This may involve a bit of chutzpah

But first, some background.

I've only recently started watching horror as a genre. After reading Bruce Campbell's If Chins Could Kill, I was curious to see the film techniques that he talked about from Evil Dead. I had seen clips of it before, of course, but I had never really watched a horror movie. My first surprise was that I enjoyed it, but what really took me off guard was the soundtrack: I was expecting music as low budget as the movie, and stinking of the 80s, but the music Joe LoDuca put together really got my attention. It also got me thinking about composting music for horror in general.

So, I dove in and did some serious research of the "classics": Halloween, Friday the 13th, Evil Dead, and many, many more (it was made all the more perfect because this was in the month of October). Naturally, I couldn't claim to have watched the giants of the genre if I didn't watch A Nightmare on Elm Street. I had seen bits of it in the 80s, and it seriously creeped me out, so I was looking forward to a revisit.

In sum, it was just as creepy as I remember, but what I found surprising was that, (with all respect due), the soundtrack really hadn't aged well. There were a few spots in the movie that I found it somewhat distracting...which leads me to my current project. Yep, I redid the music for a scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street (thus, this post's title).

There were two scenes that I was considering for trying to redo: the opening credits, and where Nancy falls asleep in class. The latter is far more...well, "synthtastic"...but also had more dialog; since I didn't necessarily want to draft my 12 year old daughter (or....shudder...attempt it myself), I went with the credits scene. Here's the scene with the original audio (SFW):

Let it be said, I do like the atmosphere that was created, but it's very 1980s. I wanted to go along with the dream atmosphere, and create something that was disorienting and metallic, to go along with the boiler room feel. I also generally stayed away from any straight synth sounds, aside from a couple gated  lines for a urgent pulse feel. Also, once again Freesound.org comes to the rescue for the environmental replacements. (I'll get a full credits list of the sounds up on YouTube.)

Here's the replaced audio:

I had fun with this project, if for no other reason than because I kept startling myself during the cat scare sequences. I put that sound there, how could it keep surprising me...especially when I'm watching the timeline during playback?