Editorials
Red Right Hand: An Oral History – How the Nick Cave Song Became the Anthem of the ‘Scream’ Franchise
In October of 1994, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds unleashed their eighth studio album Let Love In. Three singles were released in conjunction with the certified silver UK collection leading up to its formal launch. And while “Do You Love Me?” and “Loverman” set the stage for the prolific album and its harmonic tenor, it was the third single that would go on to cross the boundaries of its art form and firmly implant itself in the hallowed halls of horror history.
Scream (1996) slashed its way to genre hungry audiences several years after “Red Right Hand” hit the shelves in music stores. Although the song was written independently of the film, it’s difficult to imagine one without the other. From the second it begins, “Red Right Hand” ushers forth a domineering force, guided by the bloody governing appendage of a madman that perfectly encapsulates the film’s ever encroaching threat.
But how did the song find its way to the screen?
It all starts with Grammy and Peabody Award winning Music Supervisor and multi-decade Wes Craven collaborator, Ed Gerrard. He began his storied career managing bands in New York, eventually connecting with famed talent manager Shep Gordon and making the move to California. Shortly thereafter, Shep Gordon and owner of Island Records Chris Blackwell started up an Independent film company, which Ed was keen to become involved in.
Gerrard told BD in an exclusive chat, “How I got started as a music producer was we were sitting around a room and we had this little independent film. There’s one or two songs that the director wanted to use and they asked, ‘does anyone know how to get the rights to put the music in the film?’ I didn’t see anybody raise their hand so I raised my hand. I said, ‘No, I don’t know how to do it, but I’ll figure it out.’ They gave me the job and I became a Music Supervisor that day.”
‘Shocker’
The first film Ed Gerrard and Wes Craven worked in concert together on was Shocker (1989). “He was a very generous guy, Wes… he surrounded himself with people he was comfortable with and let them do their job,” Ed recalled. “My job would be to make the album… make a record that was sort of original.” After the soundtrack to Shocker was successful, Ed went on to handle New Nightmare (1994), solidifying his partnership with Wes and paving the way for his eventual work on Scream.
“Around ‘94, Wes started Vampire in Brooklyn. I was in New York and I went to Lollapalooza… who’s playing there but Nick Cave,” recalled Ed. “I remember seeing the show and being floored by it… it was cinematic.”
Wes Craven’s longtime producing partner Marianne Maddalena reached out to Ed regarding Vampire in Brooklyn, so he went in to sit with the film’s editor Patrick Lussier. “I brought in a bunch of music,” Ed explained, “and one of the things I brought in was Let Love In… there’s a song on the record called ‘Loverman’ and I thought it would work with Eddie Murphy playing a vampire.” While the song never made it into the film, Patrick Lussier asked to keep the record, having enjoyed it so much.
Ed revealed, “I wasn’t hired as the Music Supervisor in the beginning for Scream… I didn’t get a call until probably half way through. Marianne says ‘you got to come in and help us out here.’ So I come in and [Patrick] goes, ‘let’s spend the afternoon and mess around! Here’s a couple things that we were playing around with.’ And I said, ‘You remember Nick Cave? Let’s try that!’”
‘Scream’ (1996)
“I remember first hearing Nick Cave in 1994 on Vampire in Brooklyn,” Patrick Lussier recalled. “I had remembered Ed’s intro to Nick Cave’s dark atmospheric music two years before and instantly felt that the intro was a perfect score-like element for Scream. The two sequences where it appears, the instrument intro early on and the lyric into the chorus for the town shutting down, were cut in during the initial edit on both scenes.”
“Patrick is a creative force, he puts [the song] where he thinks it’s going to work… he used it as the announcement of Ghostface,” Ed reflected in his chat with Bloody Disgusting.
“Patrick Lussier deserves a lot of credit for that.”
“Never once was any other music used for either scene,” Patrick noted, “and neither of those scenes were shown to Wes without that song present. So much of the Scream franchise has been set by the tone of ‘Red Right Hand’. It perfectly captures the vibe of killer(s) who are the smartest in the room, no matter what room or where it may be.”
“The budget for music was like nothing… but Wes had an instinct about it. ‘Red Right Hand’ had this global vibe and cinematic meaning,” Ed emphasized. “So Wes stuck to his guns and said, ‘How do we get that song?’ And I’m like, ‘We license it.’ I put in a request and we get it.”
“I never had a conversation with Nick [Cave],” Ed continued.
“I just went to his publisher and record label… so it was an easy thing. They wanted to get him more exposure; they were looking for marketing too.”
