Chh chh chh ahh ahh ahh, chh chh chh haa haa haa. Those are the last musical notes you’ll hear before Jason Vorhees grabs you. Was all that sultry frolicking in the forest worth it?
Luckily, Jason Vorhees is a creature of fiction. The film’s score by Harry Manfredini is very real, and is still a pop culture and horror favorite. Last year, the classic score was sampled and put into the newest Mortal Kombat videogame along with a Jason Voorhees avatar.
In an interview with Jason Arnopp of Slasherama, composer Manfredini spoke about how the music in Friday the 13th would only play when the killer was near, so as to not confuse the audience. Instead, audiences were left terrified and conditioned by the machete wielding, hockey mask wearing murderer.
A solid film score can make you cry in a fit of terror, but those tears can come from other emotions inspired by well-timed music. Before Rose kicked Jack off the floating door in Titanic, you might recall a moment of intense emotion with Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On playing in the background. Let it out. All of those romantic tears can flow, this is a safe space.
What about that other type of crying? That uncontrollable sob, when you involuntarily scream “Noooo!” because you can’t believe that Mufasa has not only been betrayed by his own brother, but trampled to death by a herd of stampeding wildebeest. The Lion King is truly an amazing movie, but Scar is the worst. All it takes to bring that feeling back is one listen of the song To Die For, the song when Simba discovered Mufasa’s baby, by Hans Zimmer.
A score helps set the tone, mood and setting of film. Without it, we’ve just got moving pictures and words. This is not to say that it’s impossible to make a movie without one. For example, The Blair Witch Project had no score, and none of the songs from the soundtrack appeared in the movie, but the film was still terrifying.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is scored and composed entirely by Danny Elfman. Director Henry Selick recently opened up at a Q&A that it is in fact a Halloween Movie. This eerie tale is full of jubilation, with scattered bits of longing and sorrow. The mixture of stop animation with Elfman’s score was the key to upping the whimsy of the film. While the musical numbers are plenty, the in-between space is filled with excellent moments of music.
Mad, sad, glad, or anywhere in between, a score has the power to transcend the movie experience. Just try and think about Star Wars without that signature track, or James Bond without his theme song, or The Good, The Bad and The Ugly without Ennio Morricone. Moral of the story is that cowboys need whistling, people.