 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hello all,
I don't go "Wow!" for no reason these days, but I just must say that the newly restored footage on the (HORROR OF) DRACULA BluRay is simply gobsmackingly great. For the disintegration we now see an extra shot of Dracula's face contorted in agony, slightly longer shots of the hand and foot disintegrations, and, of course, the famous face-clawing scene. Amazingly powerful.
But the reason I'm mentioning this is that I wonder if I'm the only one who has had things the wrong way round in my head regarding the score. Those of us who grew up with this film and have seen it a hundred times will have the score for the climactic scene burned into our memories. I naturally always assumed that what we had been hearing up until now was the score as conceived by James Bernard. And even after word got out a few years ago of the newly-found reels in Japan, and that they were going to try to incorporate the new footage into the BluRay, I imagined (for some reason - I don't know why) that the footage would be silent, and that something would have to be done to the score in order to cover the new seconds, maybe putting some bars on a re-loop or something.
But no - it seems so obvious now - what we hear in the BluRay is the full score before the scene was cut, so the chords are extended, the sustains longer, and the effect is markedly different. It almost sounds "wrong", so used was I to hearing the trimmed score. If this were a re-recording, I'd be shouting "It's not the same"! Turns out that what we knew and loved was just a very clever editing job done 55 years ago!
My YouTube links never work, but I'll give it a try -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emUUbFijTkU
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I gave you the rubbishiest of the YouTube links - you can bloody well find better ones yourselves, if you so wish.
Interestingly, in the final "unrestored Japanese reel", the hand-crumpling shot is even longer than the one on the proper restored version of the complete film, AND there's an additional shot of Dracula almost weeping in distress (!) - which for some reason didn't get properly restored at all. I'm sure there's a terribly logical reason as to why this is the case, but my brain cells have been dead for a long time.
ANYWAY - There you spend your life thinking you know a bit of music, and then you discover that it's been the abridged version all along. Those few seconds of completely new James Bernard are, for me, a revelation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hi
could not agree more very odd after all these years to hear more music,
As a pointer i think i read a blog by the guy that does Dark Side or maybe Video watchdog
on the cuts not instated i think it puts to bed the rumours that they did shoot different versions due to the close ups of Mr Lee showing more pain and such from one to another
all worth seeing for sure well done to all that worked on it
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Where can one purchase a copy of this new restoration?
THANKS!!!!!
Amazon.com in the UK - I live in the U.S. but import through this site every couple of months - it's easy.
Diabolik DVD here in the U.S. is carrying the UK Blu Ray release as well - you may find them even easier.
But I'm not sure if it's a region free Blu Ray. I was planning on picking it up soon but I long ago upgraded to a Blu Ray player that could play A and B region disks so I stopped paying attention. Maybe somebody who already has the disk can let you know. Sometimes they're region free even when they're not marked that way (e.g. most Universal and Fox Blu Rays released in the UK are actually region free).
|
|
|
|
|
|
After much investigation, this whole issue has become very confusing for me...
There seems to have been some insurmountable problems in getting the slightly extended cues for the climactic battle integrated into the restored Blu-Ray correctly - they were working with damaged footage, not only the visuals but also the score and sound effects. I got so confused I had to give up, but I gather that for synch purposes they couldn't include the intriguing "crying Dracula" shot, nor the very slightly longer hand disintegration - which you can still see on the final unrestored Japanese reel... Further inspection has revealed that the newly-heard "extended" music seems occasionally "abridged" in itself... as if it's ALMOST from the complete original score, but not quite.
I have no idea what I'm talking about and would like someone to explain it to me. Please.
|
|
|
|
|
|
I'll have to look up articles about this restoration. When listening to the old version, the music does not seem to have any noticeable edits. Are you sure they didn't instead do some creative editing to extend/repeat parts of the cue to make it fit this restored version?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, that's what I originally assumed they would do, Jim. But it seems that they're actually using the "unedited" soundtrack from the Japanese print (more or less), with more gurgly sound effects etc intact... I'll have to investigate further.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In the original, the DRA-CU-LA theme is repeated 10 times after the curtain comes down, in the restored version it's repeated 11 times, so now you know how the extra 4 or 5 seconds of footage were covered.
The 4th and 5th repetitions of the 3-note motif seem to be the same, they seem to have been duplicated by music editors, there's a clumsy cut between them which interrupts the 4th repetition, at least it sounds clumsy to me judging from the poor quality of the YouTube clip.
So I don't think James Bernard composed two versions of this cue. I wish they had just cut those cheesy face-clawing shots with a dummy with two ridiculous fangs from the original version and replaced it with the restored face-clawing shot with the real actor, which is pretty good.
