Very sad news out of Hollywood today, everyone: legendary composer Angelo Badalamenti, whose distinctive music scored some of our all-time favorite horror films and thrillers, has passed away at the age of 85.
Badalamenti is perhaps best-known for his many collaborations with David Lynch. Over the years, the composer scored a number of Lynch’s biggest films, including Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. He is also responsible for scoring the Twin Peaks TV series. Here he is now, explaining how he wrote the iconic “Laura’s Theme” for that massively influential show:
Badalamenti’s scores brought an off-kilter presence to Lynch’s filmography, delivering tracks that were as likely to be ominous, unsettling or sleazy-sounding (see below: “The Pink Room,” from Fire Walk With Me) as they were to be hauntingly beautiful, euphoric and unforgettable (see: the video above). Badalamenti’s Lynch scores are pitch-perfect all the way down, but they represent just a fraction of the work that Badalamenti brought to the silver screen.
Badalamenti contributed memorable work to horror films and thrillers like Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever (itself a collaboration with Nathan Barr), Danny Boyle’s The Beach, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s The City of Lost Children, Chuck Russell’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, and Paul Schrader’s Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist. He was a mainstay in the industry for decades, and his work will be sorely missed – not just by horror fans and Lynch fanatics, but also by every other viewer who ever found themselves moved by one of his scores.
This evening, FANGORIA recommends that you revisit one of the films Badalamenti worked on or one of his scores. In either event, we further recommend that you do this in a dark, quiet room, perhaps with a nice glass of bourbon within arm’s reach. RIP, Angelo Badalamenti. You were one of the best to ever to do it, and things simply won’t be the same now that you’re gone.
