Celebrate the dark side of love with alternative themes for a gothic Valentine’s Day. From neurotic Marnie, blood sucking Dracula and all out war of the sexes in Kill Bill to “train wreck” mentality of Betty Blue, Bonnie and Clyde’s blood fest and “bunny boiling” Fatal Attraction this is an ideal anti-Valentine compilation for the more cynical amongst us...

Having listened to this soundtrack several times now, I'm still unsure as to why some of the tracks made it onto the finished collection. It's a strange mixture of soundtracks, all of which are supposed to represent an anti-romantic theme. Well... I assume that's the idea. But as a gothic anti-Valentine album I can't explain why the music from Psycho and Rosemary's Baby is included, and some of the other inclusions are a little odd, to say the least.

As with compilations of this kind, it's not going to really appeal to the hardcore soundtrack fanatic out there. Most of the tracks here represent the movie's main theme, or most famous piece of music. If you're a soundtrack fan then you'll probably already own the original scores.

I've lost count of how many compilations I now own with the Psycho theme; Vertigo's 'Scene D' Amour'; and the Marnie music that's included here. Equally, the Brokeback Mountain music is starting to become a bit of an overused theme in these sort of compilations - give it another ten years and you'll be sick of the sound of it.

While the majority of the tracks are well recorded there is at least one example that will make most with a keen ear wince. What sound like penny whistles, that accompany the vocals on 'The Storm' from Bram Stoker's Dracula, sound slightly out of tune. This gives the whole thing a very amateur feel - like some school production gone wrong.

The majority of the recordings, however, do justice to the original. I'm just scratching my head to think who would buy this rather odd collection.

5

Darren Rea