Various Artists | The Exorcist (Soundtrack) | Album

The soundtrack for The Exorcist (1973) is widely regarded as a masterpiece of "needle-drop" scoring, where director William Friedkin curated existing contemporary classical and rock pieces to create a uniquely unsettling atmosphere. Critics and listeners generally praise the album for its ability to evoke the film's "cold hand on the back of your neck" dread without relying on a traditional orchestral score. The soundtrack is described as "profoundly iconoclastic" and "viscerally evocative". It is noted for balancing the "stremecedor" (shocking) impact of avant-garde classical pieces with the more melodic, though still eerie, rock themes. Mike Oldfield’s "Tubular Bells" is the album’s most famous inclusion. While originally just a track from Oldfield's debut album, it became synonymous with horror, despite being used sparingly in the film to represent scientific and medical hopelessness against the supernatural.

Artist Website: discogs/Various-The-Exorcist

Related Artists: Mike Oldfield, Jack Nitzsche, Harry Bee, George Crumb, Krzysztof Penderecki, Anton Webern

Collections: Cult Movies