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Dracula Cues


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Does anyone know which cues are missing from the dracula soundtrack by John Williams

Odds and ends from cues which were cobbled together for the album release, a short playful tune for a scene in a village and some longer pieces utilizing the 'Love Theme', like when Dracula first courts Lucy. This may be the best missing bit, it's kind of etheral and mysterious.

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There's also a theme that suggests the devil at work - an 8 note repeating, descending, primitive sounding piece that is in several scenes in the movie and unrepresented on the soundtrack.

- Adam

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Varese released a CD copy of the original LP in 1990. It's only 36 minutes long and has crappy sound quality. With a lot of "lesser known" Williams scores getting new releases the last year or so, this should be at the top of someone's list for expansion. It deserves it.

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Varese released a CD copy of the original LP in 1990. It's only 36 minutes long and has crappy sound quality. With a lot of "lesser known" Williams scores getting new releases the last year or so, this should be at the top of someone's list for expansion. It deserves it.

It's around 55 minutes long, as far as i remember. And whatever Tomlinson recorded with the LSO should sound miles better than the muffled CD. It sounds much fuller and crisper in the film. Maybe a job for Intrada?

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  • 8 months later...

I've re-watched this film yesterday after a long time and I have to say it's better than I was recalling. The film is quite well-made, even though sometimes the "comedic" aspects (especially Donald Pleasance's performance) are not quite well handled. Frank Langella is a great Count Dracula, seductive and creepy, even though his performance is helped a lot by John Williams' thunderous romantic score. I just love the leaping 7th interval that opens Dracula's theme, it's seductive and sinuous while being creepy and gothic at the same time.

Talking about the music, the DVD audio track sounds ten times better than the CD and you can hear John Williams' wonderful score in all its glory. It's curious nobody tried to compile a fan-made "expanded version" so far. I also noticed that the OST album is NOT a re-recording, as generally it's considered. To my ears, the performance sounds exactly the same, even though Williams edited various cues together for a more rounded "listening experience" purpose.

Other interesting tidbits:

. The OST album contains only a bit more than the half of the complete score. There are some great unreleased cues (especially a jaunty motif for the English village in the early scenes and an exciting cue for the scene where Van Helsing performs surgery on Mina's corpse) that would make a great expanded version.

. The "Night Journeys" cue was retooled for the final edit, but Williams included on the OST album also the rewritten portion ("Love Scene") for the much-maligned Maurice Binder "dream" sequence.

. In many scenes, it's only the music that carries all the dramatic and gothic power, almost to the extent of sounding "campy" in a few spots. However, Williams is a man of impeccable taste and intelligence, so he always balances the thunderous, bombastic side of the music with a creepy, almost fearful personality. In the final scenes the music reaches almost an operatic overtone that sounds like what Puccini would have written if he wrote an opera based on Bram Stoker's novel. This film reminded once more how much different Hollywood films sounds today and how impossible would be to write such a thunderous romantic score like this one.

I very much hope we'll see a properly expanded album of this magnificent score. It would be more than great to have a 2-CD set à là The Fury, with the complete film recording on Disc 1 and the OST album presentation on Disc 2. I do hope Intrada will crack Universal vaults and succeeds to release this gem of Williams' "golden years" period.

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The fact is that the OST album rights (originally released by MCA) are controlled by UMG, while the rights of the film recording are property of Universal Pictures. Although they have the same name, they're two separate entities and two different companies, so I guess this is a very tricky title to release.

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