Intrada Soundtrack Forum

I've been a fan of Mancina's score to The Haunted Mansion ever since I saw the film in 2003. So naturally I tried to get my hands on the score by whatever means necessary. I bought the OST which only had 1 track of the score as a suite, so not much to appreciate the score. <y friend ended up winning the FYC disc on eBay, but the cues had a good bit of microedits and were mix up like crazy. The bootleg ended up leaking online, and unfortunately (since it was illegal) was the only was to fully appreciate the score albiet the audio quality was just... meh...

So you can imagine my excitement when Intrada released this score! I could finally get the complete score in lossless, AND LEGALLY!

When it was delivered I rushed to my mailbox with a racing heartbeat. I popped in the CD... AND disappointment ensued...

1. The sound mix is kind of odd.... This could be because I'm used to the mix on the bootleg. But on the Intrada release a lot of the percussion and other high frequencies sound a lot lower, almost as if they're supposed to be in the background. I remember in the bootleg they were a tad louder and added some impact, helping create the creepy tone of the score. But this is only a minor complaint and I can easily get over it.

2. The crossfading of cues. Again, something else I can easily get over, but I prefer cues to be separated. Even if it means we don't get an accurate film mix/edit. If I end up wanting a film edit, I'll just do it myself. But then again, I seem to be in the minority when it comes to this subject. Although seeing as this release was 2 discs, they would've had plenty of room to keep the cues separated and not have to result to crossfading to save time.

3. THIS IS NOT COMPLETE! To quote the Tech Talk section of the Liner Notes... "To present the entire score for the first time on CD..." If Intrada is gonna claim this release is complete, THEN MAKE IT COMPLETE! Now this really contains to two cues in particular. Disc 1:Track 19 Dad, We Have A Problem and Disc 2:Track 6 Try Again.

D1:T19 - Dad, We Have A Problem
This is a completely different version than whats heard in the film, and not just a slight alternate like I expected it to be. Granted, it cool that we get to hear a different version of this cue, but why not add it to the extras on Disc 2 and have the film version on Disc 1?

D2:T6 - Try Again
This track, is actually fine... Until the end of the track where they completely cut out the last part of cue 6m66 Sara Passes Out/Going To Heaven/Vacation At Last. Intrada for some reason decided to cut out the "Vacation At Last" segment of the cue. And It's fairly noticeable. Without that last part of the cue, it just sounds unfinished. That last segment gives the rest of the cue a sense of closure that were now missing in this release. How does cutting this part out make ANY sense?!

*DEEP BREATH*

There may be other absences that I may not have noticed, but these are the two tracks that stuck out to me. So now I have to listen to a mix of this release and the bootleg in order to listen to this score the way it should be. And I shouldn't have too. Everything SHOULD be on this official/legal release. I shouldn't have to resort to another source to listen to what was promised for this release.

Whenever this release was announced, I mention that if this sells well that i hoped Intrada would also release an expanded/complete release of Mancina's Tarzan score. If they do in fact do that, I hope they do a better job than this....