There’s something truly special about the bevy of holiday horror films that ride in on the crisp December winter air each year. Just like homemade eggnog that is both dangerous and delicious at the same time, these films descend into our living rooms delivering cheer and terror in equal measure. And while the current list of go-to favorites is long, horror fans are always eager for another chilly delight. Thankfully, there are filmmakers out there like Jeff Ferrell and composer Semih Tareen heeding this eternal call.
For their latest joint venture, Ferrell and Tareen teamed up to create a new holiday horror anthology called HOLIDAY HELL. As a mysterious shopkeeper (portrayed by horror icon Jeffrey Combs) helps a last-minute shopper find the perfect gift, four seemingly disparate holiday tales unfold. Wonderfully weaving these tales of woe together is the music of composer Tareen. An accomplished composer well-versed in the world of horror cinema, Tareen’s music plays off HOLIDAY HELL’s black comedy like a joyous kid on Christmas morning. To celebrate the recent CD release of Tareen’s score, I caught up with him to learn a little bit more about his fascinating dual careers, working with friends, and the joys and challenges of composing for a holiday film.
DG: Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into composing.
Semih Tareen: Yeah, absolutely. So, I just love cinema. And, I’m based in Seattle. If you ever visit Seattle, there is Scarecrow Video, which is one of the largest film archives where you can actually rent. It’s just so fun to be a film lover in this day and age. I’m also originally from Turkey and I moved to the United States in 1990. I studied science and I work in science for my day job. But, I am also a big fan of film music and I’ve always wanted to do film scoring.
So about 20 years ago, I went to the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program. It took about two years and, in order to graduate, we had to compose music for a full orchestra for a short film. We had to record it, master the score, and everything. So I basically studied traditional orchestral film scoring. My mentor there was Hummie Mann. He is a Hollywood composer, but he lives in Seattle. His most famous films are Mel Brooks’ DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT and ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS. I’ve been doing this now for about 20 years and I try to do one feature a year, with HOLIDAY HELL being my last project.
What exactly do you do in the science field?
I’m a virologist by training. I got my Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, but specifically focusing on viruses. And for the last 15 years or so, I’ve been working in biotech. So I work at biotech companies and we’re trying to use viruses to cure cancer and other diseases. I’ve worked on one FDA-approved therapy, and I continue to do that so I can hopefully try to make other FDA-approved therapies that patients can use.
That’s super fascinating. Do you think there’s any crossover with these dual interests?
I think so. I think it comes down to the fundamental love and fascination with horror as a genre.
Even when I do science you know, I love that I’m working with viruses that are dangerous or could be potentially dangerous. I’ll tell you a very short story. When I was a kid in Turkey, I had to go and get the rabies vaccine because several of us children played with a cat that died and the cats were known to have rabies. There was a special rabies hospital back then and it freaked me out because there were all these people who brought their kids over. They were all either bitten or exposed to animals and were there to get rabies shots. And, this was right around the time when Stephen King’s movie CUJO came out.
Then, around the same time, just like COVID today, the AIDS epidemic was starting. So I was a child growing up during the AIDS epidemic. All these headlines about AIDS and deaths, it’s kind of a little similar to today. So, both of those things just really fascinated me and I just wanted to be a part of it. I’m also a huge metalhead. And so it’s the whole triangle—heavy metal, horror films, and science. And not just any science, but virology, you know?
You definitely seem like a person who likes to keep busy! Speaking of busy, tell us a little bit about working on your latest film score for HOLIDAY HELL. How did you get involved and what attracted you to the project?
The movie was Jeff [Ferrell’s] brainchild. Jeff had been wanting to do a horror anthology in the style of CREEPSHOW but based on holidays. And he specifically wanted one of those [segments] to involve a Jewish holiday like Hanukkah, because there aren’t a lot of them out there. Jeff and I met about 11 years ago, when he was a film student at The Seattle Film Institute. He hired me to score his short films back then, and then his feature film as well. So this was his third feature film actually, all of which have been released and they’re all currently in distribution. So, that’s how I got on board. Jeff and I pretty much now have a composer-director working relationship. Of course, not to the same success as Tim Burton and Danny Elfman or anything like that, but the same idea, right? We try to keep working together every time.
Since the film is an anthology, there are these individual segments along with a wraparound segment. How did you approach scoring this unique style of storytelling? Was there anything special you had to do to keep the overall film feeling cohesive?
