Ever since I was a little boy growing up in the brown-tinted era known as the 1970s, one of my guilty pleasures has been scary movies. I clearly remember sitting in front of our (color!) TV in the shag carpeted, wood paneled family room watching a show featuring clips from all sorts old classic scary movies, including Psycho, Halloween and The Omen. Obviously, I HAD to see these movies.

You thought I was kidding about the Family Room?

I’ve written about this before, but excellent blogs including Final Girl and Kindertrauma have helped to bring back some great memories…memories of watching TV; kinda sad now that I think about it.

I also remember seeing the commercial for 1979′s Phantasm.  I didn’t see the film until years later, but just watching the trailer freaked me out. (What’s that flying silver ball with the spikes? Who’s the creepy old tall dude?? Holy crap, that kid is supposed to be safe in bed, but these jawa-looking things start attacking him!!) OK, it looks kinda tame now, but hey, I was 8!

(Man, film trailers back then mentioned the film title A LOT)

Since it’s almost Halloween, I put together a piece of music reminiscent of the scary film music at the time.  Specifically, I was thinking of the minimal scores John Carpenter wrote for most of his own movies. A lot of the films were done on a tight budget, so the themes often used synthesizers rather than full orchestras. I don’t currently have a full orchestra hanging around my studio, so please enjoy the synthy goodness!