Restored Isolated Score: Dracula (1979)

[Holko 9,499]

NOTE: this was originally published in 3 parts in Disco Stu's general Isolated Cues thread over 3 days. I've redone it since, more in line with the quality standards and methodology I used for my other recent isolated score uploads.

 

So, we're getting to the 1979 Mirisch-Badham adaptation of the Stoker novel, based on the Broadway play and starring Frank Langella as the titular fan of impalement, hemoglobin and women, bane of Turks and nocturneminators alike. The film takes a more romantic approach than its more prolific predecessors, humanising the Count rather than treating him as a monster after the introduction scenes. Maestro Williams created a memorable, passionate but still menacing main theme and used it quite a bit, but there's a lot else to be found in the complete score, greatly presented by Mike Matessino and Varese Sarabande in maybe not ideal, but according to our current understanding of physics most probably the best possible sound quality.

 

Part I: The Arrival

Main Title and the Storm Sequence (1m1/1m2)

After the main title credits roll, we open on a ship on the stormy sea, where mysterious growls come from a box in the cargo hold. The Hungarian/Romanian crew try getting rid of it, but they soon meet a gruesome end for trying to meddle with the plans of Vlad Tepes.

 

We naturally have the first appearance(s) of the main Dracula theme, along with calmer and more uneasy textures for the stormy sea and a quick throwaway melody which reminds me of Last Crusade's Panama Hat material, prominently featured in another "ship on a stormy sea" opening. The tone becomes more aggressive as the crew count decreases, only barely calming down when we cut away to the asylum, where the first of the story's many unrests is taking place.

The track presented some difficulties - Storm Sequence is heavily microedited, about 1:27 is missing.

 

Meeting in the Cave (1m4/2m1)

Mina Van Helsing (in a departure from the book and most other adaptations, the names of the two female characters were switched) should be sleeping her sickness off, but feels a strange calling, notices the now unmanned ship and follows it until it crashes. Out of the wreck comes a wolf, but when she follows it into a cave, she only finds the vessel's sole survivor.

 

The track flows from mood to mood following the picture quite well, finishing on a very dramatic chord as the Count and Mina touch hands, suggesting the start of something sinister. The score for the ship crashing on the shore was dialed out of the final film.

 

A Quick Change and Dracula Appears (2m2-3m1)

It turns out the sole survivor of the crash is the Transylvanian Count Dracula, who travelled to Yorkshire for a breath of fresh air, buying the old and ruinous Carfax Abbey. The workman Renfield has an unfortunate run-in with one of his more unpleasant forms, after which the vampire heads to the asylum's home wing to meet his new plot neighbours.

 

After creeping music for the obligatory iconic coffin opening shot, the score follows Dracula's footsteps, jumping into action material, premiering the signature "bat" sound of the score, the crazed flute. The next cue Mickey Mouses the couch's foldup ladder, then gets tense. The score for the hand shot was removed from the final film - I had to introduce a black screen to get it back to sync, then felt like I had to shorten the shot of the horses running.

 

Casting a Spell and The Visitation (3m3-3m5/4m1)

At dinner, Dracula hypnotises Mina, readying her for the night, while Lucy, the daughter of asylum doctor Jack Seward, takes an interest to him. Later, the Count pays a terrifying, but apparently not unwelcome visit to the young girl.

 

The former cue is quiet with quick harp runs, the second one aims to terrify completely, but with shots like the one at 2:55, it certainly doesn't have to do the lifting on its own. In the final film, most of the material from the end of the cue was removed, and from the moment the doors open, it uses Meeting in the Cave's ending. 

 

Give Me Your Loyalty and Mina's Death (4m2-4m3)

Renfield is dealing with unfortunate side effects of his bat bite, when Dracula scares him into being recruited as a servant. Morning arrives in the town, but not all is well - Mina suffocates as a consequence of her bite.

 

After some moody string underscore, we get a pleasant one-off motif for the town life, but Mina's misfortune introduces a mourning tone. I have to say, I like it more at the end of For Mina than on its own here. I again felt like I had to shorten one of the town shots for the sync to be better.

 

Jonathan Pays a Call and Mina's Funeral (5m1-5m2-5m4)

Solicitor Jonathan Harker, Lucy's fiancé visits the count to settle estate acquisition paperwork. When he heads back, Renfield shows up in the car and begs him to save him from the Count which leads to the bug-eater ending up in the asylum. Then we witness Mina's funeral.

