• Composed by Guy Farley
• La-La Land Records LLLCD 1105 / 2009 / 36:15

Like many people (I’m sure), the first thing I did when hearing about Book of Blood was to come up with a new set of lyrics for the Bacharach/David song “The Look of Love”, based around this film’s title.  Almost unbelievably, composer Guy Farley didn’t take that approach to his score.  Indeed, it is hard to find any sort of Bacharach influence at all.  If I ever make a film based on a Clive Barker novel, the first thing I’m going to do is call up Burt and see if he’s available.  Farley’s approach is very by-the-numbers; tinkles of piano to generate suspense, occasional explosions of brass for the chills, electronics to keep the kids happy.

It all works well enough, but I’ve heard this kind of score so many times, it’s hard to get particularly excited any more.  Without a strong theme (the surprisingly tender “Lovers” apart) this is unlikely to displace many of the fine horror scores of the past from people’s list of favourites.  It’s ironic because Farley has written some creative scores in the past, but this one sounds a bit like a less-impressive version of one of Christopher Young’s creepy horror scores.  If you’re a particular fan of music from this genre of film then, for sure, this contains all the right ingredients; and if I’d heard it before I had heard dozens of other very similar scores then I’m sure I would have been highly impressed, because it’s undoubtedly very well-crafted.  There’s a bit of flavour provided by the duduk (whose overuse in film scores has thankfully become a thing of the past) and I’m sure the score is highly effective in the film, so I don’t want to give the impression it’s bad.  I’m sure people without vast collections of horror scores will find much to enjoy.  ***