Music
Creepy Tunes: My 7 Favorite Macabre TV Theme Songs
I’m feeling nostalgic this morning. What can I say? As we approach the one year anniversary of when massive lockdowns began across the globe, I needed a little escape and I found it when a friend posted a YouTube video filled with TV theme songs from those bygone days when I didn’t have bills to pay and Covid-19 had never been uttered.
There’s something special about a theme song. It’s built into those nostalgia driven parts of the brain and conjures up memories of long ago nights with the lights turned down low, your face illuminated only by the radiant light of the TV screen.
You, no doubt, have your own favorites, but I thought I’d share a few of mine–in no particular order–on this Spring-like Monday morning in Texas. Be sure to tell me your favorites in the comments below!
TV Theme Songs from my Favorite Spooky Shows!
The Munsters
Of course, there’s always been a debate as to whether The Munsters or The Addams Family was the better/spookier horror sitcom, and while I’ve never much gotten into that debate, myself, I will gladly go toe-to-toe over the theme songs. For me, The Munsters, with its brash brassy drive mixed and a surf-rock infused guitar line, is the clear winner. It’s not that I don’t love the theme to The Addams Family–it’s on this list below–I just think that The Munsters edged out their counterpart in the theme song category.
I’m including two versions here, btw. One is the theme you’ve no doubt heard a million times. The other includes the theme song’s lyrics because I think a lot of folks have never heard them!
The Addams Family
See? I wasn’t going to leave them out. I love this family and this show, and it has, perhaps one of the most compulsively demanding theme songs of all time. I mean, try to listen to it and not snap your fingers. I saw the live musical based on these characters and an entire theater filled with people dressed in their finery for a night on the town snapped right along just like they would sitting at home in their living rooms.
The X-Files
Speaking of compulsive: What is it about this music that automatically makes me look up to the sky. It’s like I hear it and I just know the aliens are about to land…and I’m good with that. I want to believe.
By the way, do you remember this theme starting a whole trend in music? Who still has their Pure Moods Volume 1 CD?!
Beetlejuice: The Animated Series
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! I love Danny Elfman’s theme to the Beetlejuice animated series so much that I’d face a whole herd of sandworms to listen to it. Also, this weird show took the film’s premise to a whole new level and I love it for all of its odd sensibilities.
The Twilight Zone
Now, here’s an interesting tale. This series had multiple themes written over the years, some of them by composers whose names you might know, some whose names are not so famous. The theme most associated with this iconic TV series, actually wasn’t the original. It’s the one we all hum when we think about it and it was composed by Marius Constant, a Romanian-born French composer famous mostly for his ballet music in the classical world.
Constant’s theme was written when studio execs decided they wanted a different vibe from the first season’s theme as they moved forward. That original theme was composed by none other than Bernard Herrmann, the man who would later compose the score for Psycho as well as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Taxi Driver, and Endless Night to name just a few. His theme for the show is below.
American Horror Story
Love it or hate it, this show has one of the creepiest theme songs ever scored for television. There’s something so beautifully disjointed and jarring about this theme. It makes you uncomfortable and rattles the nerves and that’s exactly why it’s on this list! As creepy TV theme songs go, this is one of the best.
Tales from the Crypt
Another theme that somehow managed to capture whimsy and horror and distill it into one piece of music. That’s not entirely surprising, however. This music was also composed by Danny Elfman, and if you go back and listen to the Beetlejuice theme side-by-side with this one, you’ll notice distinct similarities.
Honorable Mention: Tales from the Darkside
Honestly, it’s the opening narration as much as the music itself that really gets under my skin:
“Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But… there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit… a Darkside.”
Music
The Vampire Lestat Releases Cover of Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself”
Dance on, the Beautiful Unwell, because The Vampire Lestat’s newest single has officially arrived on all streaming platforms!
The Vampire Lestat — the newest rock band taking over the world — has released a cover of Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” as the third single ahead of their full album release coming this summer.
Originally recorded in 1980 by Generation X, the punk rock band fronted by Billy Idol, the song didn’t gain major traction until Idol rereleased it as a solo artist in 1981. That version climbed to number. 27 on the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart, cementing its place as an ‘80s staple.
Now, 46 years later, the track has been resurrected once again — and honestly, it couldn’t be more fitting for a band led by someone who claims to be an immortal vampire.
Yes, for those just tuning in: the frontman of The Vampire Lestat, Lestat de Lioncourt, insists he’s the real deal.
Whether you believe him or not, this cover marks a strong and deliberate direction for the band. Lestat’s voice slides effortlessly into Idol’s range, capturing that same sneering, electric energy while still making the song feel like his own. The new wave influence meshes perfectly with the aesthetic the band has been cultivating, something nostalgic, stylish, and entirely original all at once.