Yeah, it’s a really good question because the wraparound segment is meant to be the glue of such anthology films. And musically, I had to come up with themes and elements that are unique to each segment, but then also tie everything into the wraparound. Musically, this is most obvious where one of the segments (I won’t give any spoilers) is linked to the wraparound. So thematically, you will actually see those themes used as well in the music.
The winter holidays are so interesting because they have this associated musical palette that kind of goes along with them. Were there any special challenges to scoring a holiday film? Did you feel obligated to use certain instruments or make it sound a certain way?
Only in one segment where there is a killer Santa. Because, you can’t have a holiday horror film without a killer Santa, right? [Laughs] Actor Joel Murray, who is the brother of Bill Murray, plays Santa and he’s phenomenal. If anyone hasn’t heard of him, I recommend they should watch GOD BLESS AMERICA or MAD MEN the television series. He was great in those. So, he plays this killer Santa and naturally, I used some jingle bells there. I used them just to evoke the feeling, but with a psycho killer twist. And then with the Jewish doll segment (just like from the TRILOGY OF TERROR), we have a Jewish doll that’s running around killing people. Over there I used a zither or dulcimer. These are European instruments, again, trying to evoke a little bit of the Golem-style terror.
I also have to ask you about your cameo in the film. It’s not very often that we get to see composers in the actual films they score! What was it like getting out of the studio and lab for a bit to be on set and stretch your acting chops?
That was really, really fun. And, one thing I didn’t mention is, Jeff and I actually produced this film together. This was the first time I helped him produce a film because our budgets kept getting bigger with every movie. And for this one, I just wanted to make sure that we could get “A” names like Jeffrey Combs and Joel Murray. The fact that I produced the film, I was actually much closer to being on set most of the days. As a co-producer, I had to run around and I literally picked up some of the actors from the airport, drove them to their hotels, and things like that.
So I was on set. And I was on set with the amazing Jeffrey Combs. Oh my gosh. We were all like, jaw-dropped star-struck watching him do this amazing performance. And, Jeff has a lot of friends. He used to be in a heavy metal band himself. He doesn’t quite look the part, but he has a lot of friends in the heavy metal circle in Seattle. So, he invited them out because he needed people who looked like cult members. And of course, I happen to look like one of those as well. So I kind of nudged him saying, “Come on, man. Put me in the same scene with Jeffrey Combs. Please?” And luckily, he did.
You’re clearly a big horror fan now, but how did you first fall in love with the genre?
It all started with cartoons, because cartoons freaked me out. I was born in 1976, so I got exposed to a lot of cartoons that were popular in the ’80s. And, cartoon music is just phenomenal. I mean, they used to print these cartoons and they would have full orchestral scores for these cartoons. And some of them would be terrifying! So that’s how it all started. Then, a young kid classic story, I had a grandpa who used to rent Betamax tapes. In Turkey, Betamax was more popular than VHS. So I used to be exposed to all these Betamax horror films at the age of 6, 7, 8. My grandfather didn’t care that I was so young. I remember the first thing he showed me was the movie HOUSE. So at a young age I got exposed. Probably the most terrifying experience was HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. I got to see that as a kid and again, just terrified. Something about that sucked me in. I think one of the reasons I love horror is because it helps me make sense of the world. Honestly, otherwise, things don’t really make any sense.
When you’re composing horror scores, what’s your favorite part of the process?
I actually suffer a lot when I compose. When I’m done, I say, “Oh, fuck that. I’m never going to do this ever again. This is so much work.” But then that feeling goes away. Often I’ll have such an intense schedule that when I’m done, I will do nothing but binge on X-Box games for like three months. But then immediately I start feeling the thirst again. What I love about it most is the composer-director relationship.
For the score for HOLIDAY HELL, it was four weeks and our schedule was that every Sunday, Jeff would come over. And this was with me working full-time during the day. It was all orchestral but made in my studio with my samplers, not a real live orchestra. And, if you’ve studied orchestration, you can kind of do that so it doesn’t sound too much like a synthesizer. So anyways, every Sunday Jeff comes over and I show him all the cues that I completed that week and we talk about it. We geek out about it. And then we go out, have a beer and nachos to celebrate. And, that’s what I love is those Sunday meetings with the director and then seeing his response. That relationship is my favorite part.
HOLIDAY HELL is currently available on VOD. You can also pick up a physical copy of Semih’s score for the film via Howlin’ Wolf Records.
Tags: Hummie Mann, Interviews, Jeff Ferrell, Jeffrey Combs, Joel Murray, Mel Brooks, music, Semih Tareen
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