The Best Monster Movie Music of the Millennium, Part 1

By: Randall Larson
Date: Saturday, April 15, 2000

Having already evaluated the best fantasy soundtracks of 1999 and assessed the best fantasy scores of the 1990, it's time to cast an ear back over the last hundred years of fantasy, horror, and science fiction film music. Which scores were the trendsetters, the landmarks, and the milestones in the continuing evolution of music for fantasy and horror films? It is by this stringent criterion that we will take a look back down the last century (since there is little further to look in the history of cinema) and measure what I consider through dozens of years of watching, listening, and evaluating films and their music, and speaking to dozens of film composers about their craft to be the best scores the short history of the fantastic cinema has brought us thus far.
Music for fantastic films emerged, as did all film music, out of silent films. This is by no means a paradox. Music was prolific during the silent film era, from the stereotypical honky-tonk piano or Wurlitzer organ music we think of nowadays, to full symphonic scores performed by a pit orchestra or distributed on record to accompany screenings of the films.
Georges Melies' A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902) was not only the first science fiction film; it was also the one of the first films of any kind to have a musical score composed especially for it. Unfortunately, little remains to identify the kind of score it was or even who composed it. But the film, and the fact it had a unique score, was certainly a milestone in the burgeoning science fiction cinema.

Unquestionably the first major fantasy score was KING KONG, that 1933 masterpiece of composition by Viennese immigrant Max Steiner, who is considered by many to be the 'dean' of motion picture composers. KONG elevated the classical pastiches that had accompanied such silent classics as NOSFERATU, METROPOLIS, and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA into an art form all its own. Steiner's mysterious fog-enshrouded atmospheres, with their percussive rumblings, have become indispensable elements of the mood and character of Skull Island, and his cavernous, 3-note descending chord figure perfectly captured the essence of the oversized, dangerous gorilla. The structure of the score also defined the leitmotivic style of composition, an operatic approach in which various characters or situations are given distinctive themes that accentuate those characters or situations as they appear on screen. Steiner was a master at thematic interplay, an approach that would be refined, developed, and reformatted throughout the ensuing sixty-odd years.
With THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), the silence that had surrounded its predecessor, FRANKENSTEIN, was vanquished by Franz Waxman's full-blooded music. Waxman contrasted a trio of themesone each for the Bride, the Monster, and Dr. Praetorious which musically support the characters' interactions and enhance the drama. The highlight of Waxman's score is his thrilling music for the creation of the female monster, a 10-minute virtuoso composition energized by the rhythmic pulse of the tympani, suggesting the Bride's pensive heartbeat. It's a moment of film music brilliance that has rarely been equaled, and set a new standard in horror film scoring.
If Steiner's KONG and Waxman's BRIDE were the seminal scores of the fantasy and horror genres, then Arthur Bliss' music for THINGS TO COME (1936) was their equal in the world of science fiction. For H.G. Wells' futuristic speculation, Bliss relied less on recurring motives than on subtle changes in orchestration and instrumental texture. Bliss score derives not so much from the characters or the events, but provides a musical backdrop from the visual imagery of the film.
Musical styles and approaches for scoring horror films, which by now have become stereotypical, were inventive and groundbreaking during the 1930s. Just as the Universal monster films set the stage for horrors to come, so did their music. Karl Hajos' straightforward and compelling score for THE WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935) is thick with music, most notably a menacing 7-note ostinato associated with the werewolf. Heinz Roemheld's subdued accompaniment for DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936) avoided a stereotypical horror approach in preference of an underlying emotional resonancehe sympathetically pictured the 'monster' of the title while also musically suggesting the omnipresent influence of the unseen Dracula.
Frank Skinner, Hans Salter and Charles Previn collaborated on THE WOLF-MAN (1941). Like Hajos, they emphasized both the horror and the pathos embodied in Larry Talbot's tragic affliction. A recurring 3-note trumpet motive becomes both an ostinato of warning prior to the werewolf attacks and a savage resolution after the violent dissonance of the attack itself. THE WOLF-MAN solidified the idea that Hajos used in WEREWOLF OF LONDONwhich later became unforgettable in films from PSYCHO to JAWSa repeated, simple theme, associated with a known danger, has the ability to conjure up terror in an audience and amplify the film's suspense and excitement.
