Halloween: The Scores of Michael Myers, Part 3

by Michael Mays

See Thursday's column on Halloween 1, 2 and 3 and yesterday's column on Halloween 4, 5 and 6:

And so we come to the end of this in-depth review, closing out with the most recent soundtrack of the series, the original score to 1998's lackluster Halloween H20. Along with a new crew and "bigger name" director, H20 boast the distinction of being the first Halloween since 1981 to be scored by a different composer. According to Howarth in a 1998 interview, director Steve Miner had no interest whatsoever in the people involved with the sequels, only those who were involved with the original Halloween. That meant Howarth was out of the project. The composer also said that Miner originally wanted to get Jerry Goldsmith for the film, since the two had collaborated on Forever Young. But when Goldsmith proved either unavailable or uninterested (I don't know), John Ottman was hired to score the film.

After the film was scored, executives at Miramix decided to bring in Marco Beltrami (from the Scream series) to add additional music and re-score much of Ottman's work. Clips from his Mimic and first Scream scores were also included in the film. While an official H20 soundtrack was held up by legalities, Ottman did release his own CD containing the music he wrote for the film on Varese Sarabande.

Portrait of Terror (Halloween: H20) **

Leaving synths behind and using a full orchestra, Ottman attempted a large-scale horror score and barely even hinted at the key themes from the previous films in his work. Ottman's work here is mediocre, though there is some notable material. The track "Rest Stop" features the voice of a frightened little girl whispering "mommy" that is quite effective, but nowhere near as scary as those female screams in "Tower Farm" from Halloween 5.

"Face to Face" and "Final Confrontation" are exciting suspense pieces, the first as Laurie Strode sees the face of her killer brother for the first time in twenty years, and the second as she heads back into the school for the final showdown.

In the end, though, the majority of the score is out of place. Writing a completely orchestral score for this film, Ottman went overboard in trying to give the film a large symphonic sound. It doesn't work, and the film suffers because of it (though the movie is the weakest of the franchise anyway). The previous scores worked wonderfully-well due to their minimalist sound and Howarth's ability to heighten the tension and suspense of those films by underlining them with music in a discreet way, whereas Ottman's music tended to simply just overpower much of the film and call attention to itself.

The best part of H20 comes at the very end of the film, in the final shots, where Carpenter's original "Halloween Theme" is played, exactly as it was heard in the first film twenty years before. It gives us just the slightest hint of an idea of what an all-synth score would've sounded like in this film, but that's all it is: a hint. Ottman wrote some good material, but I would give anything to see what Alan Howarth would have done with it.

Hopefully, I've managed to turn some people on to this wonderful collection of horror music. If you're willing to take a chance and try this other music you might have been avoiding simply because they were from sequels, I would very much like to hear from you, and hear what you thought of it.

After the dismal score for Halloween H20, it appears that things are looking up. Rumor has it that Howarth is returning to score the in-production seventh sequel in the series, Halloween H2K: Evil Never Dies. Other rumors suggested that he would be working alongside X-Files composer Mark Snow, but Howarth himself said that was news to him. In any event, if Howarth is indeed going to be back, look forward to a soundtrack that gets the series' scores back on track, back to where they once were and where they should remain.

Carpenter noted that he thought his plan to save his film with music had worked after the fact. In fact, it worked far better than he could have possibly imagined. Not only did that famous music save one low-budget, independent film, but it contributed to the production of five sequels and the dozens of Halloween imitations. Alongside Carpenter, Alan Howarth certainly deserves credit for his efforts towards making this horror franchise the influential success it has become.

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