Rock Songs That Defined These Iconic Horror Movies

What's a horror movie without its music? Yes, scary movies can command audiences with silent sequences and ambient sound, but there's nary a frightful flick out there that doesn't have at least a halfway decent soundtrack. And, with apologies to classical aficionado Hannibal Lecter, the reigning musical genre of horror simply has to be rock 'n' roll. Done right, the audacious, authority-defying nature of a good rock song can easily come to define its attached horror movie. At the heights of such an artistic relationship between song and film, one simply can't be fully enjoyed without the other.

Think about it: Can you really have a modern werewolf movie without "Bad Moon Rising" playing at some point? Or is it really a viewing of Stephen King's "Pet Sematary" without the Ramones track of the same name playing over the credits? Heck, we'll bet that even Dr. Lecter would have jammed out to "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" if he had managed to get his hands on a tape of the Blue Öyster Cult song or the "Halloween" movie in which it played — at least, so long as we can assume no one else was watching him enjoy something other than classical music.

Sure, the Ramones are a legendary punk band, but harsh tunes and bad attitudes don't exactly translate to record sales. So, "Pet Sematary," which played over the credits of the 1989 movie of the same name and appeared on the band's "Brain Drain" album, is one of only a few major Ramones hits. Well, it was a hit in the commercial sense, at least — the song was nominated for Worst Original Song at the 1990 Razzies.

Whether or not you like the track, it's hard to deny the song is an integral part of the film, especially considering director Mary Lambert was a close friend of songwriter Dee Dee Ramone. "I really liked the Ramones' vibe," she told Tidal. "I liked putting that vibe in the movie ... The subtext of 'Pet Sematary' is that it was a really dark party." That sort of gallows humor was well supplied by the Ramones.

Also, the band met with none other than horror great Stephen King, who penned the original "Pet Sematary" novel. They dined in King's hometown of Bangor, Maine, though there's some confusion as to precisely where and when they sat down together. Marky Ramone, by then un-fired from the band, said they dined at King's home, though King called that nonsense. As he told Rolling Stone, "I said to my publisher, 'This story about them coming to my house is total bulls****.' But I also said, 'Don't change a f****g word.'" King knows something about the power of a good story, after all.

Few movies get that unique mélange of punk, comedy, and terror as right as "Return of the Living Dead" did in 1985. It's scary, yes — the Tarman zombie will haunt dreams for generations — but there's also an underlying grunge and goofiness perfectly suited to the genre, so long as you don't take yourself or horror movies too seriously. And while you might know them for "Goo Goo Muck," this aesthetic is also what makes the Cramps and their "Surfin' Dead" track the perfect song to join in the fun. It comes in as a group of cartoonish punks have just encountered freshly reanimated zombies — they were partying in a graveyard, of course — and are fleeing the undead horde clamoring for brains.

The whole punk aesthetic neatly links this move and the Cramps, who had already established themselves as creepy, weird, and goth by the 1970s, not to mention fairly unhinged in their live shows — pretty much everything "Return of the Living Dead" was going for. Beyond that, both the band and the movie exemplify a heightened sense of camp. The film's zombies, for example, are terrifying but also kind of goofy, not unlike the morbid but winking song, which refers to a groovy group of the dead and warns "you square brains out there better beware." As for "Return of the Living Dead," you may call it gross and you may call it silly, but no one can accuse it or the Cramps of being square.

With a name like "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," you might expect this song from Blue Öyster Cult to pop up in a horror movie sooner or later. Indeed, it does, and in 1978's "Halloween," one of the classics of the genre. The tune, which is among those '70s hits still earning a head-turning amount of money, pops up relatively early in the film, when Jamie Lee Curtis' character, Laurie Strode, is riding around with her friend. This is before the masked Michael Myers wreaks havoc on their sleepy town and its surprisingly defensive babysitters (well, at least Strode acquits herself well). Here, the two young women are chilling out while driving and discussing their babysitting plans for the evening. During all this, the Blue Öyster Cult song plays on the radio, presaging the night's bloody events as Myers makes his slasher film debut.

On the first watch-through, you may not even catch it, but perhaps you get a certain sense of unease as the 1976 hit floats in on the car radio. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is an unsettling song all on its own and, to that end, has become not just a defining moment in establishing the dread of "Halloween," but other horror films, too. It's used over the opening credits of the 1994 TV miniseries "The Stand," based on Stephen King's apocalyptic horror novel, while it also pops up in "Zombieland," "The Frighteners," "Scream," "X," and more.

No one really accused "An American Werewolf in London" of understatement. Scary? Showcasing groundbreaking practical effects? Surprisingly fun? Sure, but any pretense of subtlety is lost when you read the title. It's practically all there: An American tourist is bitten by a mysterious beast out on the moors, is transported to London, promptly turns into a werewolf, and begins rampaging. There are many emotional beats — the bitten man, David Kessler, isn't exactly happy about the whole werewolf thing, and neither are his victims who are literally haunting him — but you're unlikely to miss out on nuance.

That includes the soundtrack, which features a bevy of on-the-nose references to the moon, such as multiple versions of "Blue Moon," "Werewolves of London," and "Bad Moon Rising." It's that last track, and specifically the original version by Creedence Clearwater Revival that we'll be playing with other 1969 hits until we physically can't anymore, that pops up right before the most famous moment of the film. The song plays as a bored and anxious David tries to occupy himself in an empty apartment. Its ominous lyrics and oddly buoyant tune only cut out right before David changes into a monster for the first time, with Rick Baker's masterful special effects on display as the camera unflinchingly shows the young man's agonizing, bone-crunching transformation. At that point, it's hard to hear "Bad Moon Rising" again without thinking of this film and this infamous sequence in particular.

Given how horror movies often hinge on eye-catching aesthetics and heightened drama, it's unsurprising that glam metal eventually got involved. And perhaps it's also no shock that the bedecked rockers of Dokken hitched their car up to the "Nightmare on Elm Street" train. If there's a glam horror villain ... well, okay, it might be Dr. Frank-N-Furter, depending on how you define villainy, but surely Freddy Krueger, with his snappy little quips and hat positioned just so, is a worthy entrant.

Technically speaking, Dokken didn't bring their track, "Dream Warriors," to the franchise until the third entry in the series, "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors." Still, it's a defining part of the film, and not just because it shares a key title phrase with the movie. The track was written for the movie and plays prominently over the closing credits, presumably as moviegoers would have been sitting there pondering the ominous end of the latest chapter. The music video also features an interesting mix of clips selected from the movie and sequences filmed for the video, including the band members and lead actor Patricia Arquette, who played the film's co-protagonist and final girl, Kristen Parker. Arquette's character faces off against Krueger, then is rescued by none other than the members of Dokken, who defeat the nightmare monster with the power of rock, naturally enough. Funny how no one tried that before, but the cartoony nature of it all plays perfectly against Freddy Krueger.