Just about everybody knows “Thriller.” The red jacket, the dancing undead, that long spooky video that comes back on TV every single October. It came out in December 1983, and more than forty years later it’s still the sound of Halloween.
There’s one part of it almost nobody thinks about, though.
Michael Jackson wrote the song “Thriller.” He didn’t write the creepy orchestra music that runs under the scariest parts of the film. That low, haunted sound in the opening, when the moon comes out, and again later in the graveyard, came from somewhere else.
It came from one of the most famous film composers in Hollywood history. The film’s own credits name three men for the music, and his is right there with Michael’s and Rod Temperton’s, who wrote the song itself. And you’ve heard this composer’s work in one of the biggest movies of 1984, whether you follow Michael or not.
His name was Elmer Bernstein.
If you’ve ever watched an old movie on a Sunday afternoon, you’ve probably heard him. He wrote the music for “The Ten Commandments” back in 1956. That big galloping theme from “The Magnificent Seven” in 1960 was his too. Bernstein also scored “The Blues Brothers” and “Trading Places,” and his one Academy Award came for a musical called “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”
Then in 1984 he wrote the orchestra score for “Ghostbusters.” Not the catchy theme song everybody sings. That one was Ray Parker Jr. Bernstein wrote the music playing behind the movie, the part that made a comedy about ghosts feel a little bit spooky.
So how does a composer like that end up on a Michael Jackson video?
It was the man behind the camera. “Thriller” was directed by John Landis, who was also behind the werewolf movie “An American Werewolf in London.” Bernstein had scored that one, and he went on to score most of Landis’s films for around fifteen years. According to Wikipedia, Landis grew up near Bernstein and got to know him through the composer’s own kids.
Most people have no idea the two movies share a composer. One’s a Halloween dance video, the other’s a ghost comedy, and the same man put the shiver into both.
Watch the short film again with that in your ears. The best spot to catch his work is the very start, before Michael says a word, and then again in the graveyard.
Here’s the look the kids still copy every Halloween, with the orchestra music hiding underneath it.
Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” short film in full
Vincent Price gets all the credit for the famous spoken part near the end, and he earned it. But the shivery feeling in the quiet moments, that came from Bernstein.
So this Halloween, when “Thriller” comes on again, listen past the dancing for a second and catch the orchestra underneath. It’s some of the finest movie music of its day, tucked away inside a pop video.