Terror Tracks: Music, Sound and Horror Cinema

Edited by

Philip Hayward [+–]

University of Technology Sydney

Philip Hayward is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Communication at the University of Technology Sydney, and a member of audiovisual ensemble The Moviolas.

Commissioned and edited to appeal to a crossover Film and Music Studies readership, Terror Tracks is an anthology that analyses the use of music and sound in the popular genre of Horror cinema. Focusing on the post-War period, contributors analyse the role of music and sound in establishing and enhancing the senses of unease, suspense and shock crucial to the genre. The anthology shows the various patterns of use an inflection in a range of scores – orchestral, popular, rock and electronic – and how these relate to non-musical sound. Lively and accessible, Terror Tracks is an important contribution to study of Horror cinema.

Series: Genre, Music and Sound

Prelims

Acknowledgements and About the Authors [+–] vii – vii

Philip Hayward FREE

Southern Cross Univeristy

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Philip Hayward has taught film and popular music studies in Australia and the United Kingdom and is Professor and Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor (Research) at Southern Cross University, Australia. His previous books include Off The Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema (2004) and he is a performer in an avant garde chainsaw quartet performing work written by composer Michael Hannan.

Commissioned and edited to appeal to a crossover Film and Music Studies readership, Terror Tracks is an anthology that analyses the use of music and sound in the popular genre of Horror cinema. Focusing on the post-War period, contributors analyse the role of music and sound in establishing and enhancing the senses of unease, suspense and shock crucial to the genre. The anthology shows the various patterns of use an inflection in a range of scores – orchestral, popular, rock and electronic – and how these relate to non-musical sound. Lively and accessible, Terror Tracks is an important contribution to study of Horror cinema.

Introduction

Scoring the Edge [+–] 1 – 13

Philip Hayward £17.50

Southern Cross Univeristy

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Introducing the topic, the volume editor explains that the discussions and analyses offered by the contributors to the volume are intended to provide models for future work on both specific texts and the operation of the genre as a whole. The chapters take one (or sometimes more) of four approaches to their topics: 1. detailed analyses of the relationship between image, sound and music in specific films and/or film sequences (Chapters 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 15); 2. studies of particular composers and/or directors oeuvres (Chapters 5 and 14); 3. analyses of musical approaches used in particular subgenres or film series (Chapters 3, 10, 11 and 12); 4. an analysis of the use and affectivity of sound in the (primarily) non-musical soundtrack to a single film, The Blair Witch Project (Chapter 13).

Psycho-Analysis: Form and Function in Bernard Herrmann’s Music for Hitchcock’s Masterpiece [+–] 14 – 46

James Wierzbicki £17.50

University of Michigan

James Wierzbicki is a musicologist who teaches at the University of Michigan and serves as executive editor of the MUSA (Music of the United States of America)
series of scholarly editions.

Psycho is probably the most closely and most seriously scrutinized film ever made. This chapter offers detailed analyses of the relationship between image, sound and music in the film as a whole and in the famous shower scene, in particular.

An Audiovisual Foreshadowing in Psycho [+–] 47 – 59

Scott Murphy £17.50

University of Kansas

Scott Murphy is an associate professor of music theory at the University of Kansas. His publications include articles on Brahms, Ives, Bartók, Penderecki, and on
music in science-fiction films.

This chapter proposes a way of reading the film Psycho and analysing the structure of both the aural and visual components of the main title that supports Hermann’s claim that ‘The climax of Psycho is given to you by the music right at the moment the film begins.’ The chapter’s argument to support this comes in two parts: the first uncovers a structural similarity between Herrmanns music and Basss titles, and the second relates aspects of these structures to a psychoanalytic interpretation of Norman Batess character.

Sound and Music in Hammer’s Vampire Films [+–] 60 – 74

Michael Hannan £17.50

Southern Cross University

Michael Hannan is a professor at Southern Cross University, Lismore, and a practising composer. His publications include The Australian Guide to Careers in Music (2003) and he is currently researching the Australian film music production sector.

