![]() “The music in ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ has the repetition” as the sinister theme from “Halloween,” which was composed by John Carpenter, he says in a Zoom call, playing the songs back to back for comparison. Lerner sees striking similarities between the “Unsolved Mysteries” theme and the signature music from horror movies of the ’70s and ’80s, such as “The Exorcist,” “Nightmare on Elm Street” and, especially, “Halloween.” I had horrible nightmares.” The ‘Halloween’ connection He recalls that after spending weeks on the complete score for the show, watching reenactments of murders and abductions thousands of times, he went on a camping trip to Mt. Not even Malkin was immune to the powers of the “Unsolved Mysteries” theme. The theme also has a “killer drum sound” that Malkin likens to a gunshot or an explosion, which he says added to the tension. It was like the way the color white has all the colors in the rainbow.” “He took the pitch bender and hit all the notes in such a creepy way. They worked with a synthesist named Charles Judge, who “brought it all to to life with these sweeping, sliding” pitch bends that resulted in a wailing, siren-like sound and a chilling effect. “The real magic of the theme happened when we went into the studio,” Malkin says.īoyd, his writing partner, “had a phenomenal sense of what was trendy and contemporary.” And at the time - circa 1987 - nothing was more of-the-moment than the synthesizer. #unsolvedmysteries #netflixseriesĪ post shared by Unsolved Mysteries on at 8:00am PDT Synthesizer magic New Unsolved Mysteries, now streaming on Netflix. “We never dreamed or knew that ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ would become a top-10 TV show.”Īnother thing to keep you up at night. He and Boyd came up with the basic elements of the composition in a few hours. It’s very simple building blocks with really great sounds.” The devil’s interval The theme song for “Unsolved Mysteries” is “not high art,” Malkin says, “but I think that’s why it worked. “You often don’t have good actors, so you’ve got to have something that’s going to make people feel more, to compensate for the lack of real acting and a serious script,” he says. He approached true-crime documentaries as if they were narrative features. Malkin and Boyd composed the score for the breakdancing movie “Breakin’,” and his dream was to become the next John Williams. The producers used nonactors to re-create real events - which was then a novelty in TV - and Malkin would help write music with what he calls “a you-are-there feeling” to go with the reenactments. I’d start screaming, ‘Don’t put me in bed! There’s somebody under my bed!’” he says.Īs a young composer two decades later, Malkin cut his teeth working on the heavily synthesized score for “5 American Guns,” a special about gun violence that Meurer and her partner, John Cosgrove, made for HBO in 1983. When he was growing up in the early ’60s, he was similarly freaked out by the opening notes of the “ Perry Mason” theme song. Malkin sees “divine justice” in the fact that his music terrified so many kids. ![]() “The theme is something that everyone comments about - the most, probably.” And series cocreator Terry Meurer says that over the years, she’s heard more about the theme music than just about any other element of the show - even host Robert Stack’s chilling narration. There’s still a Facebook group dedicated to the song’s singular ability to provoke a visceral reaction from listeners. ![]() The song is one of the few distinctive elements of the original that remains in the Netflix revival, but there’s a good reason it made the cut. ![]() While the reboot has been revamped to suit contemporary taste in documentary storytelling, an updated version of the original theme song plays over the opening credits. ![]()
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