FRIDAY THE 13TH: Still Haunting Four Decades On
ParamountIt’s easy for a film score to go unnoticed or forgotten by the average cinema goer, which is why it truly is special when a certain score or theme transcends the movie itself and becomes a standalone staple of popular culture. In some rare cases, it has occurred where a film score has entered into this pop culture and certain people are aware of the score and its significance without having even seen the film it features in.
The most well known example of this is undoubtedly John Williams’s theme for Steven Spielberg’s movie, Jaws. Arguably helping cement the inception of the blockbuster, Williams’s original pitch was nearly laughed out of the room – despite its partial inspiration by Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – after he showed Spielberg the ‘E-F-E-F’ beat on the piano. Those notes ended up becoming one of the most powerful motifs of cinema history – a motif used to induce fear, dread and gloom. Effectively, Williams crafted an evocative character theme for the shark itself with that now iconic melody used to connote how a viewer should feel about the shark.
It’s also interesting to note other memorable and recognisable film scores often come from classic horror movies. Psycho, Halloween and The Exorcist, to name a few, all feature themes many people could associate with the corresponding film: Psycho’s high-pitched strings, the 5/4 signature of Halloween and the tubular bells in The Exorcist all work to achieve an unsettling tone or to increase the shock value of the scene and film. Fear is a human emotion which is hard to shake; scary films people view as children are likely not to be forgotten as opposed to a comedy or a romance. Harry Manfredini’s score for Friday the 13th also remains a particularly unique piece of music that continues to be as effective now as it was forty years ago.
Unlike Williams, who has a vast catalogue of stunning and famous movie scores under his belt, Manfredini has only really worked on Friday the 13th, alongside a couple of smaller projects. That’s not to say his work is any less iconic, however. In fact, Jaws and Friday the 13th almost find themselves inexplicably linked in their simplicity and effectiveness. While Jaws consists of the ‘E-F’ beat, Friday the 13th is notorious for its use of two spoken syllables, ‘ki’ and ‘ma’. Usually mistaken as ‘ch, ch, ch, ah, ah, ah’, Manfredini has claimed the sounds are ‘ki, ki, ki, ma, ma, ma’, with them being directly lifted and shortened from a quote towards the end of the film: “Kill her, mommy!”
‘Ki, ki, ki, ma, ma, ma’ is a theme used similarly to that of Jaws, in the sense that it is a piece of music used to identify the threat and instill a sense of dread in the audience. It also remains a character theme, despite technically shifting to a different character in later installments of the franchise, as it signifies the presence of the murderer. In the case of the original film, it is of course Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) and not Jason – a subversion of expectations regarding the identity of the killer, not dissimilar to that of Psycho and its use of Norman Bates. Beyond it being particularly creepy, Manfredini’s choice of inspiration for his score signifies character as an important factor in the building of something iconic.
Psycho seems to be a clear and further inspiration for Manfredini. During the climactic beach fight between Mrs Voorhees and Alice (Adrienne King), Manfredini drops the ‘ki, ki, ki, ma, ma, ma’ theme in favour of a more intense rhythm; one full of high-pitched and sharp strings that reek of Bernard Herrmann’s previous work in the Hitchcock classic. This change in pace is partially there to increase the scene’s intensity, but it’s also to underline the change within the character of Mrs Voorhees. Rather than remaining in the shadows, stalking and murdering teens through various POV camera shots, she is now out in the open with her identity and subsequent threat exposed. The change in music represents this with a sense of urgency.
On the contrary, most modern film scores are noticeably generic. For example, it’s hard to pull out any memorable beats or themes from any of the Marvel movies – aside from Alan Silvestri’s main Avengers theme, of course. Music tends to have become mostly relegated to the background, an afterthought addition to the film rather than something intertwined with the creative process from the start, emphasising a lack of care for that particular part of filmmaking. Scoring seems mainly to have lost all connection with the character and stories it’s telling, instead serving as a bridge to keep the scene flowing and to express an explicit emotion. You’d be hard pressed to recognise a score or theme from popular films of recent times, such as Little Women or Marriage Story, both of which were actually Oscar nominated for Best Score. Even movies and sequels, such as Toy Story 4, have scores that are only playing on the nostalgia of successful music from decades ago, offering up nothing refreshing or new alongside.
This is where the talents of such composers as John Williams and Harry Manfredini are sorely missed. It is a commendable feat that riffs surrounding the utterances ‘ki, ki, ki, ma, ma, ma’ can evoke such a strong feeling of agitation and trepidation in addition to being able to insinuate a thread of story throughout. The music of horror films may seem plain as a consequence of the fact they have one goal: to cause fright by intensifying the atmosphere. But the most successful, most memorable and most long-lived scores have in fact gone beyond this and it’s surprising to note that it is the genre of horror that has continued to stand out the most.