History of music in thriller films

Friday 13th -1980
The music from Friday 13th was composed by Harry Manfredini and at first the decision from the director was that the music would only to be played alongside with the killer so it would not "manipulate the audience" into thinking the killer was there when they were not. A quote from Manfredini - "There's a scene where one of the girls […] is setting up the archery area of the film. One of the guys shoots an arrow into the target and just misses her. It's a huge scare, but if you notice, there's no music. That was a choice.". He also decided that when something was going to happen, the music would then cut off so that the audience wouldn't expect it, and relax so the scare would be so much more frightening and effective when it did happen. Manfredini was inspired by the film Jawswhere, as the shark is not seen for most of the film and the music appears when it is present.

Silence of the Lambs - 1991
Some of the songs in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) are:
"American Girl" written by Tom Petty
"Alone" written by C. Newman and G. Lewis
"Sunny Day" written by T. Ottaviano
"Real Men" written by B. Licher, M. Erskine, J. Long
"Goldberg Variations" written by Johann Sebastian Bach
"Goodbye Horses" written by W. Garvey
"Hip Priest" written by M.E. Smith, M. Riley, S. Hanley, C. Scanlon, P. Hanley
"Lanmò Nan Zile A" written by Les Freres Parent

Unlike many thriller films such as the other ones we have researched the music about, there is not a constant composer throughout the film. Instead, there are tracks that are freaky or suggest a mood at the time of the music.

Psycho - 1960
The famous music from Alfred Hitchcock's thriller, Psycho, has been voted the scariest movie theme tune by viewers! and was composed by Bernard Herrmann.
The music was only made up of strings!
Unusual for a thriller at the time, it used ONLY the string section of the orchestra. The violin music is described as 'screeching' and is heard during the famous shower scene (which originally was meant to be silent) is one of the famous moments in film score history.

The Exorcist - 1973
Originally, Schifrin had written 6 minutes of music for the initial film trailer but audiences were reportedly too scared by its combination of sights and sounds.
Warner Bros. executives told Friedkin to instruct Schifrin to tone it down with softer music, but Friedkin did not relay the message.

Halloween - 1978
One major reason for the success of Halloween is the moody musical score, particularly the main theme. Lacking a symphonic soundtrack, the film's score consists of a piano melody played, composed by director John Carpenter. Critic James Berardinelli calls the score "relatively simple and unsophisticated", but admits that "Halloween's music is one of its strongest assets".
The theme music for Halloween has been posted on a previous blog, it shows that simplicity is sometimes the most effective way to create suspense. Only consisting of a few chords, the soundtrack is overall really effective and the simple piano instrumental piece over the top works extremely well.