If you’re a fan of both horror and soundtracks, like me, you know there’s an embarrassment of riches to collect– especially in the current golden age of boutique labels like Waxwork Records and One Way Static. Some of these horror soundtracks are highly uncommon, not because they’re for obscure films or TV series, but because they break the mold in numerous ways.
Read on for some of the most unusual horror soundtracks ever released….
And feel free to add your own oddities in the comments!
Monster In My Pocket (1992)
This might just be the most unusual soundtrack on this list, given that it’s for a toy line! It’s a shame I didn’t pick this up as a kid, because I loved Monster In My Pocket toys and this Halloween-y compilation sounds right up my alley. (I probably would have worn out the cassette playing it year round.)
The back cover promises “Classic monster songs linked by original horror movie trailers.” The tracklist includes perennials like “The Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and “The Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley as well as deeper cuts such as “Feast of the Mau Mau” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and “Bo Meets the Monster” by Bo Diddley. The trailers include everything from Blood of Dracula (1957) to The Green Slime (1968). Unfortunately, this album is out of print and doesn’t seem to be for sale online, because I’d still love to give it a listen.
Psycho: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture (1998)
At some point in the 90s, some marketer had the brilliant idea for soundtracks from and inspired by movies. Your movie doesn’t have enough music for an album? Pad it out with tracks *divinely inspired* by it! I can still recall the review for Music from and Inspired by Mission: Impossible 2 that joked about Chris Cornell standing up in the theater and declaring, “Yes! I must write a song called ‘Mission 2000’!” But as often as these cash grabs were lame, they occasionally yielded a gem.
Although this soundtrack to Gus Van Sant’s controversial shot for shot horror remake is in a similar vein– a critic at the time mocked “songs with ‘psycho’ and ‘screaming’ in their titles”– it has some real treasures and is overall a strange and satisfying compilation befitting the world of Norman Bates. There’s very little music from the actual movie– just two of Danny Elfman’s takes on the original Bernard Herrmann score and, bizarrely, Rob Zombie’s anthem “Living Dead Girl” (heard during the used car scene).
What fills out most of the album is alt rock, trip hop, and even a spot of country-fried singer songwriter music (Teddy Thompson’s “Psycho”). My favorite track is “Once Is Not Enough” by Howie B., which samples Vince Vaughn and essentially makes him rap (sure it’s a little ridiculous, but it’s also awesome– honest!). Lamb’s “Fly” is a spooky, soaring anthem, and Steve Earle’s “All of My Life” is a banger. Meanwhile, the eerie “Honeymoon Suite” by Thievery Corporation samples the original Psycho score to good effect.
The Blair Witch Project: Josh’s Blair Witch Mix (1999)
The classic found footage horror flick The Blair Witch Project innovated in both technique and advertising. The ingenious marketing campaign built a universe of folklore surrounding the fictitious witch, from the expansive website to the Scifi Channel documentary Curse of the Blair Witch to the companion book The Blair Witch Dossier. This cleverness extended to the “soundtrack CD,” which purports to be a mixtape found in missing film student Joshua Leonard’s car stereo.
The only piece of music from the actual movie, “The Cellar,” is an eerie ambient track created by Antonia Cora for the closing credits; the rest is an eclectic blend of fittingly creepy songs from the likes of Lydia Lunch, Skinny Puppy, Bauhaus, and Type O Negative. “I find this a fantastically curated soundtrack album,” user ruhtinas enthuses on discogs.com. “Instead of cashing in with the usual metal hit collection of the era, this one features a brilliant collection of less known (and obviously hand picked) tracks from essential goth/post-punk/industrial acts.” I agree.
There are some truly terrific songs here, especially “The Order of Death” by Public Image Ltd. (also featured in the 1990 film Hardware), “Kingdom’s Coming” by Bauhaus, which captures the movie’s woodsy atmosphere perfectly, and the eerie ballad “Don’t Go to Sleep Without Me” by the Creatures. Sisyphus later released Greetings from Burkittsville, an alternative, unofficial score to the movie that’s a striking album in its own right. For his 2016 follow-up Blair Witch, director/composer Adam Wingard would emulate Cora’s work on “The Cellar” with a fully ambient “score” meant to sound like subtly haunted background noise.
