Readers of a nervous disposition – look away now. It’s been a total labour of love, and special thanks are due to exemplary horror specialists Death Waltz Recording Company and One Way Static, whose assistance was invaluable in assembling this list.
Bear in mind however that this is a list of original soundtracks, which eliminates classics such as The Shining, The Exorcist and, err, The Return of the Living Dead. Cult classics and video nasties are amply represented: for every Carpenter and Craven flick, there’s a Surf Nazis Must Die or Slumber Party Massacre. The following list runs the gamut from curios to blockbusters, from fan-assembled bootlegs to charting LPs.
You can see why people devote hundreds of hours – and thousands of dollars – to hoarding (and, increasingly, reissuing) this stuff. Yes, you’re never too far away from a brooding analogue synth, but the subculture of horror soundtracks is immensely rich and full of surprises. The range of music available on horror scores is similarly kaleidoscopic – funk, electro, EBM, folk, ambient and weirdo electronics have all been used to revolt, unsettle, or scare the LDs out of the unwitting viewer. The horror business is a broad and polytheistic church: a rowdy congregation of splatters, slashers, giallos, J-horrors and melts. Don’t believe us? Get to know these 100 chilling horror soundtracks, ranked in order of greatness. Horror scores are for life, not just for Halloween.