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939) was given a colorful musical tapestry that captured all the drama, celebration, and pathos of Victor Hugo's story. Alfred Newman's score brims with themes and motifs, with a large choir emphasizing the cathedral setting and the triumph of Quasimodo's well-intentioned heart. What is perhaps most remarkable about the score is the manner in which Newman gives his themes entirely different feelings through orchestration and performance, as the characters and their stories interact and merge.
Along with Newman, Miklos Rozsa was one of the finest film composers to take up residence in Hollywood during the 1940s. One of Rozsa's greatest compositions was THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940), an enchanting Arabian fantasy that allowed him to create a bountiful score full of lyricism and exotic atmosphere. The composer's penchant for simple folk melody and delicate lyricism, along with his gift for harmonious orchestration, resulted in one of Hollywood's best fantasy scores, one that rings as fresh today as it did sixty years ago.
The moody subtleties of Val Lewton's CAT PEOPLE (1942) were embellished by the understated and elegant music of Roy Webb (who scored nearly all of Lewton's RKO films). Webb's intricate score is interwoven with no less than seven distinct themes, each of which centers around the character of the mysterious Irena. Webb avoids bombastic symphonics and ambient dissonance, preferring simple orchestrations and quiet themes that develop intricately to underline and support the subtle atmospheres of dread and spookiness.
Georges Auric's impressionistic music for Jean Cocteau's poetic fantasy, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1946), described the different worlds embodied by the film. Using a standard orchestra for the village and forest sequences, and more unusual instrumentation and choir for the castle scenes, the entire resonant texture changes as soon as the viewer enters the Beast's realm, and the world within is as different audible as it is visually. Auric's buoyant score is wholly atmospheric, occasionally even atonal, and his use of wordless choir was groundbreaking for its day.
Enter the 1950s and the realm of the space invaders and Bernard Herrmann's groundbreaking score for THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951), which defined science fiction music for the entire decade. Herrmann eliminated all woodwinds from the orchestra and replaced them with an electronic ensemble consisting of two theremins, electric guitar, bass, and violin to create a tonality throughout the score that emphasized otherworldliness. The theremin, an early electronic instrument, instantly created the idea of outer space. The strange coloration of the sound and Herrmann's characteristic use of repeated and contrasted chord figures maintained a texture of extraterrestrial strangeness.
Emerging out of the arctic isolation of distant French horns, Dimitri Tiomkin's music for THE THING (FROM ANOTHER WORLD) (1951) achieved a similar musical sensibility. Heavy on brass and percussion, Tiomkin used eerie string phrasing and the wailing of four female voices to evoke the same kind of otherworldliness that Herrmann did with the theremin. Embodied with a variety of truly energetic horror music, Tiomkin's score is built around a single chilling triad for ominously growling brass, a powerful three-stage progression of notes setting off a mood of tension that rises almost unbearably through the film.
Japan's first take on creating a true cinematic monsterdespite its subsequent degradation into a children's cartoon charactercontained music that was every bit the equal of its American counterparts. For GOJIRA (1954, known in the US as GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS), Akira Ifukube created a distinctive score, constructed of a semblance of bizarrely orchestrated and deep-toned reverberations linked with a trio of associated motifs. Ifukube's rousing battle music rallies behind the machinations of the human defenders, while low, rumbling growls of woodwind, brass, and percussion evoke the gargantuan malevolence of the monster with plodding, footsteps-like chords. An intensely sorrowful requiem for strings, woodwind, and piano, embodies the pain and suffering inflicted on the populace.
One of the most dynamic scores to emerge from the Universal music factory during the '50s was THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), a chilling concoction of terror tonalities jointly composed by Hans Salter, Henry Mancini, and Herman Stein. The film's shrieking, 3-note blaring trumpet ostinato (attributed to Stein) remains one of horror's most electrifying monster attack themes. The score jolts the listener from tranquil passages of exotic Jungle romance to sheer terror, and back again.
