"One Good Scare": The HALLOWEEN Films

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H20's faults can (in my opinion, anyway) be whittled down to three key areas:

Firstly, there's the Weinsteins' squeamishness over (of all things) John Ottman's music.

Secondly, FOUR different mask types were used throughout. The less said about the cherubic KNB mask the better (for once, interference from high-ups to get rid of this was right, even if they ended up going in the wrong direction. There's also the "bad CGI mask" moment, which has never bothered me too much due to its fleetingness. The Buechler mask used for Marion's death looked best to me, but it was brief and mostly shadows, so I dare say there was a reason Steve Miner didn't like it. The "hero" Stan Winston mask looked great from some angles, but in close-ups those daft eyeholes made Myers constantly look like a surprised kitten.

Lastly - and this is the big one - there's Mustafa Akkad's contractual clause that Michael could not be killed, which undermined everything they were trying to do here and dictated the Resurrection "retcon" being planned-in even as they filmed H20.


The first point in particular has always fascinated me, because I've always been curious to see a version with Ottman's score. And it seems to me this would be the most easily achievable since audio channels on a blu-ray release could give the viewer the choice to watch either version. I don't suppose it's ever going to happen.

H20 ended up reusing some of Beltrami's music from Scream and Mimic since the test audiences had evidently liked this in the temp track for test screenings - hence baulking over using Ottman's very different music. I've had deluxe editions of all the Beltrami Screams for some time and this week I added the deluxe edition of Mimic to my collection, presumably completing the H20 music in my library.

Off the back of this, I found myself looking round, and found this great discussion (beginning on page 26) about the film's music and its problems. The magazine is from June 1999, so before H20 the wrestling over the film's music was widely known and discussed. John Ottman himself has a lot to say about it in the article. It's clear he's unhappy and who can blame him?

Incidentally the article also has a cue sheet for every piece of music used in the film. Sadly the Scream and Mimic cues aren't titled (i.e. Tatum's Torture for the scene where Michael chases Laurie, John and Molly), so it's difficult to know exactly how it all the pieces are chopped up and inserted. It does show how much of a mishmash the music cues are. And some are even recycled within the film (Race To The Subway from Mimic is apparently used several times).
 
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