Analysis of the techniques used in the scoring of the Hammer horror output concluding that Hammer’ss use of dramatic sound effects and powerful orchestrations in the vampire films dramatize a monstrous presence and threat chiefly conveyed through symbolic power and suggestion rather than graphic dismemberment and/or depictions of gore. While Hammers composers were not responsible for any significant musical innovations, their development of a series of scores (managed and maintained by house music directors) created a musical reference bank for future horror-film composers. In Hammers diegeses the world is essentially rendered: Draculas dramatic, exciting darkness against the forces of light, reason and restraint. Returning to the cultural frame that prefaced this chapter, it is perhaps not overfanciful to read Hammers post-war films and particularly their routine victories of the forces of good over evil as a cathartic replaying and purging of the traumas of the war years.

Creative Soundtrack Expression: Tôru Takemitsu’s Score for Kwaidan [+–] 75 – 87

Kyoko Koizumi £17.50

Otsuma Womens University

Kyoko Koizumi is an associate professor of music at Otsuma Womens University, Tokyo, Japan. She received her PhD from the University of London Institute of Education. Her research interests include youth studies of popular music and film music studies.

Kwaidan [Japanese Ghost Stories], directed by Masaki Kobayashi in 1964, is regarded as a seminal film not only for its magnificent mise-en-scène but also for its experimental soundtrack, created by the Japanese composer, Tôru Takemitsu (1930-96). The chapter, working with the notion that Japanese culture supports the animist notion of spiritual energy contained within the apparently inanimate (Brophy, 2005: 155), argues that Takemitsu has an animistic view of natural sounds when using the sounds of stone, ice or bamboo in Kwaidan. Takemitsus mission in the film is to give a strong life to each natural and instrumental sound to the extent that it can confront ma. By bestowing equal value to each sound, regardless of its origin, his work in Kwaidan transcends conventional distinctions between underscore and sound effects. The uniqueness of Takemitsus soundtrack to Kwaidan is three-fold. The first aspect is the effective use of musique concrète through modulating concrete sounds and juxtaposing them with Japanese traditional instruments. The second is non-synchronism, used in order to instil feelings of horror in the audience. The third is the emphasis on ma to give the in-between moments a positive meaning. Given these three distinguishing characteristics, it is possible to identify Kwaidan as marking a peak in the aesthetics of horror-film scores to date. As these three features were subsequently heard in Takemitsus later work and in film scores by other composers, the extent to which Kwaidan exerted a strong and enduring impact on horror-film scoring merits further analysis.

Prog Rock, the Horror Film and Sonic Excess: Dario Argento, Morricone and Goblin [+–] 88 – 100

Tony Mitchell £17.50

University of Technology, Sydney

Tony Mitchell is a senior lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is the author of Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop
and Rap in Europe and Oceania (1996) and editor of Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the USA (2001).

About Dario Argento’s films and his collaborations with Ennio Morricone

Inflamed: Synthetic Folk Music and Paganism in the Island World of The Wicker Man [+–] 101 – 111

Jon Fitzgerald,Philip Hayward £17.50

Southern Cross University

Jon Fitzgerald is an associate professor at Southern Cross University, Lismore, and a practising guitarist and composer. He has previously written on a variety of musical topics and is author of Popular Music: Theory and Musicianship (1999).

Southern Cross Univeristy

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About The Wicker Man ‘s soundtrack. The Wicker Man is distinct within both British horror cinema and, indeed, British cinema more generally, for the manner in which its music and sound design enhance and colour the mythicalmagical scenarios it represents. More than this, its soundtrack operates to represent and thereby offer clues as to the particular manipulations of social mores, spirituality and customs it offers.

Rhythms of Evil: Exorcizing Sound from The Exorcist [+–] 112 – 124

Mark Evans £17.50

Macquarie University

Mark Evans is Head of the Department of Contemporary Music Studies at Macquarie University and is co-editor of Perfect Beat – The Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture. He has published articles on a range of topics, including: the use of sound in the ‘Matrix’ films; copyright; CD-Rom; Christian music; rock journalism; and country music in Australia. He is also a pianist and has recorded and performed in various contemporary styles.He is the author of Open up the Doors: Music in the Modern Church (2006) and editor of the Encyclopedia of Film Music and Sound (Equinox, forthcoming).