Bronislau Kaper's music for the decade's best giant-bug movie, THEM! (1954), is another genuine classic of monster music. Scored for a 50-piece orchestra with an enhanced percussion section and two pianos, Kaper's tonal passages maintain a claustrophobic sense of apprehension and emphasize the mystery of the film's earlier half, just as its more aggressive patterns fortify the battle between the military and the giant ants in the second half. Kaper's music is thrilling and chromatic, surging in large chordal waves, flowing, like frenzied ants, throughout the orchestra.
While it is not, essentially, music, the 'electronic tonalities' compiled by Luis & Bebe Barron as an underscore in FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) gave cinema its first wholly electronic accompaniment. The Barrons' collage of music effects, achieved through a variety of electronic circuitry, was a breakthrough in musical approach, and gave the film a unique sonic backdrop, one that would not be heard again until the advent of synthesizers more than a dozen years hence.
On the fantasy front, Bernard Herrmann recreated fantasy adventure film music with his exotically flavored score for THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1956). Unified by a resplendent main theme, Herrmann's richly hued music captures all the wondrous mystery and adventure of this story of ancient lands, wizards, and mythological beasts. Distinctive cues herald each monster sequence, from low, groaning string bass for the dragon, twittering woodwind and timpani for the 2-headed Roc, a bellowing horn motif for the Cyclops that mimics its earthy roar, and the clacking xylophones, wood block, and castanets that suggests the idea of ratting bones and scraping swords for the duel with the skeleton. Herrmann's music for A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959) was equally mind-boggling, orchestrated for a huge ensembles featuring no less than five organs (four electronic and one cathedral), creating an unforgettable musical milieu of deep, cavernous depth.
When Hammer Films unleashed their stylized, colorful, and sexy reworkings of the classic Universal monsters, their vigorous, potent musical scores breathed a relentless musical dynamic into the tried and true monster formulae. The unquestionable titan of Hammer horror music was James Bernard, and his masterpiece was HORROR OF DRACULA (1958). Bernard's immensely powerful and intricately developed score, built around a 3-note brass and percussion ostinato (purposefully constructed around the syllables of the name DRAC-u-la), captured the power and dangerous presence of the savage vampire in a way that audiences had never heard before. Bernard's music is as sturdy a character in the drama as is Christopher Lee's vampire.
In 1960, Bernard Herrmann once again redefined genre film music with his inspired scoring of Hitchcock's PSYCHO. Herrmann contrasted the film's black-and-white imagery by creating a black-and-white score, eliminating all instruments but strings. The resultant orchestral texture and tonal color created an extraordinary effect, from Herrmann's fastly-bowed, windshield-wipers violin theme to the shrieking, stabbing violin strokes that accompany the murder scenes. Probably no film ostinato has ever been as often imitated as the PSYCHO shower murder music.
Herrmann's equivalent in the realm of the low-budget but creatively fertile AIP horror films of the 1960s was Les Baxter. While he demonstrated he could write thrilling romantic adventure music with MASTER OF THE WORLD (1961), his most evocative and significant work was heard in AIP's Edgar Allan Poe films, of which perhaps THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961) is most striking. From the stark atonal orchestral and electronic reverberations that play against the ocean landscapes of the opening, to the undulating dissonances that move sluggishly through the film's oppressive atmospheres, Baxter created a dismal mood of trepidation that contrasts with more lyrical flavors from the orchestra heard elsewhere. Baxter's creative use of musique concrete and micro-tonality in this score was technically advanced and quite the equal of what Bernard Herrmann was doing on a much more lavish scale.
John Barry delineated the musical style of James Bond when he rearranged/rewrote Monty Norman's James Bond Theme for DR. NO (1962), and he maintained and developed it through a dozen further film scores. But his music for GOLDFINGER (1964) remains his best amalgamation of Bond music. It contains the quintessential 007 theme song, plenty of jazzy sensuality in its subordinate themes, and lots of brassy rhythms and melodies in its chase music, suspenseful orchestral phrasing, and bold unsentimentality as it sustains the brutal psychology of Bond's perverse nemesis. GOLDFINGER is the score against which all other Bond scores will be measured, and it epitomized movie spy music for nearly half a century.