Putting Music to Murder

            The horror/thriller masterpiece, Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, has the ability to put a chill in anyone’s spine. The surprising reveal of Norman Bates as the mysterious and murder-hungry mother left audiences feeling horrified and compelled at the same time. Although Alfred Hitchcock’s effective use of camera angles and a wonderfully talented selection of actors helped bring the film into the one of the most iconic horror movies, I believe that the musical score Hitchcock oversaw and incorporated in the film took the finished product from scary to downright terrifying.

            Marion Crane’s final scene has gone down in history. The recognizable scene was chilling due to the element of surprise, and the exemplary music that took place. As Marion opened the shower curtain to reveal a shadowed figure wielding a knife, shrills of various stringed instruments filled the ears of the audience members. The alarming and grating sounds displayed in the shower scene were then used as the meaning of a death in the film. As soon as the violin was played, the audience knew someone was dead.

            Hitchcock never used gory images in Psycho, so in order to instill fear in the audience, he had to think outside the box and bring together different elements to create an unsettling feeling in the pits of the audience members’ stomachs. By relying heavily on a wonderful musical score, fear was triggered by the use of sound. The random interjections of simple strings made audiences scream with terror, without even having to witness the brutal deaths imposed on the characters.

            Various other films have been praised for their impressionable musical score, such as Jaws, Rocky, and The Breakfast Club. Each film provoked emotional responses from the audience with the matching of music to a certain scene. Music has the ability to bring a movie into a new realm of possibilities and emotions that could be portrayed.