I'd love to see this original score remastered on CD, along with Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula Prince of Darkness, most certainly James Bernard's 3 most enduring masterpieces. Re-recordings would be also welcome!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Jul 22, 2016 - 4:08 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
|
And after all those years, it's time for an appropriate resurrection of this old thread . I must have got it the wrong way round initially, whereas Jim Doherty and rbrisbane seem to have been much more on the ball. Here's a summary for those of you lazy gits who can't be bothered reading long threads.
I had immediately assumed that music accompanying the extended disintegration scene was what James Bernard had initially written, and thus what was heard in Japan in 1958.
I also assumed that when the British censor shortened that sequence, the corresponding bars from the score were lost too.
The above still kind of makes sense to me, but something's not quite right about it all. This is what has been niggling away at my brain for more than three years...
You can hear Ian Pickford in the following doc which came with the Blu talk about how the sound which accompanied the complete film had deteriorated badly, and how he had to "elongate" some of the bars of music to cover up the now-longer sequences - although I'm not quite clear if he's specifically referring to the seduction scene. I imagine he's talking about the whole thing.
Here he is, at about the 15-minute mark -
RESURRECTING DRACULA - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdYzsCfaZPI
I must be really slow, because it has taken so long to get this into my head, and I'm still unclear about it. My doubts are...
1) The edited version which we all knew seems to sound so right. The music has a steady, logical progression during the final disintegration, so now I doubt very much that what we hear in the restored film is what James Bernard wrote. In fact the Blu-Ray doc states quite clearly that it's not the way it was heard in Japan.
2) It crossed my mind that Hammer might have had James Bernard rescore the censored disintegration. That's why it fits so well - there are no noticeable oddities in the music (unlike in the restored film). But Hammer never would have done that. Too expensive. They ALWAYS sent the complete film out, and it was up to each country to decide whether to cut anything. No re-scoring. So why does it sound so right in the version we grew up with? I thought it might be just "familiarity", but I'm ruling that out. Whatever, that brings us onto the final, most troubling point Watson...
3) What exactly then did Japanese audiences hear music-wise in the full version in 1958? It must have been what JB wrote. I wonder what it sounded like. We're only talking about a few seconds, but it's fascinating to think about. I wonder if there's a written score sheet... Calling David Huckvale...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Jul 22, 2016 - 7:20 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
|
As mentioned in another thread, the new Facebook page, The Film Music Midi Group might shed some light on this. Gaetano Malaponti reconstructed the score from The Curse of Frankenstein masterly in midi. Considering that the original tapes are gone, the quality and work he put into this is absolutely outstanding. One of his next projects is to do the entire score from Horror of Dracula. He will be getting the original hand written scores by James Bernard from David Huckvale. Gae already mentioned that the main title is missing so he will have to reconstruct by ear. Maybe the "Final Confrontation" music is longer although I have a feeling that for the Japanese version JB's score was edited and expanded for that. Maybe I am wrong. For The Curse of Frankenstein there was music written for the scene where Paul Kremper fist comes to meet young Baron Frankenstein. In the film the music is potted down but now the entire music for that scene can be heard. Even the finale has extra music when Frankenstein tries to choke Paul and then Paul comforting Elizabeth before the final death knell and end credits. So I think these questions will be answered once Gaetano starts working on the score.
Coincidentally marc, I was in contact with Gae this morning (you'll see our conversation on the Midi Facebook page), and I asked if he'd be working from the full score sheets - or as many as possible - from David Huckvale. We speculated on what James Bernard's climactic cue might sound like unedited.
Then I did a bit more research... I'd been following this on the British Horror Films forum ever since Simon Rowson announced that he had chanced upon the last two reels of the film in Japan. This must have been about 2011. It was a laborious painstaking job to get the full film out, not helped by the fact that mere days after the discovery, Japan was hit by a devastating tsunami.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I recall that there was some talk about how Hammer originally got round the (re)scoring problem, by putting in more reaction shots of Peter Cushing and making it just about as long as the Japanese print. I should really do comparisons with the different prints, but I'm kind of worn out. Whatever, the conclusion is that it's very possible that the scores heard in the two versions were actually the same. It'll be interesting to see what's on the Huckvale manuscript - and to hear what Gae does with it.
P.S. - Oh, and even if that's the case, they did have to "elongate" some of the sustains, and loop bits (?) for the BluRay, coz it's a composite of the two versions. It was such a nightmare to synch that some intriguing footage only appears in the extras - the "crying Dracula" shot, which was in good enough shape to be included but which would have been too troublesome to splice in correctly, so they said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