 

The quick automobile shot continues the ostinato heard in Give Me Your Loyalty, then moody, creepy underscore settles in. When Jonathan is attacked by a stowaway Renfield, the score goes frantic but quickly settles as we hear the madman's intentions are not malicious. As Dracula looks over the happenings in bat form, we hear the high-pitched "bat" flute again. Mina's Funeral leads on from a solo mourning horn into a string arrangement.

Aside from their openings, all of 5m1 and 5m2 was removed from the final film.

 

The board is set, most of the players lined up, onward to complications!

[crumbs 14,304]

On 12/11/2018 at 12:57 AM, Holko said:

The isolated videos for Dracula have all been done and uploaded for a week, but I want to write some commentary to them. I can do that only after Wednesday, when I have my BSc final.

 

I don't suppose you could post clips of Williams' source music, as it appears in the film? I know we don't have clean audio versions but I haven't heard the material at all. It would be nice to hear what Williams actually composed.

 

Fantastic videos by the way, loving these!

[Holko 9,499]

See the dialogue-heavy 20 or so seconds max between Quick Change and Dracula Appears? That's where Williams' source cue plays from a gramophone, that's it for that one.

 

There's another big bonus to this staggered release I'm doing - it's really tough to write those cue-by-cue notes! I definitely see now where Mike's coming from with "after a while, it's just: this is what is happening in the movie, this is what is happening in the score. Next.". The first sentence was the most fun to write!

[Holko 9,499]

Part II - The Seduction

 

The Dining Room, Disorder in the Asylum and First Kiss (6m1-6m3-6m4)

Mina's father, Abraham Van Helsing arrives to investigate the circumstances of her death, but Lucy decides to pay a visit to the Count instead. During their dinner, unrest once again takes over the asylum - one mother claims a terribly transformed Mina killed her baby. Lucy and Dracula share their first kiss after the date goes well, while the next morning Abraham starts looking into nocturnal creatures.

 

The Dining Room paints the ruinous abbey as a whimsical and charming place - even the jumpscare is a lightweight flourish. The Asylum introduces the second big motif of the score, linked with Van Helsing's investigation into vampirism, here used as an action ostinato as a vampiric Mina escapes the asylum after drinking from a baby. First Kiss features romantic and seductive readings of the Dracula theme.

 

Dracula Meets Van Helsing (7m1)

Abraham has suspicions about the nature of the attacks, and gives Lucy a silver cross to wear for safety. Dracula comes to visit Mina's grave in the twilight, but his horse feeling uneasy gives the professor an idea for a quick test of supernatural happenings.

 

Swirling, menacing strings herald Dracula's arrival, then later we get another version of the Investigation motif as Van Helsing hears the horse neighing.

 

Grave Trampling and Night Journeys (7m2-7m3)

Van Helsing's plan works out better than he hoped as the horse completely destroys Mina's grave out of fear of its evil aura. Dracula visits Lucy in the night, who by now gives herself to him willingly.

Grave Trampling presents an over-the-top full orchestral rendition of the Investigation motif, as the process reaches a milestone. Night Journeys supports the firm and impassioned actions portrayed onscreen. James Bond title sequence designer Maurice Binder's Love Scene changed a few times in the edit - Williams first scored the longer cut (Night Journeys), then the shorter cut with a different approach to the beginning and ending (The Love Scene). The final film uses Night Journeys for the framing and Love Scene for the shortened Binder sequence.

 

The Love Scene (7m3)

 

This alternate shows a fascinatingly different approach - while Night Journeys suggests almost an aggressiveness and forcefulness in its first half, this cue is more soft and romantic. Compare for example how both cues support Dracula picking Lucy up and putting her in bed, up until the Binder sequence starts, and the bloodsucking afterwards.

 

Mina Impaled (8m3)

Van Helsing finds Mina's coffin empty, a hole in it leading to an old mine tunnel. There he finds his undead daughter (in brilliantly disturbing makeup), and in the end makes the difficult choice of impaling her to put her at rest.

 

A bat scares Abraham, once again bringing the bat sound, the cross getting lost in a puddle is underscored with distraught piano and unsettling strings, while Mina attacking his father and Jack is surprisingly tame until the cross gets out, then a Mickey Mouse stinger seemingly puts an end to the horrors. In the final film, the cue only fades in when we first see Mina's face, the first half is unused. The final edit is also a bit shorter than the written cue, so I had to stretch it here and there.

 

Van Helsing Confronts Dracula and Van Helsing's Solution (9m1-9m2)

Abraham comes across the Count and gets more damning clues, proving with certainty he's the vampire. With Mina's body, he proves the existence of vampirism to his peers then takes drastic measures to ensure her eternal rest. Lucy escapes to warn Dracula of the events, but Jonathan, Jack and the professor stop her.

