If you didn’t hear The Cranberries song in your head when you read the headline of this column, you might also not think of the Dokken “Dream Warriors” song if I mention Nightmare on Elm Street 3.
That’s OK. Horror movies aren’t meant to sell music. They’re meant to sell characters, and, if luck and some decent directing pan out, a compelling story. TV networks will spend a lot of energy promoting horror films this month. Like the movies themselves, their well-known songs take years to establish a legacy.
However, some of my favorite songs are associated with horror films, or their concepts. While some are not really musical themes — like Jaws, Psycho, The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby or the creepy piano of The Exorcist — full songs can be as creepy as any repetitive music or memorable scenes or endings.
Many music fans remember the Vinnie Vincent Invasion for destroying expensive guitars in music videos or being Vinnie’s post-Kiss failed experiment, but “Love Kills” helped promote “Nightmare on Elm Street IV: The Dream” and helped launch the career of Mark Slaughter as a vocalist.
“The Lost Boys” is not a horror movie in the bloodiest tradition, but its vampire theme and brat-pack cast that includes Jason Patric, Corey Haim, Kiefer Sutherland, Jami Gertz, Corey Feldman, Dianne Wiest and Alex Winter make it the most hip Halloween film I can name. Gerald McMann’s “Cry Little Sister,” and “Lost in the Shadows” from Lou Gramm of Foreigner both came from this soundtrack, as did Echo & the Bunnymen’s cover of the The Doors’ “People Are Strange.”
At the other end of the popularity spectrum were the truly B-list horror films. Even the least known of these had at least one sequel to try to get it right.
“Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers” produced a few good songs on its soundtrack, include Anvil’s “Straight Between the Eyes.” This soundtrack is one measure of a true horror movie geek. If you know this song, you watched a lot of late-night HBO in the 1980s.
Some songs sound almost too fun and upbeat to be horror themes. Kulu Shakar’s cover of Deep Purple’s “Hush” for the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” soundtrack is way too much fun for the genre, as you can picture a band smiling while playing the song — unless it’s supposed to be a maniacal smile, maybe.
The soundtrack doesn’t get any darker with Offspring and Type O Negative songs. Only L7’s “This Ain’t the Summer of Love” salvages some anger.
Speaking of “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” the soundtrack for “Scream” isn’t much better, with the exception of including the Alice Cooper classic “School’s Out.” It’s like all 1990s horror producers either plugged in the so-called alternative blandness of the era or relied on screamer “killing music” to get their points across.
As there aren’t really radio stations promoting songs and films together anymore —with the possible exceptions of the Disney realm — we might never return to an era where familiar choruses or anthems are associated with films or famous scenes. In fact, famous scenes or lines seem to be dying off as well.
As someone who was born on Friday, July 13, 1972 myself, and whose first five months of his life spell both his name and his movie namesake (JASON = July, August, September, October, November), you’d think I was destined to love the horror film genre. Yet it was really the 80s hair-band hits that pulled me into them.
I’ll miss the ways music and film used to be combined.
Contact Jason W. Brooks
at jbrooks@newtondailynews.com