The art of the instrumental horror-film score is quickly being lost. All too often now, filmmakers are using heavy metal and pop music to soundtrack their films. Hearing Slipknot or HIM during a stabbing scene just doesn't hold the same weight to us as some tubular bells or a haunting oboe.
Instrumental scores allow you to fill in the blank spaces with your mental imagery. Plus, it counts as classical music so it's like eating your cultural vegetables.
Being the witching season, we compiled a list of some of our favorite horror-movie scores. These are the lines of music that can make your skin crawl or bring sweat to your palms by just hearing them. Sadly, we couldn't include Danny Elfman's Pee-Wee's Big Adventure score on here because no one else thinks it's a horror movie.
Have you ever seen Large Marge? Yeah, deal with that.
10. Halloween (John Carpenter)
The most iconic horror movie theme of all time. It makes a good ringtone too for when your bank calls asking why you are poor.
9. The Exorcist (Mike Oldfield)
OK, maybe this is the best horror theme of all time. Jesus, we can't make up our mind. We're sure someone will tell us we are wrong.
8. The Omen (Jerry Goldsmith)
This movie makes us scared to ever, ever have children. Ever.
7. Suspiria (Goblin)
You happy now, Goblin fans? We didn't include the Suspiria soundtrack on our earlier film-scores list because maybe we were saving it for this list?
6. The Shining (Wendy Carlos)
Wendy Carlos is the man... er, woman.