The 20 Greatest Original Horror Scores

John Carpenter — “Halloween” (1978)
If anyone bestrides this list like a colossus, it has to be Carpenter — his films appear multiple times and “It Follows” wears its Carpenter influence like a badge of pride. His music for “Halloween”is one of the most brilliant horror scores, because it’s among the simplest, to the point of simplistic, and therefore feels like the irreducible element that underlies a whole lot of what came after. Including, for example, the very different, far lusher, more rounded (and arguably even better, if less catchy) score he did with Alan Howarth for “Halloween III: Season of the Witch.””I can play just about any keyboard, but I can’t read or write a note,” said Carpenter, who showed his Casio mastery in the majority of his work but lucking out here with an iconically spartan 10/8 progression that feels like the aural definition of “look behind you!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6R5ILblyto

Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman — “Ravenous” (1999)
Following the untimely death in 2013 of British TV, theater and film director Antonia Bird, her tepidly received frontiersman cannibal horror came in for some reassessment. And deservedly so, as its pitch-black ironic tone and laudably gruesome atmosphere were a little misjudged on first release. But even the film’s many detractors back then voiced admiration for the music, borne of an unlikely collaboration between composer Nyman and Blur frontman Albarn. Though “collaboration” may stretch a point, with Nyman suggesting that “Damon Albarn composed 60% of the tracks, and I did the rest…by the time I came on board, his music was so good and self-contained [already].” Whatever the provenance of the individual tracks, the result is terrific, both as accompaniment to the film, giving it texture and even melancholy at times, and also as a separate album, with twangy backwoods banjo and accordion compositions easily standing on their own as inventive, unusual instrumental songs. Or “licks,” perhaps?

Philip Glass — “Candyman” (1992)
In the early ’90s, Glass stepped away from the orchestral sounds that had brought him fame as a film composer (including the “Qatsi” trilogy and “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters”) and invaded the horror genre. And wouldn’t you know it, it was a perfect match! Glass honed his grandly harmonious choral and organ sounds and turned them ominous for pieces like “Face To Razor,” resulting in a creepily occult vibe: the perfect backdrop for Tony Todd‘s bone-chilling “Candyman.” Then there’s the emblematic lullaby-with-piano, “Helen’s Theme” and the haunting, beguiling cylinders on “Music Box” —it’s Glass’ score that helps elevate “Candyman” to the pantheon of contemporary horror. Shame that while the music is excellent, he couldn’t quite repeat that trick for the otherwise skippable sequel “Candyman: Farewell To The Flesh.” Surprisingly, the unadulterated “Candyman” score was only released last year in full by One Way Static, where previously a compilation of bits and pieces from both films was all that was available.

Jerry Goldsmith — “The Omen” (1976)
The (satanic) church of the horror score is a broad one, as we prove with some of these picks; there’s room for counterpoint, spartan-ness and irony herein. But there’s also a place for blaring, on-the-nose bombast, and in that department, Goldsmith’s score for Richard Donner‘s “The Omen” takes some beating. Essentially the “Carmina Burana” of horror scores, it is a manic choral masterpiece in which hysterical female shrieking gives way to foreboding orchestrations which in turn play into monk-like chants of grammatically incorrect Latin in the film’s signature “Ave Satani” (“Hail Satan”). Goldsmith picked up the only Oscar of his long career for this score (out of a staggering 18 nominations), and while “Alien” (see below) and “Poltergeist” are terrific, subtler examples of his work in this genre, “The Omen” deserves our worship: it’s the music of the damned, of the unstoppable tormented forces of evil, a Hieronymous Bosch painting given audible form.