Horror movies can be scary, creepy, or just plain fun and silly, but sometimes their soundtracks can make your ears bleed. Especially when some genius in the studio’s marketing department decides a movie or TV show needs a pop/rock/rap song to help promote the their latest title.
Sure, some catchy and now classic songs have come out of horror films, like “Nightmare on My Street” or “Ghostbusters,” (although the line “Bustin’ makes me feel good” has always been a cringeworthy moment itself), but most attempts to craft a song based on horror characters have fallen flat. Here are some of the worst songs from horror movies in recent memory.
5. The Ramones: “Pet Semetary”
This song is catchy and hardly the worst horror song, but its simple and obvious lyrics (“I don’t wanna be buried in a pet sematary”) put it on this list. The story goes that Stephen King was a huge Ramones song and asked the band to create a song for this movie, and that this what they came up with after about an hour. And yeah, it definitely sounds like it took about an hour to write. This song even earned a Razzie nomination in 1989.
4. Alice Cooper: “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)”
This song served as the theme of 1986’s Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Despite Alice Cooper’s status as a “shock rock” legend, the music in this song is full of lame synth sounds, dumb lyrics, and a slow, plodding pace that doesn’t inspire any feeling of impending horror. The worst lyrics from this gem might be the following:
Oh, if you see him comin’
Get away if you can
Just keep on runnin’
Run as fast as you can
He’s a dangerous, dangerous man
Maybe it’s just us, but describing Jason Voorhees as a “dangerous man” seems like a little bit of an understatement.
3. The Fat Boys: “Are You Ready for Freddy?”
This is the classic song showcasing Freddy Krueger’s rap skills. Released as the theme song for A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, the song doesn’t tell you much about the movie or its villain, except that “it’s Freddy time” or—in case you know multiple Freddys—”it’s Krueger time.” Also, the song informs listeners that “Fred Krueger is the man” and “Freddy, Fred, yeah, Freddy, Fred.” It was a cringeworthy song to begin with, but when Freddy starts rapping and even spouts the amazingly bad lyric of “My name is Freddy and I’m here to say,” you have to wonder if the Fat Boys actually wrote this or maybe delegated the job to some junior high kid down the block.
On the positive side, the video is pretty entertaining.
2. Lääz Rockit: “Leatherface”
From the soundtrack of 1990’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, this metal masterpiece pays tribute to Leatherface. The film was a bomb, making only $6 million at the box office, and it’s soundtrack was really no better. But one thing the song does well is to capture the frenetic and chaotic energy of Leatherface himself. So that’s something.
1. The Crypt Keeper: “Crypt Jam”
Tales From the Crypt was a staple among horror fans in the early to mid-1990s and was popular enough that the Crypt Keeper served as the host of Knott’s Scary Farm for several years, even appearing in his own mazes. But did you know that the Crypt Keeper can also rap? This song might actually be the best of our list, as its beat is actually decent and the lyrics worth listening to (and are “skele-tons of fun”). However, the Crypt Keeper himself is completely cringeworthy, so depsite how on-brand this song is, we couldn’t leave it off the list.
Did we forget your favorite cringeworthy horror song? Let us know in the comments.
