Horror film score

[5] Neil Lerner, in his book Music in the Horror Film, found that stylistically, the genre allowed for greater freedom for composers to experiment with harmony and instrumentation.

[6] Approaches in the 1960s and 1970s included work from Ennio Morricone, who Thrower described as bringing "shuddering, paranoiac quality" based around jazz, electronic effects and "rampant atonal twanging" to films by Dario Argento, Aldo Lado and Lucio Fulci.

[5] A short lived trend in the 1970s was for progressive rock scores in horror films following the release of The Exorcist (1973) with "Tubular Bells".

[5] The shades of progressive rock were also found in other American productions, such as Carpenter's Halloween, with its main theme having the piano tap out five beats to the bar.

[5] Thrower found that by the 1990s, horror film soundtracks were "stuffed with pop and rock in the hope that the album might shift enough units to reach the charts.