From The Archives: Jerry Goldsmith's Horror Music

A look back at a master of horror at work...

Note: I originally wrote this feature for issue 48 of Scream Magazine, and later published it on my website. I thought I’d pull it out for an “on this day” remembrance, as on June 6th, 1976, “The Omen” was released, a movie propelled to stardom by Jerry Goldsmith’s music.

Jerry Goldsmith may not be a household name, but he is still remembered with great fondness amongst genre fans, particularly those who love horror. For decades he thrilled and terrified us with incredible music for malevolent spirits, acidic creatures from outer space, and even the antichrist himself. But perhaps the sheer amount of quality music provided by the "white ponytail" is even unknown to many horror fans, so come on a journey to explore all things Goldsmith.

Jerrald King Goldsmith was born in Los Angeles in 1929 and began playing piano at an early age, before being tutored by Polish concert pianist Jakob Gimpel. He soon studied under Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and would go on to attend the University of Southern California inspired by the music of Miklós Rózsa for Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound". Goldsmith was able to study under Rózsa but soon dropped out, finding himself working as a typist in the music department at CBS. From there he began to write scores for the radio shows being produced there, and soon found himself writing for television, including one of the most notable genre television shows ever produced: "The Twilight Zone".

Goldsmith composed music for "The Twilight Zone" between 1959 and 1965, his first episode being the first season episode "The Four Of Us Are Dying". Further episodes included 1960's "Nervous Man In A $4 Room" and 1961's "Dust" and the celebrated episode "The Invaders". Around the same time, Goldsmith was also composing music for another anthology series full of scares and shocks. "Boris Karloff's Thriller" ran for two seasons on the NBC network, and during those two seasons, music by Goldsmith was featured in eighteen episodes.

By this time, Goldsmith was also scoring feature films, with his early efforts being westerns such as "Black Patch" (1957) and "Face Of A Fugitive" (1959). While he didn't purposely score his first horror film until the late 1960s, a film he scored just after the beginning of the decade would later appear on the soundtrack of one of his most notorious projects. "Freud" (1962) was a biographical picture about Sigmund Freud, the Austrian father of psychoanalysis, and actually garnered Goldsmith his first Academy Award nomination. However, music from the film would eventually wind up in a film in the late 1970s, which we'll discuss in time.

His first actual effort for a horror film was in 1966 with "Seconds", a John Frankenheimer tale that straddles science fiction and horror in a tale of paranoia and mysterious organisations. From there he began to rise in stature with music for films such as "Planet of the Apes" (1968) and "Patton" (1970). More opportunities in the horror genre came in 1971, with "The Mephisto Waltz". A mystery about Satanists based on the book by Fred Mustard Stewart, unsurprisingly coming not long after the sensation of "Rosemary's Baby" (1968), the film gave Goldsmith something to get his teeth into. What resulted was an incredibly unsettling score that would not only act as a precursor to some of his later horror work but also as an illustration of his love of experimenting and the avant-garde. Textures reminiscent of classical composers Bela Bartok and Krystof Penderecki (which would later be heard in 1973's "The Exorcist") immediately throw the viewer off balance, and the music is uncomfortable to listen to even now. Some of this is contrasted with a score that, while not being necessarily lighter, is more melodic, especially with Goldsmith using Franz Liszt's four compositions between 1859 and 1885 known as the Mephisto Waltzes. It remains an early highlight and an example of Goldsmith's unerring ability to terrify.

1972 brought two more horror scores that showed Goldsmith's suitability for the genre. "The Other" is a psychological yarn about a pair of identical twins with a secret, and the music is curious, quite lovely in places and interestingly bucolic, establishing the relationship between the twins before everything goes downhill. When it does, Goldsmith uses variations on what has come before integrated with more traditionally scary elements, leading to a fairly creepy conclusion. "Crawlspace" was a television movie about a middle-aged couple who found a young boy living in their crawlspace, and attempt to adapt him to society. Goldsmith's main title is another melodic piece, with lovely woodwinds and guitar bringing a curious feel, which, similarly to "The Other", continues by interpolating these pieces with more appropriate horror elements.

