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Very nice pick Mr. Krakatoa.
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STAR TREK III - music by James HORNER
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THE HAUNTED MANSION (MARK MANCINA) – Let me first confess that I have not seen the film, nor, indeed, have I ever encountered the famous Disney ride that it is based upon. Thus, the theme for Grim Grinning Ghosts is, like the rest of the score, entirely new to me.
None of this, however, detracts from what has proved to be a highly enjoyable and delightfully spooky experience with this release of Mancina’s score from Intrada. And, fresh from reviewing a slew of haunted house scores over in the Halloween Now Playing thread, this seems like entirely the perfect soundtrack with which to nudge into this arena.
There is never any mistaking the fact that we are in ghostly territory, but this remains steadfastly a Disney score. By which I mean that it is colourful and enriched with deep orchestration, always enchanting and irresistible, is often bouncy and knockabout (Chased by a Marching Band), and determinedly thematic. When things get dark and passages become filled with dread, Mancina always ensures that the music still contains plenty of ebullient jauntiness to thwart any serious frights. Nervous strings are soothed by mischievous woodwinds. Trembling low tones are whispered to and cajoled by placatory harp and piano. The wraithlike voices that breathe so evocatively into the score at splendid junctures are never menacing, just eerie asides whispering in our ear. This playful quality, usually characterised by little woozy flourishes from the flute, cannot fail to add charm and elegance.
With Ghost Ball and So Many Memories, the impression of shades of the past is richly observed. Spectral nobility comes courtesy of the sonorous voices of the choir, lilting like a gentle breeze weaving through a graveyard.
Yet even with the threat barometer accordingly lowered, there is much atmospheric creepiness to savour, and hectic action to buoy us along. And nowhere is this more evidenced than in The Crypt, with its gentle hissing undertow, like the cold dead air escaping from a cracked tomb, the organ sound sending a grand gothic shiver up and down the spine, and Mancina then encouraging his orchestra to take flight, the entire ensemble erupting into a fabulous action cue enlivened by chanting voices, chiming bells and swirling dust-devils of woodwind. He then brilliantly carries this skittish energy over into Spiders. Here, the chanting chorus and pell-mell chase motif plays very much like a more streamlined and less severe version of what Roque Banos did with this frantic possessed pursuit mix for the Evil Dead remake.
Mancina blends the quieter, spookier sections with the galloping action quite ingeniously. We have grim ambience and then a rollercoaster ride, the two ideas ricocheting into the strenuous final stretch, in which the composer pulls out all the stops and then lets rip with highly involving and exciting pyrotechnics for an epic climax in the extensively bombastic Try Again, in which all of his motifs clash and eventually turn full circle.
This is the musical equivalent of an eloquent raconteur, your favourite uncle, say, settling the kids down at Christmas to impart to them a fabulous festive ghost story. No damage done. No nightmares. But a spectacularly shuddery time is had by all.
Wonderful stuff!
Chris
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