Zombi, has done admirable work on films like Cub (2014), The Guest (2014) and The Mind’s Eye (2015). But these scores, while not entirely pastiche like say, the Texan synth quartet SURVIVE’s nostalgic one-off score for Stranger Things, are still rooted more or less in the techniques of their predecessors.
This doesn’t always mean they’re not worth checking out. I like Jeff Grace’s scores for the Ti West features, House of the Devil (2009) and The Innkeepers (2011). And Jonathan Snipes is someone to watch for his work on Starry Eyes (2014), Excess Flesh (2015) and Rebirth(2016). There are very interesting things being done with music and sound in these off-the-beaten-track, straight-to-video/streaming releases (which have been quite successful) that you won’t find in theatrically released mainstream horror movies.
One notable exception is Christopher Young’s score for Scott Derrickson’s excellent Sinister (2012). Near as I can tell, its orchestra-free soundtrack is the first film score to utilize dubstep and other industrial motifs for its intended effect. They’re submerged within dank, forlorn piano melodies and other traditional instruments that were sampled and then manipulated beyond recognition, until they aided dubstep’s whomping, thudding effect. Here, they’re employed to suggest a ghastly presence trying to force itself into the world of the living. I learn that Young also employed music by the experimental post-metal bands Ulver, Aghast and Sunn O))) & Boris to buttress this immersive effect - taking us further into the psyche of Ethan Hawke’s tortured author. For the soundtrack album release, Young essentially remixed his own work. He plays with fragments of the film’s dialogue, using his machines to elongate or warp the words until they bleed into the actual notation. It creates a very creepy experience for deep listeners:
The thumping and whomping of dubstep mixes were used for Christopher Young’s score for Sinister, like reverberating pools of phantasmagoria from the underworld that bleed into our reality.
I mention Sinister as a trailblazer because its composer built an entire milieu in which his music could exist. He fashions his soundscape with its own vibe and then experiments within that space as opposed to simply piggybacking on the well-trodden or even stale techniques of his predecessors. It’s so rare to see that, not just in film but in any artistic discipline - creating one’s own universe. There are many more wonderful examples of successive waves of cool musical machines, evoking the unnatural with their various modulative features; the ARP Odyssey/Minimoog used for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (1979), Howard Shore’s striking blend of sounds and effects with the Synclavier II for David Cronenberg’sVideodrome (1983), Charles Bernstein’s combination of a Roland drum machine and Juno-106, an Oberheim OB-SX, a Yamaha DX-7 and a basic Casio keyboard for A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), or John Harrison’s Kurzweil, Prophet 5 and Lynn drum machine used to create a melodic slow burn for George Romero’s Day Of The Dead (1985). Romero’s work with scoring and sound layering merits its own separate article.
Of course, these gushed-over items and their musical evocations all come from a certain era, and it’s an era that so much horror scoring seems to be unable to transcend. That’s why Young’s work on Sinister is worth pointing out. He doesn’t just create music. He invents his own form of sound design. In this sense, it recalls the ingenious, almost revolutionary new way of adding sound to images that can be found in David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1976). The director and his sound man, Alan Splet, eschewed use of the Moog, or any electronic sound and instead built the soundtrack themselves by recording noises and altering them, condensing them or expanding them in various directions.
Lynch and Splet hung blankets on studio walls so they could get the cleanest, deadest sounds possible. Their recordings would have a purity, like painting on a white canvas. They could make anything sound the way they wanted it to. They used modest machinery to vary the pitch of sounds, add reverb, and could peak or dip out certain frequencies, reverse them or cut them together using a filter set called a Little Dipper. They relied heavily on industrial noises like droning factory machines and conveyor belts; all a pretty good approximation of the cacophony inside Henry Spencer’s head as he drifts from event to event in the process of his dehumanization. His robotization.
For one scene, Henry makes love to the Beautiful Girl from Across The Hall and they sink into the wet, volcanic mire of his bed, liquifying together and vanishing into the fluid corruption of carnality. There’s the faint trace of an ethereal whooshing or air being moved around, almost ringing in a subtle tone before the organ music comes in. Lynch and Splet placed a microphone inside a large glass bottle floating on its side in a bathtub. Then a garden hose was placed inside the bottleneck and Lynch moved the bottle around while Splet blew air into it. Apparently, hundreds of hand-produced sounds like these were recorded for the film that were never used.
David Lynch and his sound man would spend six months to a year recording and editing sounds. Sometimes as many as fifteen separate sounds were going at the same time on separate reels.
I’ve called horror the genre of diminishing gains in the past and perhaps this was derisive and unfair. It has some of the most loyal fans to be found in cinephilia. I know people who collect soundtracks on vinyl, attend horror festivals, know the names and work of long dead directors, actors and composers from halfway around the world. It’s endearing. I’ll say without question that horror is the only genre with a fanbase motivated enough to understand the craftsmanship that makes it possible.
So much so that some of those fans are even motivated to make those kinds of films themselves using only their senses, skills, creativity and whatever raw materials are available. They create a culture not only of admiration but of invention, where new discoveries and possibilities arise out of both viewing commercially filmed works AND the contributions of culture’s own participants. I find it very inspiring. I’m an amateurist. I support people who love an art form enough to try to contribute to it regardless of experience or cost.
Horror fans are sensual. They pay close attention to things like film scoring. I wonder if, like me, they long to see innovation and invention develop in creating the sonic landscapes of tomorrow’s cinematic chillers, rather than re-animate the same shopworn material. In other words, we hope that future scores won’t be like the storylines of so many horror movies themselves.
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