A HISTORY OF HORROR: Music for Scary Movies

By Randall D. Larson     June 03, 2000

The idea of a 2-CD set presenting music from some of the best horror film scores over the last century is a great idea, particularly using modern digital recording technology and faithful recreations of music lost to the ages. Unfortunately, what we have here is a mixed bag. Obviously compiled primarily from a variety of other Silva Screen collections, this anthology of horror music does indeed contain plenty of effective horror film music, but it's far too lopsided to be the kind of 'best horror music of the century' that it suggests itself to be.
Music from two classic silent horror films opens the gate 1921's NOSFERATU and 1925's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. However what we have are not the original scores to those films, but rather 1990's restoration scores albeit excellent material, from James Bernard and Carl Davis, respectively. Their work is great, but it's new material the collection does not truly span the decades from 'NOSFERATU to THE SIXTH SENSE' as its cover touts.
The 1930's and 1940's are represented only by the famous Creation music from Franz Waxman's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN truly magnificent music and the first true original horror score, but the CD fails to recognize other important attributes of '30s and '40s horror film music the early Universal horror scores of Hans Salter, Frank Skinner, Charles Henderson, and others, the atmospheric Val Lewton scores of Roy Webb and Leigh Harline, for example. Likewise, such notable 1950s horror music as IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, THEM!, THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, CURSE OF THE DEMON, THE FLY, THE MUMMY, and others are ignored; although such important 1950s genre musical milestones as Tiomkin's THE THING, Ifukube's GODZILLA, and James Bernard's HORROR OF DRACULA are included, in addition to a couple of minor if likable efforts, Brian Easdale's PEEPING TOM and Gerard Schurmann's HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM.
Humphrey Searle's THE HAUNTING and James Bernard's THE DEVIL RIDES OUT barely break the surface of 1960s horror music. The important and innovative efforts of Les Baxter, Ronald Stein, and Paul Dunlap are unnoticed in Silva's revisionist 'history.' The 1970s are more fairly represented, however, with Bernard's TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA, Morris' YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (not really a horror film), THE EXORCIST (a weak re-recording of Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells'), Goldsmith's THE OMEN and ALIEN, Goblin's SUSPIRIA, and Carpenter's HALLOWEEN. The '80s are well-integrated through robust excerpts from THE SHINING, DRESSED TO KILL, POLTERGEIST, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and HELLRAISER, and the millennium is closed out with Jerry Goldsmith's remake of THE HAUNTING, J.N. Howard's THE SIXTH SENSE, and Woijech Kilar's music for BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA and THE NINTH GATE.
Much of what is included on the collection seems to be here due to convenience, by already existing elsewhere in the Silva catalog, and the result is a disproportionate compilation that does not truly represent the 'best' of horror film music from the '20s to the '90s. It's too bad a newly recorded collection that does represent the best three or four scores from each decade wasn't produced instead, I think that would be a far more pleasing collection to the discerning horror music aficionado.

A HISTORY OF HORROR, Various Composers. Silva Screen FILMXCD 331 (UK): 28 Tracks, 130 mins.