by Ken S on 7/27/2001
favorite track: 1
 
This was my first soundtrack album I ever purchased (1986) - and ever since I have loved dramatic movie music.

Being a Dracula fan from early childhood, I listened to this soundtrack without seeing the movie it was composed for - and I was swept away to Bram Stoker's original gothic world with ruined mountain castles, white-shrouded ladies, misty graveyards, and wolves baying at the moon. Williams' enchanting and powerful music suggests all this. But alas, when finally seeing the movie, I was truly disappointed by its idiotic screenplay and colourless actors. But the music itself was even better than on the soundtrack album, which is a rerecording. Although the music on the album is marvelous, the album doesn't contain the entire score - and the music has been arranged for "listening convenience" (?) by the composer - which is why the album lacks couple of wonderful cues from the original score. Due to this, I can give only four stars to this soundtrack album which actually stands better on its own than heard within the stupid movie adaption.

For anyone who has ever read Bram Stoker's original masterpiece - John Williams' atmospheric soundtrack is the closest thing musically linked to the novel!