Another film that strayed close to the horror line while maintaining science fiction themes was "The Reincarnation of Peter Proud" (1975). A supernatural thriller about the truth of the afterlife, Goldsmith's score was bold and haunting, with a beautiful main theme coupled with electronics, something that he would be known for in his later years and especially his next horror score in 1976. It would be a bonafide blockbuster, a huge success critically and commercially, and Goldsmith's music would instantly become shorthand for the concept of devil children in popular culture. The film was of course "The Omen".

"The Omen" was a tall tale of biblical proportions. Gregory Peck headed the film as Robert Thorn, the US Ambassador to Rome who is ecstatic when his wife gives birth to a wonderfully healthy baby boy. The family and Damien move to England when Thorn is made the ambassador to the UK, and that's when things start to go wrong, with suicidal nannies, angry baboons, and the sudden appearance of a vicious dog. Yep, it turns out Damien isn't Thorn's son but actually the son of the devil, the "antichrist". Thus began a desperate struggle to protect him from those who would seek to destroy him, which includes spectacular deaths through the medium of plate glass windows.

And this is where Jerry Goldsmith came in, with a little ditty called 'Ave Satani'. Basically a black mass for the devil, it opens the film and sets the stall out for how the picture is going to go, and it is utterly terrifying. Built on a powerful low-register melody, Goldsmith designed the song after the Gregorian chants from the 9th and 10th centuries with the lyrics translated into Latin. They read:

Sanguis bibimus (We drink the blood)

Corpus edimus (We eat the body)

Tolle corpus Satani (Raise the body of Satan)

Ave (Hail)

Ave, ave Versus Christus! (Hail, hail Antichrist!)

Ave, ave Versus Christus! (Hail, hail Antichrist!)

Ave, ave Versus Christus! (Hail, hail Antichrist!)

Ave Satani! (Hail Satan!)

The words are creepy even when read, so you can imagine the intensity when the full-blooded male choir chant it in anger and fury, and of course, Goldsmith uses it throughout the picture. One way to make it build and sometimes keep it fresh and as subtle as it can be is the use of phrases from the song quietly, as whispers, building slowly and incorporating more of the song and expanding into a full, terrifying statement. He also uses a brief seven-note motif as connective tissue, often for a sense of foreboding before launching into 'Ave Satani'.

At the same time, Goldsmith also created another theme to counteract this, a love theme for the Thorn family, for the relationship between Robert and his wife Kathy as well as between the parents and the child. It's a beautiful theme for strings, quite wistful, and contains an innocence that belies the darker tale underneath, perfect for its contrast against 'Ave Satani', and the juxtaposition that results. A perfect example of this is in the iconic safari park scene, where Kathy takes Damien to Windsor Safari Park. As they arrive and everything is fine, the love theme plays and they initially have fun, but when the animals start reacting to Damien the darkness of 'Ave Satani' envelopes the soundscape, coming to a head when the baboons attack the car, recognising the pure evil inside the child, even when the theme earlier told us how innocent he is.

The film is full of set pieces that provide ample space for Goldsmith to go crazy with 'Ave Satani', most of which end up with some fairly gruesome deaths. There's the storm scene with Patrick Troughton's priest, who after warning Robert of the true identity of Damien ends up with a lightning rod through his torso, and the spectacular fall of Kathy over the landing, complete with goldfish. The song gets a lengthy workout in a sequence where Robert and photographer Jennings get caught in a cemetery by a pack of wild dogs after discovering the true identity of Damien's mother, but its most insane reading is when Robert dispatches evil nanny Mrs. Baylock using a carving fork. Here the choir is male and female, alternating chanting and shrieking as she's put out of her misery and it's quite interesting to see Gregory Peck, one of the greatest actors that ever lived, in the middle of it stabbing a woman in the head with a fork.

"The Omen" was a massive success for everyone involved, especially Jerry Goldsmith, who received his one and only Academy Award for the film. It was one of the few times horror as a genre has really been recognised by the Academy, certainly when it comes to horror scoring, and helped put Goldsmith on the map as well as open up the path for tons more "devil child" pictures. Goldsmith would eventually return to Damien's world in 1978, but first he had a ventriloquist's dummy and some killer bees to deal with. "Magic" was a picture about a ventriloquist named Corky who murders on behalf of Fats, his dummy who is a manifestation of his "other" personality, which is severely damaged.

