Terror Tracks - Music, Sound and Horror Cinema - Philip Hayward

Terror Tracks - Music, Sound and Horror Cinema - Philip Hayward

Sound and Music in Hammer’s Vampire Films

Terror Tracks - Music, Sound and Horror Cinema - Philip Hayward

Michael Hannan [+-]
Southern Cross University
Michael Hannan is a professor at Southern Cross University, Lismore, and a practising composer. His publications include The Australian Guide to Careers in Music (2003) and he is currently researching the Australian film music production sector.

Description

Analysis of the techniques used in the scoring of the Hammer horror output concluding that Hammer’'ss use of dramatic sound effects and powerful orchestrations in the vampire films dramatize a monstrous presence and threat chiefly conveyed through symbolic power and suggestion rather than graphic dismemberment and/or depictions of gore. While Hammer’s composers were not responsible for any significant musical innovations, their development of a series of scores (managed and maintained by house music directors) created a musical reference bank for future horror-film composers. In Hammer’s diegeses the world is essentially rendered: Dracula’s dramatic, exciting darkness against the forces of light, reason and restraint. Returning to the cultural frame that prefaced this chapter, it is perhaps not overfanciful to read Hammer’s post-war films – and particularly their routine victories of the forces of good over evil – as a cathartic ‘replaying’ and purging of the traumas of the war years.

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Citation

Hannan, Michael. Sound and Music in Hammer’s Vampire Films. Terror Tracks - Music, Sound and Horror Cinema. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 60 - 74 Jul 2009. ISBN 9781845532024. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=19123. Date accessed: 29 Mar 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.19123. Jul 2009

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