Freak Scenes explores the increased licensing of indie music and representation of indie music cultures within American independent cinema since the 1980s. Indie music has, since the 2000s, become highlighted in some indie films as an attraction, but this book probes how the appeal of indie music stretches back to the late 1970s, when punk music made its impact on filmmaking.

Sexton looks at a range of issues where indie music and indie film intersect, including commercial concerns, the growth of niche marketing, the increased employment of popular music in cinema and questions of authenticity, as well as the fraught tensions between commercial and artistic concerns. Case studies include: sonic authorship and indie music, representations of punk and indie scenes on screen, and an exploration of how racial and gender issues inform the representation and reception of indie cultures on film.

Val Lewton's horror films revolutionized a popular genre through a much-studied and still widely emulated visual style emphasizing shadows and absences. By denying audiences visual confirmation of horror, his reforms placed a fresh burden on the soundtrack of his films. This book offers a fine-grained study of the Lewton unit's transformational sonic style which introduced the first 'jump scare', liberal use of pre-musique concrète, and an original orchestral score for every film in the series in violation of 'B' movie norms. Their orchestral scores often exceed the conventions of film music as we hear the RKO music department ignoring instructions thus freeing their contributions to signpost the path toward each films' essential themes.

This edited collection looks closely at the range and scope of contemporary film musicals, from stage adaptations like Mamma Mia! (2008) and Les Miserables (2012), to less conventional works that elide the genre, like Team America: World Police (2004) and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill (2003/04).