Halloween Returns to Haddonfield: Official Convention Soundtrack (2003)
Long before Rob Zombie or David Gordon Green rebooted the Halloween series, the fans kept the spirit alive with a series of anniversary conventions in Pasadena, California– filming location for the first two films. The first event, “25 Years of Terror,” boasted its own “soundtrack”: a series of electronic, John Carpenter inspired music tracks composed and performed by Dan J. Schulte.
Schulte’s pieces have fun names like “Factory of Masks,” “Time to Carve,” and “45 Lampkin Lane,” and sample dialogue from the first three films in the series. (Was this the moment when fan appreciation for Halloween III: Season of the Witch reached critical mass?) The album is strong enough that even people who didn’t attend the convention became fans; its music was later used in the documentaries Halloween: 25 Years of Terror (2006) and Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010).
Cloverfield: Rob’s Party Mix (2008)
Cloverfield, the found footage monster movie homage from producer JJ Abrams and director Matt Reeves, necessarily lacked a musical score. But the opening party sequence was soundtracked with the best hipster music money could buy, from Kings of Leon to Gorillaz to Moby to Of Montreal. Paramount marketed the movie with considerable savvy, launching one of the first “puzzle box” online campaigns since The Blair Witch Project (including MySpace pages for the film’s characters) and releasing “Cloverfield: Rob’s Party Mix” on iTunes.
One reviewer described it, accurately, as a sort of “NOW! That’s What I Call Indie Rock” compilation. Highlights include Coconut Records’ adorable “West Coast,” Spoon’s rocking “The Underdog,” and banger “Fuzz” by Japanese band Mucc (the latter a tip of the hat to the film’s origins). The closing credits piece “ROAR! Cloverfield Overture,” meanwhile, was created by composer Michael Giacchino (The Batman) as a tribute to the Godzilla scores. That terrific theme was eventually released on iTunes as well.
American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014)
After Jessica Lange’s drug-addled performance of “The Name Game” became a viral moment on American Horror Story: Asylum (2012), it was inevitable that series creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk would attempt to replicate its success– especially given that they also co-created Glee. But some felt Freak Show, the polarizing fourth season of AHS, went a little too far, with almost weekly musical numbers in the early episodes.
Lange’s Elsa Mars was the star attraction of the titular show, concluding each one with an anachronistic pop number (the show was set in 1952 Florida by way of Moulin Rouge!). This worked to unforgettable effect with the premiere’s “Life on Mars” and “Edward Mordarke (Part 1)”’s “Gods and Monsters.” But Sarah Paulson’s performance of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal,” as conjoined twins Bette and Dot, garnered mixed notices, and Evan Peters’ attempt at Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” barely registered (I still recall the Entertainment Weekly recap joking that his character Jimmy was “so angry he invents grunge rock”). Honestly, I really enjoyed most of the covers, nearly all of which were released as singles on iTunes.
What really irks me is that, to date, there have never been any soundtrack or score albums for American Horror Story. A label like Death Waltz or Waxworks really needs to get on that.
Black Christmas (2015)
Carl Zittrer’s score for the 1974 slasher classic received a vinyl soundtrack record four decades later. What makes this album so unusual is not just Zittrer’s nearly avante garde compositions, created with strange implements like forks, combs, and screwdrivers scraped across piano strings, but also its format: rather than a series of linear tracks, the record is a creepy sound collage blending score cues with Christmas carols, ringing telephones, and the terrifying sounds of the mysterious “Billy.”
With beautiful artwork by Ghoulish Gary Pullin and informative liner notes by Zittrer, who calls the horror soundtrack “a re-imagined, re-composed, and re-mixed interpretation from Billy’s perspective,” this is a must have for fans of Black Christmas.
The Guest 2 (2022)
Now here’s an oddity– a soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t even exist! Adam Wingard’s cult action-horror film The Guest (2014) won over critics and fans alike, many of whom have been clamoring for a follow-up ever since. While Wingard hasn’t given us that movie–yet–he did release this highly unique “Original Soundtrack” earlier this year.
The painted artwork hints at what the movie would look like, while the compilation has the same eclectic, 80s throwback vibe as the first film’s soundtrack. Wingard himself contributes “Grim Showdown” following his work on the Blair Witch score, along with tracks like Ghost Cop’s “Just Run” and Xander Harris’ “You’ve Got the Armory, I’ve Got the Time.”
Now I can’t wait for Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving: The Album.
