: (John Ottman) Oh, the woes of a
brainless studio. The only reason this, the seventh entry of the
series, came to be was due to the involvement of
original writer Kevin Williamson and star Jamie Lee Curtis, resurrecting
a franchise that had turned hopelessly stupid and giving it what was
thought to be, at the time, a proper burial. The film is arguably the
most sensible since John Carpenter's original, and Miramax was
determined to offer it to audiences with convincing sincerity. The
events of the film are a predictable tribute to the original, though a
few more humanizing elements of the battle between Michael Myers and
Laurie Strode are explored. In the end, a final confrontation between an
axe-wielding Curtis and her masked opponent is, of course, inevitable.
One aspect of Miramax's attempt to make
into a
serious venture was the hiring of rising horror composer John Ottman to
beef up Carpenter's original theme and give the franchise its first
intelligent score of significant size. Despite Ottman's efforts to do
just that, the music heard in the film was a studio-mandated, rearranged
mess. A few major film reviewers commented that they would have
preferred to have heard more variations on Carpenter's theme rather than
the generic slasher style of music actually used in much of the film.
While some, like respected reviewer James Berardinelli, blamed Ottman
for this music, it was actually Marco Beltrami that deserved the
mention. Miramax moved up the release date of the film and claimed that
they did not have time to show the film to test audiences with Ottman's
original music. Thus, a final soundtrack including only parts of
Ottman's work and lengthy pieces of Beltrami's temp-tracked scores for
was used and eventually preferred by the
studio to such an extent that they flew in Beltrami to write synthetic
bridges between the pieces of his music and Ottman's original material.
Obviously, the tracking of Beltrami's music into the film was not a
success, and any observation of both the film and Ottman's complete
score will reveal Miramax's stupidity in the post-production management
of the endeavor.
The entire crew, interestingly, had been satisfied with
Ottman's work. Only the studio objected. To make matters worse, Miramax
complicated the possibility of a commercial album release of the score
as well. Fifty minutes of the score was eventually released under the
name "Portrait of Terror" by Varèse Sarabande, vindicating Ottman
for what was obviously a frustrating experience on the production team.
Ottman's intent had been to arrange Carpenter's famous piano theme into
an orchestral powerhouse, filling the time in between with clever
symphonic and synthetic textures featuring electronic vocalizations and
even a theme for Laurie Strode herself. While the sparse piano and
synthesizer renderings by Carpenter have always been considered to a
great asset to the eerie atmosphere of the original film in the
franchise, the seventh film deserved a maturation of sound that Ottman
was able to very well provide. He indeed uses Carpenter's theme in full
three or four times, with two knockout performances that open with the
expected solo piano and eventually build to menacing ensemble depth (in
"Main Title" and "Final Confrontation"). The incredibly powerful bass
thumps in these performances, like a bizarre combination of an anvil and
drum pad, offer an extremely sinister atmosphere. Metallic clangs mix
with short bursts of brass and sampled choir over a consistently
resonating electric bass to provide an enjoyably creepy effect. Pieces
of the theme are intelligently incorporated into the rest of the score,
as is the franchise-defining piano. The theme for Laurie is integrated
directly into the titles and expanded upon throughout the work, though
it's not as obvious as it could (or perhaps should) have been.
Guaranteed to bring a smile to any film score collector's face is the
direct quote from Bernard Herrmann's
Psycho in the "Advice" cue,
accompanying actress Janet Leigh's much hyped cameo. The remainder of
the score is mostly defined by Ottman's usual horror textures, much of
it indistinguishable from parts of the generic horror scores he would
produce in following years.
Inevitably, with the slasher/horror genre comes the
orchestral blasts of surprise and the extended sequences of quivering,
stalking underscore, and at this task, Ottman's imagination is somewhat
limited by the confines of that genre. Pieces of
Snow White: Tale of
Terror occasionally peek through in the brief lyrical flow of some
of the cues. Individual, devilishly creative moments are littered
throughout the work, though, including Deborah Lurie's vocals in "Rest
Stop," the whispering of a young girl's voice saying "mommy, mommy" in
"Disposal," the contemporary pop rhythm that dissolves into an airy,
electronically vocal fantasy cue, and the last cue, which provides a
falsely comforting finale before the necessary slashing in the final 20
seconds. Overall, the adaptations of Carpenter's theme are definitely
the highlight of this score, and unfortunately, these were largely
removed from the film by Miramax. There are hints of the orchestral
creativity of
Usual Suspects and
Incognito to be heard a
times, but never in coherent or lengthy enough forms to recommend this
score along with those earlier classics. Is it superior to Beltrami's
music for
Scream and
Mimic that was settled upon at the
last minute? Absolutely, though those horror scores (despite loyalty
from Beltrami collectors) weren't particularly very good to begin with.
As an album, "Portrait of Terror" functions better as a promotional tool
for the composer and a curiosity for his fans, and the "Main Title" cue
would be a welcome addition to any compilation of great horror theme
adaptations. With the Beltrami scores already released, there was no
possibility of a score album for
Halloween H20 that is loyal to
the actual music heard in the final cut. Unfortunately for Ottman, the
controversy surrounding
Halloween H20 came just when he was
already having problems with the producers of
Cruel Intentions.
After writing a classical and edgy "manipulation" score to suit the
requests for that film, he was then asked to change it to the hip-hop
score that would also be rejected and ultimately replaced. Portions of
that score were also released by Varèse Sarabande, and, like
"Portrait of Terror," that album serves as a reminder that studios often
have no musical intelligence whatsoever.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For John Ottman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.17
(in 35 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.05
(in 20,670 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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