![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Stoneground party scenes say everything, really, about the film's uncomfortable relationship with youth culture. In the film, the last chord of the main title fades into Stoneground's ‘You Better Come Through for Me’, so it's nice to hear the whole thing come to a close on the CD. Even without the images, this is still a great opening cue. (Alan Gibson's suave direction is full of such witty touches.) If anything could make us want to remember the almost forgotten world of 1970s London it's surely this gorgeously nostalgic moment (although the brutalist underpasses down which Gibson's camera inevitably hurtles are a part of the 1970s I'd rather forget). Suitably ‘swung’ by the saxophones, the main theme goes on to accompany ironic shots of crucifix-form cranes, blood red London buses and even an Angus Steak House. As the camera pans skywards from a Victorian graveyard, a plane suddenly appears in the middle of the screen, jolting us into the twentieth century. The Stan Kenton-style syncopations of the main theme's first full statement are reserved for the film's first big shock. As a taste of things to come, however, Vickers subtly introduces more contemporary percussion and the sound of an electric guitar. While Dracula and Van Helsing senior battle it out on the top of a runaway carriage, the score's main heroic theme is introduced embryonically and the orchestral style is somewhat more traditional in style. Having said that, Vickers holds them back during the prologue set in Hyde Park in 1872. These are replaced by a quartet of saxophones, and they've never sounded fruitier than on this very well-engineered recording. It's Vickers’ job to tell us how things have changed, and one of the ways in which he updates the proceedings is by abstaining from that staple of the symphonic film score, the first and second violins. The CD puts the record straight and does credit Bernard, which is important, for although it's only a short nine-second cue, it serves to remind us of how things were. The film starts with James Bernard's famous (and uncredited) Dracula theme as the Warner Bros. Everything in the manuscript score is also here on this CD – and more. However, the fact is that everything which he so expertly composed for it was laid into the soundtrack by Hammer's formidable music supervisor, Philip Martell, exactly as Vickers intended. The score was equally well-performed, but over the years there have been doubts about exactly how much of Vickers’ music was actually used in the finished film. ![]() Skilfully directed by the talented Alan Gibson, time has given Dracula A.D. They both gave terrific performances, as did Stephanie Beacham, who played Cushing's granddaughter, Jessica, and there was even a small role for a very young Michael Kitchen as one of the really rather respectable hippies who decide to dabble in a little devil worship. Their latest release brings Mike Vickers’ complete score for the company's first, once very underrated, modern-dress Dracula tale, which brought Peter Cushing's Van Helsing and Christopher Lee's Dracula back together again after a fourteen-year break. Since their first release just over ten years ago, GDI records have consistently revealed the high musical standards of Hammer films. ![]()
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