I haven't watched the movie yet, and judging by what you say in your review, I'm not terribly excited. I will catch it on DVD some day, but I'm afraid it will "damage" the pleasure I get from listening to Elfman's score on album.

It's a pity that one of Elfman's more enjoyable works of recent years, and a great homage to Wojciech Kilar's Dracula (1992), was treated this way. This music sets a perfect tone for a gothic horror set in Victorian times, just like Coppola's 1992 film. By listening to it you imagine a great, dark, atmospheric and exciting horror film.

It's also a pity that this score will most likely receive little attention, for all those reasons you mention. If it was attached to a good horror movie, or even maybe a Tim Burton stylistic follow-up to Sleepy Hollow, it would get many fans.

Too bad that Bad Taste and "hip" pseudo-metal (I know my Heavy Metal, and Haslinger's stuff is many things, but metal is not one of them) is more popular with the masses, the test audiences, whatever. Maybe these "entertaining-but-not-very-good" Underworld films have done much more harm to Gothic Horror than some of us initially thought.