‘Scream 2’
Scream’s success changed the budget and the perspective of the financiers heading into the production of Scream 2 (1997). “I sat with Patrick and I sat with Wes and we realized the impact that ‘Red Right Hand’ had in the movie thematically…” Ed reflected. “We were going to have to use it again.”
While Scream 2 was filming in Atlanta, Ed Gerrard was in England with clients and working on putting the sequel’s soundtrack together. At the same time, Ed decided to reach out to Nick Cave in the hopes of getting a meeting to discuss “Red Right Hand’s” potential place in the follow up. After calling Nick Cave’s management, Ed was able to set up an impromptu meeting in his hotel room. Ed was nervous, having heard about Nick Cave’s general aversion to meetings with those he was unfamiliar with.
“[Nick Cave] looks at me and goes, ‘Were you the one that put that song in there?’ And I said yeah. He said, ‘You know I sat with my kids and we watched [Scream] and they were impressed that my song was in that movie. They loved that movie. They loved how the song was used!’ After that we became fast friends.”
Beyond bringing the song back for Scream 2, Nick Cave also suggested a remix for the soundtrack which resulted in DJ Spooky’s version of “Red Right Hand”.
In Ed’s words, “It’s so important when you’re doing a soundtrack, you need something different. It just adds value to the soundtrack… [Nick Cave] was the sweetest guy about it. [We] had his blessing to do something interesting with it.”
With Scream 2, “Red Right Hand” became further ingrained in the atmosphere and narrative of the franchise, resounding as the anthem of Stab in its opening moments and solidifying itself as the amorphous Ghostface killer’s most recognizable theme. It made sense for the third film in the series to further feature the song and allow for its evolution to mirror the events onscreen.
“[Nick Cave and I] came up with this idea about orchestrating it. Build it up with this big string section and make it more cinematic,” Ed revealed to BD. “Then he said something that blew my mind… he goes, ‘I will write a new verse specifically based on the movie to be put into the song and only used on the soundtrack.’ [Nick Cave] used the original master from the ‘Red Right Hand’ sessions and brought in a thirty piece string section… I think Nick really appreciated how [the song] was used.”
‘Scream 3’
This new version, dubbed “Red Right Hand 2” or “Red Right Hand (Scream 3 Version)”, served to bridge reality and fiction. In Scream 3 (2000), the song ferried the horrors of the Ghostface killer from homespun suburban terror to the glitz and glamour fueled machinations of the Hollywood elite. Booming over the end credits as well, the song added a sense of finality to the concluding chapter of the initial trilogy with satisfying edge and poignancy.
Although Ed Gerrard continued to work with Wes Craven for many years, serving as Music Supervisor on Cursed (2004), The Last House on the Left (2009) and My Soul to Take (2010), he did not return for Scream 4 (2011). The song’s absence in the fourth film is one that still confounds Ed to this day.
“I was disappointed, but I wasn’t hired [for Scream 4],” Ed told us.
“I know [Nick Cave] and I talked about what we did and how we established it… and I think the fact that I wasn’t around to figure out how it all worked was half the battle. The value of it, when it was left up to other people, got lost in the filter.”
‘Scream VI’
Still, the legacy lives on as the creative teams behind Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023) have again embraced “Red Right Hand” as an integral component of the franchise. “The new directors, who I don’t know, were honoring Wes and honoring the fact that the song has its place in Scream history,” Ed explained. “[‘Red Right Hand’] is an established character just as much as Dewey, just as much as Gale, just as much as Sidney and just as much as the Ghostface killer. Just as important.”
The marriage of Scream and “Red Right Hand” represents a creative anomaly, the forging of two singular artistic expressions that were created independently but somehow became each tailor made for the other. Ed proclaims, “I had never experienced it. It will never happen again. It’s cinema history.”
“Ed Gerrard has always been a part of the Craven Films family,” Scream franchise producer Marianne Maddalena told us. “He did such a brilliant job of finding ‘Red Right Hand’ for Scream. In one song he nailed the feel of the movie. It gives me goosebumps every time I hear it in all the films. His choice to set the tone for Ghostface truly makes this character one of a kind.”
“‘Designed and directed by his red right hand’ captures the world of Scream in its own vice-like grip,” Patrick Lussier echoed. “The two are now synonymous.”
When reflecting on his rich, decades spanning career in music and film, where he was once known as “the Vincent Price of Music Supervisors,” Ed Gerrard’s experiences with Wes Craven, the Scream movies and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” hold a special place of pride.
“At the end of the day it’s a legacy thing,” Ed reflected. “I know what I brought to the table and I know Nick appreciates it and I think the audiences appreciate it. I think Wes in his eternal life appreciates it too.”
‘Scream VI’
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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