The 13 Best Horror Movie Themes | Den of Geek

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For those who met his demands and settled in for a road movie about a greedy blonde, the rug was likely pulled harder than it ever had been or will be again when she was gutted like a fish by the 30-minute mark at the hands of a cross-dressing serial killer (though at the time, it appears to be his mother).Likely the greatest scare in movie history, the scene is punctuated with the deafening sounds of Hermanns burning score stopping dead in its tracks by the sound of repeated violin screeches. Screeches may not even be the right word; the scorescreamed. Audiences, feeling almost as violated as Leighs bloodied and dying character, let their preconceptions wash away with the showers blood and the lowering cellos.

Written by John Williams

Im not even sure ifJawsfully counts as a horror movie, but I dare you to name more than a few horror movies themes that have had a more bloodcurdling effect. The movie that still keeps large swaths of every generation out of the water,Jawsis one of the finest pieces of musical terrorism ever composed thanks largely to its simplicity. Beginning as an insidious contrabass, the theme never graduates past its two-notes as it encompasses the entire thought process of its Great White leviathan. In other words, its, Eat, eat, eat, and eat.

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There is something primordial about this melody that taps into the most basic survival instinct of every animal: The fear of being gobbled up by an incomprehensible beast that might as well be Lovecraftian in nature. And it is the fear of nature it instills in every viewer or courageous shoreside bather.

Written by John Carpenter

IfJawstapped into something elemental in our nature,Halloweenembodies something far more sinister.Halloweenis a movie about evil, plain and simple. In writer-director-composer John Carpenters world, evil is made flesh by one Michael Myers. It is beyond human understanding to know why, nor does it truly matter. Evil can get you, even in your suburban neighborhood, and for no other reason than you crossed its path. Originally about three babysitters nominated for ritualistic slaughter by an escaped psych patient who, one Halloween night 20 years earlier, silently and emotionlessly murdered his older sister when he was only 8-years-old,Halloweenis chilling in its unknowable malevolence. And that Other, a masked enigma, is only better represented by its even more inexplicable score.

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The 13 Best Horror Movie Themes | Den of Geek