Troll (1986). Composer: Richard Band.
“What is the difference between trolls and men?”
Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt
This film has a look to it that’s like something like Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Troll tells a menacing, impish modern fairy tale. It’s a film with an equally impish and fanciful soundtrack. I can imagine the fae of artist Brian Froud’s book, Faeries…,
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The Innocents (1961). Composers: Georges Auric and Daphne Oram.
This film is a familiar one for many Gothic horror film fans. It is derived from Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and William Archibald’s play The Innocents, and creates a dramatization of the nefarious nature of James’s story that is very elegant. The Innocents, like The Watcher in the Woods and Wait Until …
The Watcher in the Woods (1980). Composer: Stanley Myers.
Disney movies. What do you think of when you think of Disney movies? Castles? Princesses? Happily Ever After? What, no saurian alien life forms stalking chatty Americans living on the Gothic side of England? If the latter option doesn’t come to mind when you think of Disney movies, then you might have missed The Watcher in the Woods…
Sleepy Hollow (1999). Composer: Danny Elfman.
This film’s beautiful cinematography keeps vivid color to an effective minimum and relies on dreary, overcast, gray atmosphere to create dread. The score employs a similar concept by relying heavily on low-end orchestral instruments like contrabass, bassoons and tubas, and cuing gentler instruments like harps and solo violins sparsely.
“Introduction”: The ideally ominous way to begin a film …
Kill Bill (2003). Composer: Various artists.
This score is an intriguing jigsaw. Its cultural span includes Spanish, Asian and Spaghetti Western-Italian musical influences. It also includes rap, disco, contemporary pop, rockabilly, and spoken dialogue from the film.
“Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” by Nancy Sinatra: Kill Bill is not a subtle film and this song’s meaning in the film is not metaphoric.
“That Certain Female” by Charlie Feathers: Jerry Lee Lewis’s fellow Sun label Rockabilly …