Previous accounts of sound in The Exorcist have tended to focus on the non-diegetic musical segments of the film (Bazelon, 1975; Brophy, 2001), or else the haunting lack of music in totality (Marriott, 2004). Most have discussed the manipulation of Regans voice as she becomes increasingly controlled by the demon Pazuzu. Even more have paid great attention to the role of Oldfields Tubular Bells (e.g., Marriott, 2004; Brophy, 2001). Missing from these accounts has been any discussion on how the soundtrack synthesizes key themes of the film. Most pointedly, it is argued here, the soundtrack achieves this via the manipulation of rhythmic elements. The chapter shows how over and above any good versus evil polemic, the soundtrack of The Exorcist re-enforces the battle between the natural (safe) rhythms of everyday life and the disruptive dysrhythm of evil.

Texas Chainsaws: Audio Effect and Iconicity [+–] 125 – 136

Rebecca † Coyle,Philip Hayward £17.50

Formerly, Southern Cross University

Rebecca Coyle published on screen music and sound in a number of journals and books, including two anthologies on Australian feature film music. She was the editor of Screen Sound, the Australasian Journal of Soundtrack Studies and on the editorial board for such international journals as Convergence and Music and the Moving Image. She taught in the Media programme at Southern Cross University, Australia, until her death in November 2012.

Southern Cross Univeristy

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This chapter looks at how the chainsaw and its distinctive sounds do not so much provide the core horror moments in Texas Chainsaw Massacre as complement and crystallize a broader set of audiovisual impressions that engender it. In particular, the films suspense and shock sequences are graphically rendered through a series of intense and sonically inventive sound sequences that draw on pre-recorded music, score, human vocalization and skilfully blended sound effects.

Incorporating Monsters: Music as Context, Character and Construction in Kubrick’s The Shining [+–] 137 – 170

Jeremy Barham £17.50

University of Surrey

Jeremy Barham is a lecturer in Music at the University of Surrey, where he teaches courses in screen music studies. His research focuses on the use of pre-existent music, science fiction and horror-film scoring, music in experimental and avant-garde film, and musical temporality in film. He is currently working on a monograph for Cambridge University Press entitled Music, Time and the Moving Image.

The films of Stanley Kubrick, particularly from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) on, were characterized by their innovative approaches to the use of music. Even by Kubricks standards, however, The Shining (1980) exemplifies a level of both sophisticated interaction of music and moving image, and general reliance on music for contextual, characterization and narrative purposes, rarely equalled in his output. The films almost exclusive use of pre-existent music not only sets it apart from many other contemporaneous and subsequent works in the horror genre but also raises important questions surrounding Kubricks conceptual and constructive film aesthetic, and his crucial collaboration with music editor Gordon Stainforth, hitherto rarely acknowledged in the published literature. With the support of material supplied to the author by Stainforth, this chapter will reinvestigate the historical context, methodology and aesthetic and structural consequences of Kubricks use of the modernist and avant-garde music of Bartók, Ligeti and Penderecki in the film a stylistic repertoire, which he first explored in 2001 and admired in Friedkins The Exorcist (1973).1 It will examine ways in which the music is employed to project climates of primarily psychological (rather than physical) horror and to embody the omnipresent but unseen malevolence of the alien other, whether through propelling the narrative in visually static scenes or underpinning passages of vivid action and subverting dialogue in precisely matched scenes of varying length.

Music of the Night: Scoring the Vampire in Contemporary Film [+–] 171 – 185

Janet K. Halfyard £17.50

Birmingham Conservatoire

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Janet K. Halfyard is a Senior Academic in Music at Birmingham Conservatoire. She has published widely on film and television music, particularly in relation to horror and fantasy genres. Her publications include Danny Elfman’s Batman: a film score guide (Scarecrow, 2004) and Music, Sound and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Ashgate, 2010).

