In the pantheon of horror film music, Harry Manfredini’s score to Sean S. Cunningham’s 1980 slasher classic FRIDAY THE 13th is very much like the film itself. It’s not especially flashy, it doesn’t go for the spectacular grooves that its contemporaries did, but it’s supremely effective without really calling huge attention to itself. And by the end, at least one part will be echoing around in your head so intensely it’ll cause madness.
Near the end of the 1970s, the world of horror had been shocked by the explosion of John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1975), and not only the film but the fierce electronic score that had been composed by the director himself. Carpenter had many influences including the music of Goblin in Dario Argento’s films such as DEEP RED (1975). At the time of HALLOWEEN, cinema was still reeling from the effects of another horror film with a strong musical core: Steven Spielberg’s JAWS (1975), which had a supremely effective John Williams score that also used the tropes that would become hallmarks of the slasher genre; the POV shots of the killer, in this case, the shark, along with an easily identifiable theme (of course, the slasher tropes themselves came from the gialli of Bava and Argento et al). And when the legend of Jason Voorhees and FRIDAY THE 13th erupted from Camp Crystal Lake, it immediately created its own unique sound that would be further plagiarized and parodied as the slasher became more and more popular and commercially successful.
In contrast to Carpenter’s more DIY approach, Harry Manfredini went through education and studied musical theory, with a short career in teaching music before composing. For the tale of a bloodthirsty mother murdering camp counsellors as revenge for her son’s death, Manfredini was allowed a small orchestra consisting of thirteen musicians on brass and strings, including himself performing on synthesisers, piano, and percussion. The composer also performed the vocal aspects of the score, in particular, the iconic phrase for Mrs Voorhees that has become the core musical motif of the entire franchise.
Manfredini was influenced by the avant-garde work of Polish composer Krystof Penderecki, whose music had already previously appeared in THE EXORCIST, and Williams’ JAWS. The reveal of Betsy Palmer’s Mrs Voorhees as the killer doesn’t come until the climax of the film, so Cunningham and Manfredini needed to musically identify her during the POV scenes, similar to how the main theme and POV is the presence of the shark in JAWS. The problem was that they needed an idea like the shark theme, something short and simple but which had an immediate impact that they could thematically attach to the killer.
“So I’m watching the film,” explained Manfredini to author J. Blake Fichera in his excellent book SCORED TO DEATH, “and thinking, ‘What sound am I going to make?’ And that’s when I came to the final scene, where Betsy Palmer’s mouth is going, ‘Kill her, Mommy.’ So I took the ‘ki’ sound from the word ‘kill’ and the ‘ma’ sound from the word ‘Mommy,’ I said them into a microphone and we ran it through a gizmo, and it was spooky as hell and it worked.”
The motif is the first musical idea you hear in the film, which immediately establishes not only the tone but also starts to condition you to associate it with the POV and the deaths. From that, as soon as you hear it throughout the film, it’s able to set you on edge and it makes the film more unpredictable and subsequently more unsettling. Its versatility, especially in not being a melodic motif, also means that it works well with Manfredini’s disquieting underscore, which happily wears its influences on its sleeve.
Of course, like JAWS, the music owes a lot to Bernard Herrmann’s great PSYCHO (1960) score, which at that time was only twenty years earlier. Manfredini’s main title cue seems to have fun with this, its fast-paced sawing strings very much like the opening credits to Alfred Hitchcock’s picture, with the “Ki Ki Ma Ma” battling chugging brass, and the piercing violins that recall stabbing knives, a device Herrmann used to genius effect in the famous shower scene. “It does sound like PSYCHO,” Manfredini said, “because first of all, that’s a good thing. If you’re going to sound like Bernard Herrmann, you’re probably on your way to doing a good thing.”
Manfredini was also influenced by one of the great horror composers, Jerry Goldsmith, and specifically his score to the 1978 medical thriller COMA, directed by JURASSIC PARK author Michael Crichton. “I really enjoyed the movie a lot,” Manfredini said, “and I like that score a lot. So a lot of the ideas and things that I got, I also got from listening to COMA.” COMA has a similar impressionistic approach, playing with mood and tone, and Manfredini beautifully included its disconcerting effect in his score. “It is a combination of a whole bunch of things, it’s not just one thing. You steal from a lot of places, but you make it something unto yourself.”
FRIDAY THE 13TH is absolutely the sum of all its parts, and with these interpreted through Manfredini’s obvious prism of talent, it makes for an enthralling and nailbiting experience. The composer would go on to score seven of the subsequent eleven sequels, as well as the recent video game, and also worked with directors such as Wes Craven, Steve Miner, and Robert Kurtzman, as well as maintaining a relationship with Cunningham into the 2000s. His work has also been extremely popular on vinyl, with a “blood-filled” edition of the first score often selling for several hundred dollars.
Manfredini’s work in the genre easily affords him a place in the horror hall of fame, and while his career speaks for itself, it’s still that first FRIDAY THE 13TH score that remains the touchstone and will continue to do so as long as the franchise continues. Next time you’re on a walk in the woods, stop and look around, take in the sights.
Just get ready to run when you hear “Ki Ki Ma Ma”…
Tags: Friday the 13th, Harry Manfredini, Horror, music
No Comments