I think I should make a confession up front, although I find it personally embarrassing. When I first saw the restored NOTLD video with the new soundtrack, I was furious. How dare they slap a shitty new soundtrack by a contemporary hack onto a classic film? How dare John Russo present this video as the one for the "purists" among us who don't want to see any new footage, or any old footage cut, and yet remove much of the library soundtrack that was carefully edited to fit the final movie, and which is beloved by long time fans of the film? I confess that as the car drove up the road in the opening shot, and I heard the new music, I shouted "Fuck You!" at the screen. I even had misguided thoughts about the new music being anachronistic, as the style of music that followed Johnny and Barbara into the Cemetary was not heard in '67-'68, let alone the clearly synthesized sounds that were not possible at the time. Although I know my buddies will rib me for this until the end of time, I even considered raising objections to the new sound mix, like the absurdly loud sound effects (Ben's resounding grunts when beating in zombie heads outside the farm-house is one example) , or the fact that many of the sections that retained the original music were insanely muted, as if one were urinating in the restroom of a club that was playing Night of the Living Dead in the main room. All that changed, though, when I read the words of the new composer, Scot Vladimir Licinia. The scales fell from my eyes, and I took a journey to a place I never dared dream of...
He said that musically, he wanted to tell a tale, that the music should be an homage to the entire genre, and that he saw himself as a "thread" back to '68, where the original had that "naive, cheesy feel down to a science". I'm amazed that it took me this long to understand what he meant by the "entire genre", but then, life is a voyage of discovery... Vlad's score effectively evokes the mood of the golden age of horror, the early-mid '80's, with its astute use of such time-honored musical devices as the spooky modal piano ostinato. The score brings to mind such terror classics as "Tales from the Crypt", "Sleepaway Camp", and the grand tradition of 80's slasher flicks in general. The music for these films was a high-watermark for soundtrack music, influenced as they were by Carpenter's scores and Goblin's music for films in the genre, although mean-spirited snobs cry "rip-off" and "diluted" to this day. I feel that Vlad's variations on a deceptively simple piano theme are as myriad in implication as the countless variations on the "teen killed with a strange implement" scenario in the classic era of horror. By bringing Night of the Living Dead into this period (sonically, at least), Vlad is ushering it into the halls of the true classics of terror, for NIGHT, whatever its relative merits for its time, was in danger of being a footnote in movie history, perhaps ending up being remembered only for opening the door for such classics as Scream and Leprechaun. Of course, in the glory days of the horror film, few soundtrack composers had preset sampled piano sounds available to them. For the most part, they were reduced to recording an acoustic piano with a device known as a microphone, and with human fingers striking a "key" to produce each tone. An unfortunate side effect of this ancient method of recording is a tendency for individual notes to sound slightly different from each other. Thankfully, years have passed since this method of music recording was used, and Vlad was faced with no such limitations when he created his monotonous, tiring sound, so essential for creating an atmosphere of hopeless terror. Granted, some people who refuse to let go of the past will say that the piano "sounds fake", but to say so is to miss the point of Licina's achievement. The hollow, false, sound of the piano music is a shrewd commentary on the artificiality of our collective faith in societal institutions to save us, be they family, peer-group, or police and military "authorities". The drone of the "piano" is the inevitability of death, and the plaintive song of the oboe (before my "moment of understanding", I would have been tempted to call it a "faux-boe"), is the cry of the individual faced with an uncaring universe. We are, all of us, ultimately alone, but if one has the courage to look into the void and bravely choose to create, challenging the absurdity of existence, one can perhaps create meaning where none existed before. This is what "Vlad" has done, and that is his legacy to each of us. Wherever you are right now, "Vlad", know that your work has not gone unnoticed. I'm at a loss for words, so let me say, quite simply, Thank you, and I wish you the best of luck with the Slice Girls. I trust that project will survive as long as the new score to this film and Geri Halliwell's solo career.
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