The role that music plays in movies is a crucial one. A well-composed theme can build tension to almost unimaginable levels, making you feel like what ever is one screen is going to come out of the shadows and grab you when you're least expecting it. Of all the classic horror themes that have come out of Hollywood over the last few decades, only a few have truly reached a level where they are universally recognised by both music and movie buffs and these are the ones we celebrate below. Beware though, these sounds might haunt your dreams for a many a night to come...



The Fog Theme - John Carpenter

What set John Carpenter apart from most directors of his era was that he more often than not composed the soundtracks and themes to his own movies allowing for a much tighter grip on the nerves of his viewers. The theme song to his 1980 horror movie The Fog clearly shows Carpenter's knack for writing unnerving pieces of music, even if this one couldn't quite repeat the sheer creepiness he came up with two years prior with now classic Halloween theme.

 

Tubular Bells - Mike Oldfield

Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells' wasn't composed with the intention of scaring you witless but that's exactly what happened after its association with one of the cinema's all-time scariest movies, The Exorcist. The song went on to become one of Oldfield's biggest hits of his entire career. Perhaps the scariest fact about the song? Oldfield was only 19 when he wrote it.

 

Jaws Theme - John Williams

du-dun...du-dun...du-DUN...du-DUN...DU-DUN DU-DUN DU-DUN! John Williams earned an Academy Award for composing the iconic Jaws theme, which was named by the American Film Institute as the sixth best score in film history. Never has the music in a movie built tension and suspense so perfectly as with this, so much so that Steven Spielberg has suggested that the movie wouldn't have been half as successful if the score was different.
 

Psycho Theme - Bernard Herrmann

Is there a film score which elicits more dread than Bernard Herrmann's strings-only score to Alfred Hitchcock's classic movie Psycho? Hitchcock began his career working in silent movies and through this gained an innate understanding of the effect that music can have on an audience when used correctly - and never did he do it more effectively than on his collaboration with Bernand Herrmann for Psycho.

Halloween Theme - John Carpenter

Our vote for the creepiest movie theme ever. John Carpenter's 1978 horror flick Halloween was a genre-defining example of what can be done with a small budget, a good story and a crew of like-minded people. Central to the movie's success was the simple piano theme that John Carpenter himself composed, and you know that when you heard it in the film something very bad was about to happen...