For "Magic", Goldsmith wrote a curious score rooted both in tragedy and the absurdity of the situation, the latter represented through harmonica. The film features a beautiful warm love theme for strings and piano that, while soaring and inspirational, still interpolates the harmonica, leaving no doubt that something like a relationship is a situation "Fats" cannot accept. A refrain for Fats echoes throughout the score, adding to the sense of desperation and inevitably that comes from Corky's fractured mind. Together with "Magic" was "The Swarm", a new disaster film directed by Irwin Allen, producer of "The Towering Inferno" and "The Poseidon Adventure", that had African killer bees invading the United States. Universally recognised as one of the worst films of its ilk, the film nevertheless is made more palatable by Goldsmith's larger-than-life score, climaxing with a rousing end title cue that has gone on to be a beloved work in the composer's repertoire.

At the same time, Goldsmith continued his work for the Antichrist in the inevitable sequel "Damien: Omen II". Now a teenager, Damien is at military school with his cousin after being taken in by Robert Thorn's brother Richard and is beginning to have an understanding of his power, if not his identity. However, he has many disciples around him including his military leader and family members, as well as a murderous raven. Goldsmith paints with somewhat harsher colours for the sequel and it makes for a thrilling revisit, with a new title theme that remixes 'Ave Satani' and an increased electronic presence, including a devilish synthesiser motif for the raven and its exploits. There are some wonderful and bright melodic moments, such as the mesmerising cue for the snowmobile racing at cousin Mark's birthday party, but much of the score is etched in haunting tones as Damien finds out who he really is.

Like with the first film, there is a central scene where the truth about Damien is revealed through the visual of his 666 birthmark on his scalp, thankfully while cutting his own hair and not on an impromptu visit to Supercuts. As he sees the mark of the devil, Goldsmith's choir kicks in, underlining the critical moment and kicking into 'Ave Satani' as a terrified Damien runs to wherever he can be alone to deal with his newfound information. It's not easy to find out you're the son of the devil. Things get worse when Mark figures it out, leading to a confrontation between the pair that inevitably ends in Mark's death and another round of 'Ave Satani', although Goldsmith's initial treatment before the final act is quite wonderfully tense and emotional. The ending is wonderful, with Damien standing outside a burning museum now fully aware of his power, with 'Ave Satani' playing in its original form with a huge climactic emphasis on the "Satani! Satani!" section before segueing into the sequel's new version.

And after that, where else can you go but space? 1979 was a landmark year for Goldsmith, where he composed two space-bound scores that are still amongst his most cherished works today. But while "Star Trek - The Motion Picture" was about conquering the fear of the unknown, "Alien" was about not getting murdered by the unknown. "Alien" was a milestone, and with H.R. Giger creating the defining image of an extra-nasty extra-terrestrial, Goldsmith's haunting score told you what an alien world actually sounded like. For the score the composer brought in some curious instruments such as the serpent and the didjeridu, as well as the Echoplex tape delay machine which he had used on his well-received score for the war movie "Patton" (1970). Goldsmith used a bed of strings and a conch shell to create a unique sound field which he then ran through the Echoplex, with the resulting reverberations being the alien wind sound used to such devastatingly terrifying effect in the film.

Ironically, this would help the score become a bone of contention between Goldsmith and director Ridley Scott. Goldsmith originally intended the score to be much more romantic and traditional in its opening act, before descending into madness as the alien began its rampage. However, Scott wanted alien sounds to appear with the opening frames of the film and asked Goldsmith to re-record some cues, as well as placing them around the film in editing himself. What emerged was a hybrid of sorts, with Goldsmith's fantastic music cut up and rearranged around the film by Ridley Scott, with some pieces replaced entirely, with music from Goldsmith's aforementioned score to Freud as well as classical composer Howard Hanson's "Symphony No. 2".

What was amazing is that the final film's music was still absolutely terrifying, a tribute to Goldsmith's sheer inspiration. Interestingly, his music would continue to appear throughout the series, both in recurring themes ("Alien: Resurrection" (1997), "Alien: Covenant" (2017)) and taken directly from the soundtrack ("Aliens" (1986)). Following "Alien", Goldsmith made his final contribution to the world of the Antichrist with 1981's "The Final Conflict". Now featuring a grown-up Damien (played by Sam Neill) angling for the destruction of Christianity and any possible threats towards him, "The Final Conflict" had a much grander feel, abandoning the esoteric chants of the first two films for a more epic confrontation of good versus evil.