The vampire himself – because the memorable cinematic vampires tend to be male (in fact, they tend to be Dracula) — has generally been presented as a character simultaneously dangerous, terrifying and yet also exotic. He is a model of the colonial Other in Western culture, the foreign and demonic savage who seduces and destroys respectable white women, a threat to patriarchal dominance and to Western culture itself. However, since the early 1980s there has been a shift in the construction of cinematic vampires that arguably goes hand in hand with the increased recognition by western culture of the danger of othering groups and individuals. Dracula has traditionally been enigmatically alien: his seductions have been a ruse, the means to achieving his true goal, namely, drinking the blood of his victims. The modern vampire is often cast as a victim himself, an altogether more sympathetic figure; and the way in which this shift in our perceptions of what a vampire is has been articulated, in part, through music. This chapter examines how the music written for cinematic vampire narratives has changed since the days of Hammer (discussed by Michael Hannan in this volume), and how these changes therefore affect how we read the vampire.

Scary Movies, Scary Music: Uses and Unities of Heavy Metal in the Contemporary Horror Film [+–] 186 – 197

Lee Barron,Ian Inglis £17.50

Northumbria University

Lee Barron is a senior lecturer in Media and Communication at Northumbria University. His main research and teaching interests are in the areas of cultural theory,
media and popular culture. His writings have appeared in journals such as Fashion Theory, The Journal of Popular Culture and International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music.

University of Northumbria

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Ian Inglis is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Arts, Design and Social Sciences at the Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne. He has written extensively abut the history, performance and presentation of popular music. His books include Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time (2006), Popular Music and Television in Britain (2010) and The Beatles in Hamburg (2012).

One of the most profound developments in strategies of scoring films since the introduction of sound to cinema emerged in the 1970s, when the perennial reliance on the creation of a new, freshly composed, classical film score began to be challenged by a preference for utilizing already existing (popular) musical sources. this chapter looks at the use of Heavy Metal in contemporary films, showing how It is, that music’s ability to provide a demonic presence that has made it such a suitable partner for the horror movie.

“Like Razors through Flesh”: Hellraiser’s Sound Design and Music [+–] 198 – 212

Karen Collins £17.50

University of Waterloo

Karen Collins is Canada Research Chair in Technology and Communication at the University of Waterloo, where she teaches game development and sound design and is developing software for interactive audio applications. She has published two books and numerous articles on audio for film and games.

Sound design in recent decades has developed beyond the creation of real sounds in film, to a whole aesthetic in itself, in part through the use of sound as metaphor. Particularly in science-fiction and horror films, sound design and how it functions with the underscore has become a crucial aspect in the creation of fear and horror in cinema. To illustrate this idea, this chapter will explore the sound design and music of the Hellraiser films: Hellraiser (Clive Barker, 1987), Hellbound: Hellraiser II (Tony Randel, 1988), Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (Anthony Hickox, 1992), Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (Kevin Yagher, 1996), Hellraiser V: Inferno (Scott Derrickson, 2000), Hellraiser. VI: Hellseeker (Rick Bota, 2002), Hellraiser VII: Deader (Rick Bota, 2005) and Hellraiser VIII: Hellworld (Rick Bota, 2005).The conclusion is that sound design is no longer just for real sounds, or the creation of a realistic world, but is becoming more of a creative aspect of film-making. As with the musical functions in film, the sound serves to heighten our fear and psychologically disturb us. In particular, the very physical aspect of sound in the films is influential in disturbing the viewer.

Spooked by Sound: The Blair Witch Project [+–] 213 – 228

Rebecca Coyle † £10.00

The Blair Witch Project (hereafter BWP ) is a noisy film despite the near-absence of music or standard suddenly shocking horror sounds. This low-budget film, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sànchez (1999), draws on dialogue, foley and location sound for its effect. Indeed, it is through its approach to and connections with the horror elements that the film builds its affective impact. This chapter investigates how sound and music are tied into the narrative in BWP. I will analyse a selection of key scenes and their sonic elements to discuss the ways by which sound is used to situate, identify and enhance horrifying events that are not necessarily represented on-screen.

Popular Songs and Ordinary Violence: Exposing Basic Human Brutality in the Films of Rob Zombie [+–] 229 – 237

Laura Wiebe Taylor £17.50

McMaster University

Laura Wiebe Taylor is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, where she is examining
boundary issues in speculative fictions and theory. Her publications include articles on the relationships between science fiction, dystopia and metal music.

