Hayward/Terror Tracks, 3. Sound and Music in Hammer’s Vampire Films

Analysis of the techniques used in the scoring of the Hammer horror output concluding that Hammer's 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.