Category: Score Card
Score Card is dedicated to deconstructing the film score of selected motion pictures. This column is something of a journey for me. For though I appreciate film music, I am disadvantaged in that I do not know the the language or vocabulary of music. So I will proceed as delicately as I dare and ask that you bear with my ignorance.
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Score Card: Halloween
I find it difficult not to give the number one spot over to that classic slasher film that birthed the infamous killer known as Michael Myers, and tonight is no exception. The rightly-celebrated Halloween theme is as iconic as Bernard Hermann’s Psycho or John Williams’s Jaws. If Alfred Hitchcock can credit Hermann for 33% of… Read more
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Score Card: Session 9
Session 9 is an atmospheric creeper about an asbestos removal crew working at an abandoned mental asylum, and the mounting tensions between them as they begin exhibiting unusual behavior. Director Brad Anderson hired experimental music band Climax Golden Twins to score his subtle psychological horror and what they created is a fascinating aura that defies… Read more
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Score Card: Dracula (1979)
The orchestrations of prior horror films, most notably the Hammer Studios films, were frenetic and uptempo, something more suited to an action movie today. Williams mostly avoided this zealous use of horns and frantic strings, preferring instead the sweeping romanticism that has since become a hallmark of the Dracula story. Read more
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Score Card: A River Runs Through It
Score Card is devoted to an unseen but pivotal force behind the best (and worst) movies: the motion picture score. An ethereal veil of ambiance, its absence can be as powerful as its presence, and its misuse can bring down a single scene or an entire film. This column will be something of a journey… Read more
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