Looks at the films of Rob Zombie and argues that Zombie’s use of popular music in his horror films produces not so much a counternarrative as an alternative reading that resists conservatism rather than affirming it. By relentlessly pairing extreme brutality with popular often beloved tunes from the (primarily) American past, Zombie exposes the violence that lies embedded in American history and society. The music prevents the horror the films reveal from being othered; just as the music belongs to society, so does the violence.

Terror in the Outback: Wolf Creek and Australian Horror Cinema [+–] 238 – 248

Philip Hayward,Harry Minassian £17.50

Southern Cross Univeristy

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Macquarie University

Harry Minassian is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger with a degree in Creative Arts from Macquarie University, Sydney. His recent projects include
event management for Ara Gevorgians 2006 Sydney concert.

Although Horror had a low profile in Australian cinema and, indeed, Australian popular culture in general during most of the twentieth century. The film Wolf Creek was an exception and one of its many significances is that it has broken through to the mainstream and managed to produce a local inflection of the genre with international appeal. This chapter examines the authorial intentions behind the films design, direction and soundtrack composition and the manner in which the final film text combines, develops and/or deviates from these.

The Ghostly Noise of J-Horror: Roots and Ramifications [+–] 249 – 267

James Wierzbicki £17.00

University of Michigan

James Wierzbicki is a musicologist who teaches at the University of Michigan and serves as executive editor of the MUSA (Music of the United States of America)
series of scholarly editions.

This chapter looks at a peculiar sonority of J-Horror such as the metallic screeching, a grating or ripping sound that often announces the presence of ghosts and links the tradition to historical Japanese genres and animist beliefs and looks at the work of recent composers Kenji Kawai (Ringu, Honogurai mizu) and Shiro Sato (Ju-on) known for Hollywood remakes. It argues that their recent film music is characterized both by timbral transformation and by substantial silence, and insofar as it relates to on-screen yûrei it seems strongly redolent of kabuki convention. For theatrical presentations of Japanese ghost stories, the combination of subtly shifting sound colours and purposeful ma has done the trick for centuries. Knowingly or not, Kawai and Sato with their scores for J-horror films have tapped into longstanding Japanese tradition. Perhaps instinctively, but more likely because they realized they were dealing with subject matter far removed from western culture, the composers assigned to the Hollywood remakes have gravitated towards a time-tested Japanese model.

Index

Index [+–] 269 – 286

Philip Hayward FREE

Southern Cross Univeristy

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Index

Reviews

This is as about as far-ranging an anthology as one could hope for, and the reader can only admire the sheer quantity of information and analyses contained in one volume.
Reynold Humphries, Music, Sound and the Moving Image, 4:2, 2010

The collection is a useful and often insightful addition to a growing body of critical literature devoted to encouraging viewers to listen to popular movies.
Journal of American Studies of Turkey, 2011

Over the last three decades, literature about music used in horror films has either barely scratched the surface or failed to be balanced enough in respect to music, horror film, and horror literature scholarship. Addressing the needs of a musical and nonmusical readership, Hayward (Macquarie Univ., Sydney, Australia) attempts to rectify this situation. He collaborated with film scholars, musicologists, and music theorists, which gives this book a strong sense of continuity. In the introduction, he provides necessary historical background for those unfamiliar with horror cinema. The diversity of films covered (Psycho, The Wicker Man, The Shining, Hellraiser, among many others) will satisfy those interested in literature as well as film. All essays focus on the film as a final product with its film music–i.e., the music is not separate from but rather interacts with the soundtrack. James Wierzbicki’s and Scott Murphy’s opening essays on Psycho provide a much-needed musical orientation and analysis of the film; Mark Evans’s essay on The Exorcist will likely inspire other studies about rhythm. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.
M. Goldsmith, Nicholls State University, CHOICE, February 2010 Vol 47, No 6

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Terror Tracks

Music, Sound and Horror Cinema

Philip Hayward [+–]

University of Technology Sydney

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