 

Doing this video made me appreciate the Confrontation cue much, much more - Williams himself is known to go over the top on much less grand scenes, even within this same score, but for the most part this one's more quiet, subtle and restrained - see breaking the mirror and the garlic's appearance! In the next cue we get another barrage of the Investigation motif.

 

[Holko 9,499]

Part III - The Finale

 

Into the Crypt and The Bat Attack (9m3/10m1-10m2)

Jonathan and Abraham go to Dracula's cellar to confront and possibly destroy him, but he has other plans. After a short talk, he transforms into a bat and attacks Jonathan, while Van Helsing lets sunlight in to chase the creature off.

 

We get the final playoffs of the Investigation motif here, as well as some moody underscore and harp plucks. Dracula's transformation and first attack is unscored, but the bat sound returns is full force when he goes in for the blood again, then some organ as sunlight starts flowing in. The score for the first chamber (0:33-0:24) is unused in the final film, as well as the first half of Bat Attack up until the organ starts coming in with the sunlight.

 

Lucy Attacks, Waiting for Dracula, The Capture of Lucy and To Scarborough (10m3-11m1-11m2-11m3)

 

Lucy is now in the asylum for safety. She attacks Jonathan, but a cross drives the evil out of her temporarily, since she's not fully in the Count's grasp yet. Everyone waits anxiously for Dracula's arrival as Renfield predicted, but nobody anticipates his wall-climbing ability. The Count decides his bugmunching servant has outlived his very limited usefulness, then sneaks in to kidnap Lucy in the form of smoke. Having realised they are right for each other, the pair decide to head off to Scarborough port to travel back to Transylvania in a coffin, while the heroes give chase with their automobile.

 

These cues are quite dramatically reactive, as we're heading toward the climax. The first bit of The Capture of Lucy (4:42-5:24) is unused in the final film, and To Scarborough is classically microedited - this time I made sure I got it mostly right.

 

The Death of Dracula and End Titles (12m1-12m2)

 

The heroes catch up to the boat and find Dracula and Lucy. In a climactic fight, Abraham is taken out, but Vlad Tepes is hooked and hoisted up into full sunlight to burn up in a spectacular finale, if not one quite as gruesome as Christopher Lee clawing his own face off in pain. Lucy looks on in horror, but breaks out a subtle smile as she sees the Count's cape flying off, knowing his memory and spirit live on and they will be reunited in death one day.

 

After a fittingly spectacular climactic fight and villain death cue, we get some more wonderful renditions of the main theme in the end credits. The opening of Death of Dracula is shortened a bit in the film and the end is shortened too - for context for the next 3 posts, I originally didn't fix the latter problem, but now I did.

 

Main Title Fix and Badham Ending (1m1)

 

As a new bonus, here's the alternate Main Title - I'm not quite sure what the ending was meant to accompany, so I synced it up with the label reveal, had to cut the long shot of the coffin very short.

[publicist 4,643]

You cheated a bit with the last one. The film obviously was edited after scoring, so the complete tail end for Dracula's Death was never used and we will never know what footage it was meant to accompany. The music should end much earlier and not fade into the credits.

[Holko 9,499]

15 minutes ago, Holko said:

and its end is shortened, which I just let play out.

 

[publicist 4,643]

Yeah. And it doesn't fit.

[Holko 9,499]

I deleted these videos from my Drive not long ago, but the were still viewable because they weren't emptied from the trashbin. Weird.

I felt they weren't up to scrutiny by now - now I know how to render so it won't look that crap, I'm willing to put more effort into syncing up microedited stuff, the original print of the movie is available officially, etc.

 

I set to redoing it this morning and was surprised to find Jay separated it into its own thread and linked it in the score information collection. Huh. Neat I guess, now it's extra good that I decided to redo them better.

 

Usually I loathe everything I ever wrote more than 40 hours ago, but I was surprised to find I didn't want to die while reading all this, so all I did was update some of the technical explanations to reflect the newer videos.

 

Anyway, it's done, enjoy! For the fist time or again.

 

The Cowboys was separated into its own thread too, after I properly deleted those videos long ago and even removed the dead links from the original posts, so that's kinda strange. Oh well, guess I'll redo that too 

[Jay 37,322]

Wow that's great, thanks for redoing Dracula; Can't wait to find time to watch these

 

And great news about Cowboys; I never got to see those, and am REALLY interested.  Thanks so much for all this!

[JohnnyD 1,221]

Really cool!

[JohnnyD 1,221]

Loved revisiting this around Halloween!

[Bespin 8,480]

Nice vids thanks!