Daniel White — Le Lac Des Morts Vivants OST
This release is the first volume in Omega Productions French Horror Film Soundtrack Collection. The CD comes in a see-through jewel case- which features a glossy 16 page inlay booklet- this takes in a host of film stills, different region cover art work for the films release, and poster artwork. The release was ltd to 300 copies.
It’s fair to say Le Lac Des Morts Vivants( aka Zombie Lake, The Lake of the Living Dead) had one of the more troubling production histories in Euro horror. The 1981 feature was originally meant to be helmed by Spanish sleaze meister Jess Franco, but at the last minute, he replaced by arty French vampire director Jean Rollin- who basically disowned the film, due to not reading the script fully before he agreed to do the picture. The film was produced by soft-core & sleazed exploration company Eurociné- and really it completely lacks the arty & darkly erotic finesse of most of Rollin’s output. Instead, it’s a blend of badly made-up zombie Nazi, lots of sleazy underwater shots of naked females, and a few haphazard gore/ effects set-ups. It’s far from a great film, even by euro exploitation standards- but it has its moment’s cheesy/ sleazy wonder.
The score is by Daniel L White- a French soundtrack composer, who worked on a lot of Jess Franco films of the 70’s/ 80’s- in all, he was fairly prolific as in between the 1950’s & mid 1990’s( when he sadly passed away) he composed the scores for 164 films. The CD takes in twenty three tracks, and a total runtime of forty three minutes- these take in musical cues, as well as film samples, and trailers. Sonically the soundtrack moves from vibe-heavy & organ focused easy listening camp-ness, onto simmering blends dread-bound church organ gothic-ness & creepy water textures. Onto lush-but- slightly melted string harmonics. Though to wordless female vocalizing over easy guitar wondering. Onto more grim & subterranean blends of murky percussion & vibe discordant edged with zombie moanings. Though to primitive synth texturing & moaning zombies/ screaming women samples. On the whole, it’s fairly eventful & varied score; though I’m sure some of the cues sound very familiar to me…coming from another Franco film of the period- this didn’t bother me too much, as there is enough original material here
Through-out the score we get nicely mood setting selection of samples from the film- be it creepy marsh field recordings, dialogue samples, or at the end the original French language trailer. These are all fairly short but are just long enough to set the mood of the film it’s self.
In conclusion, it’s great to have a CD reissue of this early 80’s slice water-bound Nazi zombie fun. This will certainly be of interest to fans of Jess Franco’s work, as the score is very Franco like. But also I can see it appealing to those who enjoy both melted & unwell easy listening, and murkily vibe scaping/ primal electronic mood-making.