More importantly, the lyrics land differently in the context of the band’s previous singles, “Long Face” and “All Fall Down.” There’s a throughline of loneliness here that feels intentional.
Lines like “Well, I wait so long for my love vibration / And I’m dancing with myself,” and “If I looked all over the world… but your empty eyes seem to pass me by,” feel rather personal. There’s a lingering sense of longing that suggests Lestat isn’t just performing just for a crowd, but rather for someone in particular.
And that someone? Possibly not as absent as he’d like us to think.
Between the emotional undercurrent of “Long Face” and the beautiful man that’s been spotted at multiple concerts — someone who seems to command both Lestat’s attention and the audience’s in a lot of ways — it’s hard not to suspect there’s some very messy, very compelling relationship drama unfolding behind the scenes of The Vampire Lestat.
This is all speculative, of course, but it’s starting to feel like a pattern given everything we’ve seen from the band thus far.
But if you’re curious what an “immortal vampire” sounds like covering one of the most iconic songs of the ‘80s, you can stream The Vampire Lestat’s “Dancing With Myself” now wherever you listen to music.
Tidal
We here at iHorror will be covering the full album release once it’s out this summer. And we’ll also be keeping you updated on who that love with the “empty eyes that seem to pass [him] by” could be 👀
Music
Ice Nine Kills’ “Twisting the Knife” On ‘Scream 7’ Soundtrack
Ice Nine Kills officially enters the canon of one of the most iconic horror franchises with ‘Twisting the Knife,’ featured in the forthcoming film Scream 7 (Feb.27). Cast member McKenna Grace joins the band on the new single, a rare, high-impact crossover between one of modern metal’s most ambitious bands and one of horror cinema’s most enduring properties.
Take a look at the video for Twisting the Knife Below, then read what lead singer Spencer Charnas has to say about his contribution.
Charnas says of his musical involvement in the film:
“Twisting the Knife is our tribute to Wes Craven and the Scream franchise, which means so much to us. Scream is baked into the DNA of who I am and of Ice Nine Kills—my love of horror, comedy, and the collision between the two. I was already obsessed with Halloween and Friday the 13th, but Scream was the first I saw in theaters. Hearing the killer talk about horror movies, in that distinctively pop-culture savvy Kevin Williamson way, blew my mind.
In recent years, we’ve gotten to know and work with Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, Neve Campbell, Rose McGowan, Jamie Kennedy, Lee Waddell, and others in different capacities. We announced the collaboration with Scream 7 at Wembley Arena, with Ghostface and Rose McGowan, which was surreal in itself.
When we learned that Mckenna Grace is a fan of our band, it made perfect sense to invite her to sing. She recorded her part in my home studio, in the same room where I keep my screen-used Scream knife prop, one of the four rubber knives made for the first movie.
Marco Beltrami’s Scream scores are just as influential to me as any other component of the films. In our song, there are echoes of the moody atmospheres he’s created, with our own INK twist.”
Scream 7 opens in theatres on Friday, February 27th.
Per the press release:
“Twenty years on from the release of their debut album, Ice Nine Kills are one of the most intentional and commercially successful bands in modern heavy music, driven by immersive cinematic world-building and a deep fusion of melody and bombast. Their two breakthrough albums, The Silver Scream and The Silver Scream 2: Welcome to Horrorwood, generated over 1.5 billion streams alone and positioned the band as a rare crossover force.”
Lists
Straight Through The Heart: Movies Where Love Turns Dangerous
We’ve all taken the plunge at one time or another in the name of love, or at least the prospect of it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
The movies below all deal with that topic; only the characters in these films might die during their courtships. If you’re sour about love, indulge your cynical side and give any one of these a watch. Find them by searching Just Watch.
Possession
A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.
Audition
A widower has his film producer friend organize a fake audition as a means of helping him find a new girlfriend, but the woman he selects is not who she appears to be.
Fresh
After quitting dating apps, a woman meets the supposedly perfect man and accepts his invitation to a romantic weekend getaway, only to find that her new paramour has been hiding some unusual appetites.
Bones and All
A young woman embarks on a 1000-mile odyssey through America, where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether love can survive their otherness.
Fatal Attraction
A married man’s one-night stand comes back to haunt him when that lover begins to stalk him and his family.
The Loved Ones
When Brent turns down his classmate Lola’s invitation to the prom, she concocts a wildly violent plan for revenge.
Spring
Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci, Evil Dead, Thumbsucker) is a young American fleeing to Europe to escape his past. While backpacking along the Italian coast, everything changes during a stop at an idyllic Italian village, where he meets and instantly connects with the enchanting and mysterious Louise. A flirtatious romance begins to bloom between the two — however, Evan soon realizes that Louise has been harboring a monstrous, primordial secret that puts both their relationship and their lives in jeopardy.
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