​Like many film composers, albeit perhaps less frequently than some, Friedhofer occasionally scored films within the fantasy, science fiction, and horror genres, and has brought his own voice of musical expression to these evocative films. Avoiding movie monsters and attacking aliens when scoring a film by himself, Friedhofer’s explorations into the fantastic cinema revolved mostly around psychological horror, where he used music to identify and reflect the central mystery of the suspicious character(s) and also to enhance the resultant apprehension and suspense those characters’ interactions create in the storyline. His first score in the horror/thriller genre was for THE LODGER (1944), John Brahm’s remake of the silent Hitchcock classic, in which Laird Cregar is a hotel guest who turns out to be Jack the Ripper. Friedhofer had just completed writing Main Title music for Hitchcock’s sea-bound thriller LIFEBOAT (which is all the music that is in the film) when this grim mystery in the London fog came his way. The music is appropriately atmospheric and grim, supplying a darkly impressionistic picture of the London in which the story takes place. Noted for its orchestrations, Friedhofer’s writing for low winds and brass is exemplary, giving the film music of his brooding flavoring, while also adopting the characteristic use of lush strings in the manner of his former mentor at Warner Bros., Max Steiner.

Friedhofer incorporated the motif of the Big Ben chimes into his music during the opening murder scene, which both sets the stage and provides a moody pizzicato for the unfortunate woman who will meet her date with destiny in the fog-shrouded Whitechapel alley. As her screams expire, a growling pattern from French horns resonates gutturally, a flurry of violins rush by (along with a dark cloaked figure) and disappear out of site. A three-note ascension of horns provides a thrill of horror as the camera turns into the corner of the alley and we see the victim’s broken wine bottle and fancy hat, as shrill police whistles vanquish the music.

The music accentuates the mystery of the mysterious “Mr. Slade,” lodging at 18 Slade Walk – is he or is he not The Ripper? When the maid delivers a meal to Slade while he is napping in his room, the music intones darkly as she enters, as if arriving into the lair of a slumbering beast; but as he wakens and they have a conversation, he shows her a self-portrait of his dead brother, his love and passion for his sibling clearly evident; the music underlies his yearning and grief, and yet even in its poignancy there is an underlying tone of menace, as if perhaps this, too, is not all it seems; or, as we shall see, the memory of his brother’s demise fueling his homicidal misogyny. Friedhofer underlines the sadness and human-ness of Slade as much as he accentuates the terror of the Ripper’s action and violence. There’s a marvelous mysterioso when Kitty Langley (Merle Oberon) wakes up one night to smell smoke; investigating she finds Slade in the basement burning a stained coat in the fire. Brahm’s moody direction of this sequence, with its superlative balance of shadow and brightness, aided by Friedhofer’s intricate pattern of flute, harp, and string harmonies, builds a striking tension. Slade’s late excursions into the night fog are escorted by a compelling array of dark, undulating low winds.

The climax, where Slade is chased through the scaffolding of a theater, is a marvel of dynamic accompaniment. Vivid gashes of strings pierce through layers of hulking brass, rising and falling, with shouts of winds escalating as Slade, wounded, climbs higher up the curtain apparatus; brooding low winds over tremolo violins and cautionary warnings of trumpets as he makes one final attempt on Kitty’s life, the full orchestra raging cyclically and rising higher, holding with horn figures dangling like the heavy sandbags Slade is aiming to drop on the resting Kitty below, repeating chords emphasizing our tension, until Slade is spotted and the chase renewed, the massive orchestral onslaught dissolving down to a single trumpet as Slade is cornered in the theater, and then stinging violin notes, their yearning melody piercing, speaking for the panic, desperation, enmity, and tortured soul of Mr. Slade as his wild eyes stab knifelike into those of his imminent captors, and then a final low ringing horn, doubled by a soft timpani roll, and then utter silence, only Slade’s rough, panting exhalations sounding through the silence as police and villain stare each other down, panting louder, louder, eyes and knife glinting alike in the incandescence of the confluent hallways, and a sharp flutter of descending violin melody capped by a resolute horn chord as Slade turns and bursts through the window behind him, splashing into the rough river below… It’s a brilliantly executed sequence, stunningly scored and perfectly married to image, composition, choreography, and silence.

Nearly two decades later, Friedhofer encountered another psychological terror tale, this one a lot more visceral than the moody theatricality of THE LODGER. William Castle’s HOMICIDAL (1961) was a sturdy Psycho-like tale of homicide and psychosis to which the composer provided a customarily melodic, romantic, and flavorful composition – until the murder occurs like a thunderbolt ruining a beautiful day. The crime is bathed in a dissonance of blaring brasses over raucous drums and sizzling cymbals, followed by a downward rappel of low strings as the murderess Emily (Joan Marshall, as “Jean Arless”) makes her getaway and returns home. As the film moves into the deceptively pleasant domestic lives of siblings Warren and Miriam and their disturbing past, with which Emily is somehow very involved, Friedhofer provides a gentle sonority that drifts around the seemingly innocuous activities, informing the proceedings with an air of uneasiness that belies the familial decorum, since we know Emily is more than she seems. The music during the film’s climax builds a continuous, growing, potent sense of suspense through circulations of horns, winds, and strings, joined by thunderous timpani as Miriam is nearly stabbed by Emily; and then the music is gone and it’s just the two of them facing off against their own silent pounding heartbeats, as Castle works out his final reveal, with an unspoken nod to Bloch and Hitchcock.