The adult Damien receives a fully-blown high choral theme, much more sinister than terrifying and somewhat seductive, more befitting the nature of Damien's self, although it still stands pretty high in the "making your hands on the back of your neck stand up" stakes. Opposing this is another choral cue, one for the powers of good known as 'The Second Coming'. It's a stunning cue that harks back to the times of biblical epics, with a gigantic chorus that is scoring the literal second coming of Jesus (Christ, not Franco), which is used incredibly in the finale of the film where a vision of Jesus does appear. Seriously. No, I'm not joking. It's an amazing score, the best in the series, and Goldsmith really went out on a high. Sorry, "Omen IV"? Never heard of it.

The 1980s was an incredibly fertile period for Goldsmith and heralded some of his most beloved scores. 1982 saw him create a wonderfully creepy yet beautiful score for Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg's "Poltergeist", while 1983 saw him follow in the footsteps of Bernard Herrmann with "Psycho II", as well as returning to an old stomping ground with "Twilight Zone: The Movie", which began his amazing collaboration with director Joe Dante. Dante and Goldsmith's next project was their most fruitful, an anarchic monster movie perfect for the counter-culture era that was emerging, and another way for Steven Spielberg to let loose his own dark side.

"Gremlins" was an ingenious story about adorable furry creatures that turned into scaly nasty critters, and Goldsmith scored this dichotomy using more orchestral colours for the "mogwai", including star Gizmo, and synthesised tones for the gremlins themselves. Centring on Gizmo, Goldsmith created a simple but wonderfully innocent and charming melody for the creature to hum, but which could also be incorporated into the music as a motif. He gave the gremlins a wild and crazy theme known as 'The Gremlin Rag' played for synthesiser that matched the wild cat howls he inserted in the score, making a theme that was suitably anarchic and hilarious.

Other 80's scores included the odd and heavily electronic "Link" (1986), the sequel "Poltergeist II: The Other Side" (1986), underwater sci-fi adventure "Leviathan" (1989), and another Dante collaboration, "The 'Burbs" (1989). No matter their budgets, quality, or prestige, Goldsmith's commitment to genre films was always second to none and he always produced excellent scores for them. The 1990s began with the composer reprising his music for mogwai in "Gremlins 2: The New Batch" (1990) and continued with American neo-giallo "Basic Instinct" (1992), to which he contributed a superb score, the remake of "The Vanishing" (1993), and "Jaws with lions" picture The "Ghost and the Darkness" (1996). His best genre work of the decade came at the end of it, with a pair of updates of two classic horror films, "The Mummy" and "The Haunting" (both 1999).

"The Mummy" is a rousing score that reflects the film's more adventurous tone, mixing horror with the action of the Indiana Jones series. Goldsmith's music for the evil Imhotep is wonderful, with huge brass strokes representing the sheer power and inevitability of the creature and his quest, and it's an exquisite score that is perhaps better than the film it belongs to, which is something you can say about a lot of Goldsmith's work and especially "The Haunting". A remake of the 1963 Robert Wise picture, the film is a dire update that replaces the atmosphere and tension of the original with CGI effects, however Goldsmith's score is truly sumptuous. A score as labyrinthine as the house itself, it's also as full of emotion and intrigue as its walls and slowly unfolds itself to present the horror and the manifestation of the truth, with striking intensity from the composer before ending with a stunningly beautiful end credit cue.

Goldsmith's final horror film was his third collaboration with director Paul Verhoeven and another update of a classic tale, in this case, H.G. Wells' "The Invisible Man". "Hollow Man" starred Kevin Bacon as a scientist who discovered the ability to make himself invisible, but was soon driven to madness and murder. Goldsmith contributed an atmospheric score, with an ethereal main title and some thrilling traditional horror action music with some pounding percussion and some wonderfully shrieking moments for the climax.

Unfortunately, "Hollow Man" was one of Goldsmith's final set of scores, and he sadly passed away in 2004. However, he is as popular as ever with film and music fans, and his music is constantly being reissued and reappraised, with the latest being a lavish four-disc vinyl set of his score to "Alien". And with his music still featuring in the "Alien" universe, as well as being performed as part of the "Star Trek" universe, his creativity and sheer brilliance in every genre will shine bright long past any of our lives.