John Ottman first came to most people's attention through the unusual double
success of scoring and editing on of the key films of the 90's, The Usual
Suspects. Many of his scores have tended towards films with dark subjects,
and he has now made the move to directing, helming his first feature, a sequel
to the worst Scream rip-off of 1999, Urban Legend. This is
hardly auspicious stuff, though given that the film is a teen-slasher picture,
ultimately devolved from John Carpenter's Halloween, it does put him
in the same rare ground as Carpenter, being a director who also scores and
edits his own horror movies. What ever his talents calling the shots, he
has already proved himself by far the more accomplished composer, even if
he has yet to pen anything so iconic as the Halloween theme.
Snow White - A Tale of Terror was one of those acclaimed movies no-one
saw. It was not even released in its home country, while in Britain its nominal
theatrical run was followed by instant obscurity. Staring Sigourney Weaver
and Sam Neil (soon after Carpenter's vastly under-rated In the Mouth of
Madness), the film's crime seems to have been to be an adult fairy tale,
something for which there is a vanishly small market. However, John Ottman
clearly thinks very highly of this particular score, and notes that the recording
sessions are among his 'fondest memories', subsequently being depressed that
the film was not issued theatrically.
To one with no attachment to the score, and not having so much as seen the
video-box to the film, it is hard to summon quite such enthusiasm. It is
however, a most skilfully wrought (at times overwrought) dark fantasy work,
with some romantic melodic sequences (including an attractive main theme
which evokes memories, both thematic and in terms of orchestration, of John
Williams Jane Eyre) and rather more, strange, unsettling and otherworldly
music. Ottman tells us that he required the choir to 'give their best loon
impression'!, while other techniques included rattling chairs with sticks,
'electric violin bending', and writing 'ascending and descending tremelo
string lines' to describe Claudia's (Weaver) unbalanced state-of-mind. It
is all most effective, and if rather opaque on early plays, proves to be
a score which reveals increasingly layers of subtle detail upon repeated
attentive listening.
With orchestra, choir, and what occasionally sounds like the kitchen sink
too, this is a big score, recorded in a church near Seattle to give it a
mysterious, ambient acoustic. Fans of horror scores will find this an inventive
fair few notches above the bang-crash-wallop electronics of the bargain-basement
end of the genre - there is plenty of glittering orchestral colour and baroque
fairly-tale melodic atmosphere - though without having seen the film some
listeners may find parts of the proceedings hard going. However, if the thought
of something between Jerry Goldsmith's Alien, Legend and The
Mummy, garnished with fine English-sounding Gothic romanticism and a
dash of the spirit of Bernard Herrmann appeals, this might just be the disc
for you. Full-blooded is perhaps the best description.
Reviewer
Gary S. Dalkin
conducted
by Larry Groupé * unaccredited orchestra, the Tudor Choir * solo voices
Karen Hart and the composer
